Effective Selling - Thought 1

There are lots of character traits and habits/behaviors that contribute to being a good Account Manager, but in this day and age there is one simple thing that all salespeople, regardless of talent, can do to separate themselves from the large majority of their competition: they can do what they say they're going to do.

We have been conditioned to almost expect people to not do what they say they are going to do, so when people actually do follow through on their commitments, when they actually do follow-up when they said they would follow-up, when they actually do complete the big -- and little -- tasks they said they would complete coming out of a meeting, it is like a refreshing surprise.

If I was a whiny, grumpy old man I could dedicate the next couple of paragraphs to shaking my fists at the world and asking "Why? Why has the bar been set so low? What is the world coming to? This isn't right!!!"

But I won't. Why would I? If I do what I say I'm going to do, and all the people on the Varrow sales team do what they say they're going to do, we will continue to surprise and please our customers without doing any more than we would expect of ourselves anyways. 

If this is the baseline from which we start, and then when we do all of the other things that go into being great account managers, we go from being a refreshing surprise to a truly valued and trusted business partner and friend.

Jimmy V

One of the guys on the team is an NC State alum. He sent me a link today to Jimmy Valvano's classic speech at the Espy awards, less than 2 months before he died of cancer. What an inspiration Jimmy V was, and what a great guy. You can't help but love him. Enjoy.

Fun w/ VCE

Life is too short to take yourself too seriously. "Integrity" and "excellence" are two words that come to mind when I think of the people I work with at Varrow, but "fun" is definitely another one.

If you look at it on paper, there never really is time to have fun at work. You can do a cost/benefit analysis and justify not having fun every time. "Well the return on "fun" simply does not justify the investment. Now, where are those TPC reports?"

The team at Varrow is the hardest working group of people I know, but some folks got together earlier this week and made the investment in fun. Here is what came out of it: