Hard Work

Over the July 4^th holiday we moved our daughter from Georgia to New Orleans.   We began by moving all her stuff into our basement for storage until her apartment was ready.  We then repacked everything, rented a trailer, loaded it, and drove the fully loaded trailer and truck to the Big Easy. 

Once we arrived at the apartment we learned that the task of moving in was going to be big and in no way easy.  You would think that when you rent an apartment it would be ready to move into.  This is apparently not so in New Orleans.  After moving everything into the apartment we discovered that a lot of work was needed just to get the apartment livable.   We had to fix plumbing, lights, dishwasher, cabinets and much more.  Even though the place was suppose to have had already been cleaned by a cleaning company, it was filthy.  Things like the AC filter hadn’t been changed for at least a year.  My wife, my daughter, and I worked feverously to get everything ready by Monday.  We were successful due mostly to my wife’s hard work.  She is probably the hardest working person I have ever known. 

As we were making the 12-hour drive back to our home I reflected on the importance of hard work when it comes to success in sales.  I have never met a successful sales person who didn’t work hard.  I have been with companies where most of the people in the company and even management thought that sales people didn’t work hard and that they were over paid.  It only takes one down turn in sales to wake people up to how important sales is to the company, but even after a downturn people may still think that sales people are lazy.  After all, all they do is talk, eat expensive meals, travel, and play golf.  Anyone who is in sales understands that the glamour of entertaining and travel are not so glamorous when you are doing these things in order to win business.   The meals aren’t relaxing, the travel is hectic and even the golf is more stressful than normal.  You can’t even throw the club or shout profanities when you hit a bad shot.  Not that I have ever done those things. 

The other part of sales that requires lots of hard work is the research and planning.  I can’t tell you how many late nights after a long flight I’ve spent trying to get the proposal just right, or working on the perfect presentation.  There is massive amounts of strategy planning needed to be successful in sales; and then there is all the training required, both product training and sales skills training.  There are times when this training is not required by many companies, but in order to be successful, sales people will do this on their own. 

With all that said, working hard by itself doesn’t make you successful.   During the move to New Orleans if we didn’t plan how we were going to get everything loaded and unloaded, and what route we were going to take, the move would have been much harder.  In sales, if we don’t work smart and do the proper planning, we will not only make it harder to get the business, we will likely not win the business.  So make sure you as sales people are working hard but also make sure you are working smart.