The Wild World of Sales
When I was a Junior in College, I spent a week in South Africa at a private game reserve researching Wildlife. The experience was pretty much incomparable. Waking up everyday at dawn to explore the wide-ranging primal vistas full of majestic and dangerous wildlife was something not many of people get to experience. The exciting encounters I had with Lions, Rhinos, Elephants and many more exotic animals became routine; and though I was only there for a week; it strangely felt like months. However, I will always cherish the time I spent there because of the amount of character it built in me.
Yet life is unpredictable and full of surprises; and some experiences can either trump or match others. My experience at Acquirent – though on the surface almost completely different – has so far been a lot like my experience in South Africa. Indeed, the novelty of being exposed to the business to business world and taking on over a hundred calls a day has forced me out of my comfort zone, just like my week out in the bush. At the start, calling people who had no desire to speak with you was an incredibly intimidating prospect to me. So much so, that I often thought I would rather have my jeep break down twenty yards away from a pack of Lions who, thankfully had just finished a healthy serving of Wilda beast or be nearly mauled by a leopard that I had been tracking for days, than be cursed out at by an unhappy business owner on the other line.
Thankfully, I am at a point in my time here where I would happily take the angry customer. If I were to be told on my first day at Acquirent that I would be convincing an angry prospect to give their account information over the phone, while ending the call on a good note with them. I would not believe it at all. Just like I couldn’t believe the close encounters I had with the wildlife of South Africa. However, it has only been two months and I still have much to learn about the world of business to business sales. But it is a world I hope to never stop exploring.
