This is the first installment in a four-part series on how sales is like dating.
February 01, 2023
By Adam Rosa
I’m a big fan of the allegory—Animal Farm, the social order in 1984—or maybe I’m just a fan of George Orwell and being passive aggressive; “No, seriously, it’s just a book about pigs, I swear.”
But I am a firm believer that from our stories come our lessons, often the tougher the tribulation, the stronger the lesson. And when you think about tough stories, as we teeter into February, there is one place we must go to learn about sales. A place most of us are familiar with, but wouldn’t think to go to improve our discovery, shorten our sales cycle, or simply work on our sales pitches—dating.
This month, the month of love, we will look at all the ways sales is just like dating, and how from our heartbreaks can come our biggest wins and biggest deals.
I met my first love in preschool. Her name was, and I suppose still is, Rosalia. Rosalia had it all; she knew her ABCs, she always had cookies at lunch, and she could draw inside the lines, truly one in a million. I met Rosalia because I, the left-handed, messy, no-eye-for-visual-art-in-my-life boy could not draw inside the lines. My teacher paired us together in hopes that I might learn a thing or two from someone who had skills I did not, and that Rosalia might learn patience by helping me. At the time, I felt she completed me. We met in a place that led me to find someone with something I needed.
My second love came much later in life, not until college. Her name was, and I suppose still is, Marta. I met Marta during a night out. The music was good, the Fanta was grape, and we had a blast. Our relationship was much of the same. Eventually though it got too tiring. I am not a partier, I only like soda on occasion, and I couldn’t keep up. She was fun, always kind, and always the life of the party, but we were just a bad match.
From my two loves I have learned lessons that I plan to use to find my third, and that can keep you improving the very first part of efficient sales cycles—how to find the right loves (or clients). I found my loves in certain places, and they reflected those places and experiences. Someone who likes sports will be at a basketball game, someone who likes the outdoors will be in a park.
If you need a client who has a need for snow tires, you shouldn’t be searching the yacht club for leads. You are wasting your time and theirs, they won’t be your right loves. People who lead gen mindlessly and think quantity is fine in place of quality when it comes to email campaigns and sending out propositions for meetings are only hurting their own deals.
When you simply try to get emails or names at random, even if you get discovery calls, you are going to end up wasting your time when you realize they aren’t a good lead.
Take the time to ensure your ideal customer profiles are good.
Take the time to make sure you know what ideal clients look like.
Take the time to find out what ideal clients’ needs are, what they typically do, what size they might be, what items they might use. Take the time to be picky with who you want to reach out to, and suddenly you will only spend your time looking at the right people.
It’s just like love, if you get picky and look in the right places, you can only find the right people.
Nowadays that right place might be a dating site. You pick the site that matches what you are looking for and hope it works. Most of us, whether we have used them or not, know the basics of dating profiles. You put your favorite picture of yourself, the one that looks like you ten years ago, you post about your favorite hobbies that you don’t do anymore, and you put your height as just a little too tall.
“No seriously, I used to be five inches taller, it must be climate change.”
Again, the sales lessons strike. When we pose as something we are not, we will never find the right match. If you do this, you are not selling the truth. The good sales professional wants to highlight the truth about their product, just like the confident person is content being themselves.
One thing I see repeatedly is people who forget about some of the wonderful things about them. They forget to share that they can name every Charles Dickens book, or name 500 types of fish. The tiny little things that make them…well them.
In sales, I see similar things, salespeople forgetting to highlight their best qualities. They are so busy trying to be what they think someone needs, they forget who they are. (You should definitely be what they need though, but discovery and getting to know your partner is next week’s dating lesson)
It’s like having the greatest and safest snow tire in the world, but only talking about your all-terrain tires. If you got it, flaunt it! If you know your snow tires are the best in the world, don’t forget to share that, share the stats, the reviews, show who you are, and when you find a prospect desperately in need of snow tires, your profile will be right for that client.
Every sales professional has been in a place where they feel a prospect is the one, they are ready to propose, but the prospect doesn’t believe in the product, or salesperson. You feel if only you could have been something you aren’t, you would have had that perfect deal. Or maybe you missed out because you weren’t presenting everything you could have been.
My friend Aaron fell in love with Brando when they were only seventeen. Brando was everything Aaron thought he wanted, he was nice and kind and funny, but after a year, they didn’t work out. Aaron went on to college, had ambitions to start a company, and wanted to see the world. Brando really wanted these things, but he had never worked hard a day in his life. He was unable to keep up, and eventually they drifted apart.
Cue ten years later. Aaron was walking our hometown supermarket during Thanksgiving time only to run into Brando. Brando carried himself in a manner that was far surer of himself than ten years ago. It turns out he ended up getting into a trade school, began doing home projects for struggling families, and ended up starting a successful business that helps families in need with home improvement. They got to talking, went on a date, and realized that what had kept them apart ten years ago was now perfectly in sync. They have been together ever since.
The best relationships don’t just happen, they are work, and sometimes that means doing the work before you can fit with the right person. From beginning to end. Not everything is a match right away, and sometimes you are not ready for your ideal client. Knowing when to go for the right client is one of the most important things in sales, and dating. The right time need not only come once, as long as you keep the relationship polite and on good terms.
I knew someone named Penelope once. I suppose she still is named Penelope. Penelope had many boyfriends. Penelope was smart and kind, but those who knew her knew she had one fault: she couldn’t handle rejection. Even if she planned to break up with someone, if they did it first, she would spend months chasing them, trying to win them back.
She equated her worth with the way others valued her. After years of chasing the wrong men, she started reflecting. She realized she simply allowed outcome to determine her self-worth. She learned a key lesson: just because something doesn’t work, doesn’t mean she isn’t right. The right people stick at the right times.
After that, she started getting picky, not wasting her time on those who were not interested in her, and now has had a happy marriage for six years.
I’ve seen it in sales time and time again. A salesperson has a client they are in love with, who they can’t get enough of, who is simply stringing them along. Sometimes I watch a single meeting for five minutes and I can see the deal will never take off, but the salesperson is so enamored with the prospect they ignore the red flags. They think if they can just be better, it could have worked out.
One thing that separates a salesperson and a sales professional is knowing when to move on. If a prospect is clearly not a fit, or clearly does not have the actual ability or interest in your product, to entertain that prospect is only to lose out on other deals and waste your time.
Nurture deals with potential, move on from any that are dead. Love never dies, but deals can. Sales is two parties moving in parallel and deciding when to bend towards one another. If the other client ain’t dancing, stop singing them your tune.
Sales is love and love is sales. Many of us have had loves, heartbreaks. We have had deals fall through, perfect prospects pass us by, and missed deals of a lifetime. When we start learning where to look, and how to handle rejection, in love and in sales, suddenly something magical happens. Only the right people start showing up, and we are able to find perfect deals time and time again, with less heartbreak along the way.
But knowing how to find a perfect person and keeping them are two totally different things. Next week, we will look at how our worst first dates will lead to our best discovery calls of our lives.
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