44 DEC 2022/JAN 2023 BILL FARQUHARSON Working from home, the signage salesman faithfully (but not always enthusiastically) makes his calls day after day. His selling efforts ebb and flow, as does his motivation, drive, attention span, interest…and success. Life is good on the days he reaches clients and prospects, and he is “Livin’ la Vida Loca”. But those days are increasingly infrequent, and he struggles, feeling as though he is alone in his distress. “What am I doing wrong?” he wonders. “No one picks up the phone. No one wants to see me.” Trying to improve his sales results, he leans back in his chair, takes a deep breath, stares at the ceiling, and thinks through his approach, pitch, methodology…everything. “What I need is a mentor. Someone with experience whom I can watch and learn from.” But that is not possible, given that he works from home. As he ponders his sales challenges, his thoughts are interrupted by the sound of one of his twin Russian Blue cats scratching at the drawer containing his office supplies. This activity is a favourite of the boys, Sherlock and Mycroft, a gift from his daughter. “You two are natural hunters. Too bad you can’t teach me what I need to do to sell more signage,” he says jokingly. Sherlock ignores him. He is busy trying to access the drawer’s contents and tugs away, trying to get at whatever is inside. “Dude,” the frustrated rep says, “there is nothing in there of interest to you. There was nothing in there when you looked yesterday, and there will be nothing in there when you look tomorrow. Every day you open that drawer, look around at what is inside, and then walk away, and every day, I tell you the same thing. Give it up. You are wasting your time.” After a moment, the rep adds with a chuckle, “But I will give you this: You certainly are persistent, and that is a valuable sales lesson. You’d make for a good mentor.” He stares back at the ceiling until suddenly… PERSISTENCE “Persistency,” the rep thinks and shoots up in his chair. “That would be the first thing I’d learn if my sales mentor was a cat. In addition to looking for new ‘lead’ sources, they go back over their existing prospects repeatedly, never giving up. Sherlock, that’s a pretty good place to start. I could learn from watching how you two re-examine the same drawer day after day despite being turned away day after day. Who knows? Maybe someday you will look in that drawer and strike gold! I really should be more persistent. I should make more calls to the same prospects. Thanks for that reminder. That’s lesson number one, Sales Sensei. Okay, what else do you have to teach me?” Sherlock is listening, but his brother is fixated on something outside and sits on the windowsill, raptured. Standing up to look over his shoulder, the rep says, “Hmmm…what’s your lesson, Mycroft? What can I learn from you? All I see is a cat watching leaves blow by. Where’s the lesson in simply being curious?” CURIOSITY But as he sits back down, he ponders the lesson: “Be sales curious. I need to pay more attention and look for opportunities in everything around me. There might be prospects blowing by me like leaves in the wind, and I am not noticing because I am not seeing what is right in front of me: Window If a Cat Taught You to Sell If a Cat Taught You to Sell A story about sales; and cats. Photo Credit: Dillon Kydd (Unsplash)
