In the 2004 movie, The Wedding Date, Nick (played by Dermot Mulroney) boldly and harshly exclaims to Kat (played by Debra Messing): “There is no such thing as ‘out of the blue’.” His statement was made in the context of relationships, and I remember chuckling when I first saw the movie because he nailed it. Not only did he put Kat in her place while she was trying to justify her status of still being single, but he nailed it with me, too. So many times, I had made a comment like: “… and all of a sudden, my travel was a problem.” or “It hit like a ton of bricks – I couldn’t stand her but here I was a year later.” or my favorite: “Everything seemed great and then out of the blue, she decides she doesn’t like me anymore.”
I chuckled years ago when watching this scene because none of those comments were accurate. I knew all of it – I just didn’t want to pay attention.
In your profession of selling or managing salespeople, have you heard statements like the ones below?
- All of a sudden, she’s doubling her quota and making $300k a year.
- Out of the blue, they called me back and invited me in for a presentation.
- I never saw it coming, but my largest client decided to move forward with another company.
These statements are rarely – and I mean practically never – true. It’s more like: She’s been working 60 hours a week for three years now and it’s paying off for her; I’ve spent 18 months calling on these guys and they finally called me back; and I started seeing my client becoming less reliant on us months ago, but I didn’t do anything about it.
It’s never out of the blue in sales. Never. There are two reasons we think it is:
- We don’t want to pay attention. We want to ignore the bad things and assume others got lucky with their success.
- We don’t have the systems or processes in place to look at the data. If you’re going to have a bad August, you should know in May.
That’s it. Become emotionally strong enough to look at the brutal truth and develop the systems and processes that will indicate trends with your numbers and customers.
It’s never out of the blue!
