Have you heard the story about the sales guy who closed the biggest deal in his company’s history only to be fired the next week?
Here’s how it goes.
A sales guy at a major tech company is working on a single deal throughout the year.
His management supports him throughout the lean quarters.
Towards the end of the fiscal year, that deal closes which is the biggest for that product category in the region.
Everyone’s at the office celebrating from the sales guy to his manager to the regional management.
A press release comes out a week later.
Their client had given a significantly bigger order to their competitor for a tech where they played as well.
It was all part of a single larger client initiative.
Their celebrations now seemed silly to them as they had been celebrating coming second in a two-man race.
A quick debrief on how could they not know about this requirement while they had been in touch for over a year and the blame was assigned to the sales guy who was then fired.
Now, I am not sure whether this is a story concocted by sales trainers to drive home a (valid) point or it’s actually true.
I remember being told this story in a training about 13 years ago and the lesson has stuck with me.
Always be in discovery mode to ascertain how else you can help the prospect/client organization.
I see rookie salespeople not giving the initial discovery due importance for inbound leads thinking that these guys are already at the bottom of the funnel and know exactly what they want.
And I see seasoned account managers develop tunnel vision for the one deal that they’re working on & they forget to explore more.
It’s the job of the management to coach their team to always have an eye on the bigger picture.
The story, if true, is a case of the sales guy being made the scapegoat for poor team management.
Have you heard this story in your career or worse yet, have you seen it happen?
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