Actions, not words.

Three weeks ago I asked a colleague of mine for a professional favour. It was a very simple task that required at most, 15 minutes of organized thought. The person responded; "NO PROBLEM".

Here we are three weeks from then and I still have yet to received what I asked for. This morning I spent 7 minutes doing it myself.

How many of you salespeople are in the business of saying, 'No problem', 'For sure', 'Consider it done', 'I will have that for you on delivery' or the most insincere and most common, 'It would be my pleasure'? I'll bet over half the time you don't follow through. Why would you? It's easy to blame service, operations, the customer, your sales manager or anyone other than yourself. The fact is, when you say you are going to do something for a customer and that something doesn't happen, you've lost. You've lost some trust, some credibility, practically all chance of being referred and in short you've lost future money.

Now you're thinking, how I've lost money Haddon? Well;

TRUST + CREDIBILITY = REFERRALS
and
REFERRALS = MONEY.

Therefore you've lost money.

Think about that, MONEY! The very reason you have a car, house, nice things and a pot belly. MONEY - the root of all evil and modern innovation, the thing you work so hard (and dumb) for. MONEY the thing you dream of having more of and claim to be doing everything you can to get.

Wait, no you aren't. You're just lying to yourself.

By not exerting the extra effort and spending the extra time, you've lost future sales, repeat orders and lay down referrals. You are giving money away to the smarter sales person. The more organized salesperson. The salesperson who is a person of action!

If I had Loonie (proudly Canadian) for every time someone told me they were going to do something and they didn't do it, I would have more money than I'd know what to do with. Now, what if I told you that if early in my career I would have actually done everything I ever told someone I would do for them, I'd have even more money than that?

The point is, whether you are new to the sales game, an old dog with a pipeline the size of Alberta (Texas for you Americans) or someone who just switched to a new industry; a sure way of getting to the top is by doing what you say you are going to do. Under promise and over deliver - you've certainly heard that since you started your career. The problem with age old sayings is that they often fall on deaf ears.

Let me suggest this; If you promise it, look up the word promise in a dictionary and act accordingly. Otherwise look up the word failure and prepare to accept that as the definition or who you are.