by tabletop recruiter Mike Hawkins
Industry colleagues and I have been talking lately about how mature tabletop sales people can continue and even increase their momentum/velocity. “Showing up” is a major portion of the answer.
In my view, no matter what your age is, you have to “show up.” Let me give you two examples from my own sales career.
As a bright eyed and inexperienced 17 year old in London, I sold brushes door to door. Most sales people, including those going door to door, worked five days a week. This was a hundred plus cold calls, twelve demonstrations, four orders a day, “foot in the door” type of business.
On one Saturday morning, instead of sleeping in, I was working the streets when it started raining hard. I decided not to go home but work a high rise to shelter from the weather. Around 4:00 p.m. I was trying to close a sale, with samples strewn all over the doorstep, when the woman’s husband appeared from behind the door. He asked me “what a nice young kid was doing selling brushes” and that he was the London Sales Manager of an American company called Diversey Chemicals. Coincidentally, they were looking for a trainee salesman.
Twelve years later after a career which included calling on the largest hotel chains all over Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Diversey relocated me and my family to the USA. See what a 17 year old got for “showing up”?
Last fall, 50 years later, I was working the floor at the HOST Show in Milan, Italy. It was 6:00 p.m. and I was on my way out of the show and on to a client’s 50th anniversary party. The show was slow and emptying, and I walked past a booth and decided to make one last stop. Well, guess what the President on the booth told me? That he was glad that I stopped by as he was in the market for a general manager to head up his US operation. I was late to the party, but that one last stop paid for the entire trip and more.
As you can see, nothing much has changed in 50 years, has it?
It doesn’t matter how old you are …just showing up is half the battle. It has an effect of leveling the playing field against those that have less grey hair so that you can play the Ace Card of experience.
