Is home working dulling your sales edge?
Michael Price
IT Sales recruiter with 194 recommendations. Grown up who will tell you truth. 25 years experience. I only work on roles I'd take myself.
We work in a serviced office. There are lots of different businesses and one of them is a software company. I was sat working away in the main reception area and I overheard one of the software sales people make a call. I ignored most of it but one of his questions stood out...
“Do you know who’s in charge of purchasing? If you don’t mind me asking.”
If you don’t know what's wrong with this question, stop reading this and disconnect from me; I only place sales people.
It’s a closed question to start with, and the person he’s asking will most likely know the answer to it so he’s either patronising them, showing his lack of knowledge or just plain lazy. Furthermore, he then weakened his position further (if that was possible) with the awful statement, thus meaning they didn’t need to answer the question. That made him vastly inferior in the call. Sandler would not be happy.
So it’s a dreadful question but, is it his fault? No.
He works remotely, with none of his line managers in sight. He may have been well trained once but, in isolation the training is quickly forgotten with no one to reinforce it.
Even if he wasn’t trained at all, he’d soon hear other people having more success with questions in a different way or maybe a supportive colleague giving him some advice.
He’s not alone though. There are loads of you, all sat at home. (let’s not get into you reading this post during working time and it not being work related).
Who are you learning from?
Who’s listening to your calls and giving you advice? Who’s making sure you’re applying your training just like the day you were trained? No one I suspect.
What action are you going to take?
Living life and relaxing too ??
5 年In my experience, being part? of and managing a remote team takes significantly more effort that those who are office bound. I draw your attention to the word TEAM. Many of these articles are very individualistic and as an unsupervised individual working alone at home there are many ways in which one's "edge" can be lost.? If however you are part of a managed team then there is little difference in performance IMHO... just a lot more time on the phone/skype whatever. The trick is to maintain verbal contact and agree goals and targets.? Communicating by email is inefficient and a difficult way to build and maintain momentum.?
Bringing world-class expertise in digital transformation to the Logistics / Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Construction and Professional services industries.
5 年Yes, but to get true peak performance from your resources you have to be fully engaged. You can’t do this from home...
Depends on the Sales person.? I like the peace to focus by working from home but use technology to be part of that virtual team.
Bringing a connected digital experience to the Audit, Risk, Controls and ESG community
5 年Done. Disconnected and unfollowed. The lack of awareness in the post is exactly why the IT industry is full of poor managers, recruiters & why talent is leaving traditional sales environments in droves.