When you have 2 out of 4 flights cancelled in a span of 3 days, and both cancellations result in overnight stays and missed meetings, you do have to wonder about air travel.
My trips were all scheduled around sales call and client update meetings, as well as a board meeting and a networking breakfast.
Sandwiched in between these meetings and flights were a number of scheduled conference calls.
Yes, a typical week for me and probably similar to what many of you encounter.
Irony of the cancelled flights is yes stuff got pushed back, rearranged, etc., but in the end, nothing truly was lost.
It came down to the simple premise of keeping focused on the focus. Or in my case, keeping the expected outcomes still within reach.
In the end, I was able to handle the critical meetings and let the others fall to another day. Looking back on the trip, I realized something. Regardless of what circumstances arose, there was still an objective to be accomplished.
Yes, it would have been tempting and much easier to let the circumstances take control and try to justify ignoring the objective at hand. Looking at this from a leadership perspective, I can’t help but see several interesting points.
First, as a sales leader, we have to make sure we know what the objective is. Not knowing the objective makes it far too easy to become a victim of circumstances.
Second, we can’t allow circumstances to alter the expected outcome. Things do come up. There’s no one in sales who has not experienced unforeseen issues or problems at one time or another.
Third, customers don’t care about our problems. They only care about their problems. When we allow our problems to become the center point of our thinking, then there is little chance of being able to help the customer.
Finally, as a sales leader leading other salespeople, we must always remember how much our perspective will influence those we’re leading when circumstances change.
Maintaining balance and perspective is the only way we will ever be able to lead others in time of change.
Copyright 2014, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price.
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One Response
Go with the flow and keep on keeping on. Sounds trite, but so often the world shows up to greet us with these kinds of issues and that is exactly what we have to do. Keep on going.
Thank you Mark, this is an excellent post and I am glad your trip turned out well anyway.