Turning Bad Luck Into Good Luck

To increase your good luck in sales you have to learn how to convert the bad luck into good luck. In outside selling there are two fundamentally different kind of sales calls. Prospecting calls are essentially going out cold calling and looking for accounts interested in using your product/service. They are pretty much convinced that what you sell is a good solution for them and your primary job is to find them and sign them up. Like the prospectors of the 1849 California Gold Rush these callers are looking for gold that already exists… it just a matter of making enough calls to find enough nuggets of gold. In other words, prospecting is pretty much a matter of going out and looking to get lucky.

Sales Alchemy is another matter entirely. An alchemist in medieval times was something of a magician who could reportedly take a non-precious metal like lead and turn it into gold. Alchemist weren’t out looking for existing gold but looking for ways to turn non-gold into gold. In sales, alchemy is any attempt to take an account that is apathetic or even hostile to your product/service and transform them into interested and eventually passionate users.

Very few sales people make this distinction in their mind. Prospecting is more or less a numbers game. Call on enough accounts and you will eventually find enough people that want to buy. I always recommend that for the first 3 months in their territory, even up to the first year, my reps focus on prospecting, finding people that want to buy. Eventually though you may run out of those and have to learn a whole new skill set. You may have to learn how to manufacture some luck.

Alchemy is where you really begin to earn your money. I always loved the challenge of taking someone who was completely disinterested and transforming the relationship over time into a sale. The best feeling in the world is taking a customer that is completely hostile because of a past negative experience and turning them into a raving fan. And the essence of alchemy is learning what will best serve your individual customer and give it to them.