We interviewed a candidate yesterday for an outside sales position who comes with a different background to our client’s company. The purpose of the interview was to further discuss his abilities before putting him in front of our customer. We were pleasantly surprised that his sales skills and history are even stronger than we first expected.
Here’s why – he took over a territory in a complex, technical sale in which his employer had a bad reputation. The reputation was deserved. The task for this salesperson was daunting…and he succeeded in turning the territory around.
Overcoming a bad reputation in the marketplace is more difficult than new business development with a clean, or even unknown, reputation. We have seen this first-hand with one of our national accounts that completely alienated a market in Texas. They are working to reestablish themselves, but the wounds are too fresh. The salespeople have yet to get traction with that market so they are focused on other markets for now.
I’ve personally sold in both situations within the same industry and I can attest to the difficulty of overcoming a bad reputation. The customers were dogmatic and skeptical at every turn. And, of course, I stepped in it a few times since my employer did not share all of the history in the account. That was nice.
The main points I learned in these situations:
- Time – it takes time for the emotions to calm down. It takes time to attempt to work your way back in to the market. Expecting a quick fix, fast turnaround only exasperates the problem. Cordial perseverance is the best approach.
- Humility – it is tough sledding and the sales rep best not be cocky. I ate a lot of humble pie while rebuilding a bad territory that I inherited, but it worked.
- Sacrifice – some accounts will be lost for good. I wasted much of my time trying to secure a previous customer that was too far gone. There has to be some tough decisions made about which accounts to pursue and which to put on a “drip” list. As a sales rep, this was a tough meeting to have with my sales manager (“Why can’t you get them back?”).