During the summer of 2012, I received a call from a sales director of a large manufacturer asking me about my speaking programs. We had one of those amazing introductory calls where my solution perfectly fit his needs, my price fit within their budget, and we got along very well. This was a slam dunk. In fact, he ended the call with: “Chris, this is great. I’ve got a meeting on Wednesday to finalize things with my boss and a committee, but it’s just a formality. Send me your contract and pencil in the dates for January.”
That was it, right? The sale was done – closed, nailed shut, secured. Coffee was for me! Well, not exactly.
On Wednesday afternoon, I received a call from my new BFF and it went something like this: “I have no idea what happened. This thing got taken totally out of my hands and we’re now bringing in some personality style speaker. My boss asked if you had any testimonials or videos. I didn’t have any to show, and they didn’t want to surf through YouTube or your website. Anyway, I’m sorry – we’re going in a different direction.”
Even though he apologized to me, it was my fault and I should’ve been the one expressing regret. I assumed my point of contact was my customer. That wasn’t the case, and it’s never the case anymore. Our points of contact should be considered our internal sales professional – the one person who is responsible for selling us to the committee. I have videos. I have testimonials. I have video of people giving me testimonials. However, I didn’t share any of this with my point of contact. I assumed the sale was closed. Obviously, it wasn’t.
So, what can we do to help our points of contact sell for us? Click the image below to learn about three ideas to make your points of contact great internal sales champions for you.
