Last month, I had an early-morning sales call and was meeting the homeowner at 7:15. I had been to the property before, and the homeowner asked me to call him when I was outside so he could come out and meet me. I knocked on the door and gave him a call to let him know I was outside, but he said he couldn’t see me.
I was at the wrong house.
An elderly woman lived alone at this house. I had woken her up and she was very alarmed to have a man at her front door this early in the morning. It wasn’t a great first impression for her, and I was late getting to the right house for my meeting.
Sales should always be handled as a process, and our sales process is set up to minimize the opportunities for mistakes like these: We have the address both in Aspire and on our calendar along with the name(s) of who we’ll be meeting and additional notes from screening calls. But your process only works if you use it, and I was so confident I knew where I was going I didn’t double check the address.
Mistakes happen in life and in business, we’re all only human. But when we make them, how we recover speaks volumes and can make a big impact. When I got back to the office, here’s how I handled my mistake:
- I hand-wrote a sincere apology and mailed it to the neighbor, letting her know how terrible I felt for waking her up.
- I shared this story with my team at Grunder Landscaping Co., so that they could have a good laugh at my expense and remember to always double check the details. Stories are a memorable way to make a point, and I couldn’t waste this opportunity.
The sales process we have in place at Grunder Landscaping Co. is meant to prevent us from making the same mistake twice. Our process includes checklists for designers so that they don’t miss key details when doing the initial sales call, standardized bidding to ensure we’re only bidding work that we can successfully complete, and training to help our team put their best foot forward with every client.
We’ll teach landscape pros how to create their own winning sales process during our next Virtual Sales Bootcamp on Dec. 3-4. This popular training is designed to help sales teams overcome their most common challenges: finding good prospects, closing sales, overcoming objections, and more. We’ll even cover how to make sure you’re at the right house. View the full agenda and register online: https://growgroupinc.com/virtual-sales-bootcamp
