My job involves kicking doors down, figuratively speaking of course as I generally open them like normal people. I'm a hunter, meaning my sole responsibility, my purpose within the company, is to find and win new business. There's a little account management once I win a new account initially, but soon after the account the operations team takes over and the frequency of my touch-points decline.
I recently won a huge client the revenue of which satisfies my annual budget and I've still got ten months of reporting-year to build on that; a good position to be in. But this week I've won five more which, combined, will match that big client for annual revenue. That's kind of cool right?
The interesting thing about winning these clients isn't about winning the clients per se; the most interesting thing for me is where they came from and what it takes to win them.
What's behind the door
*What's behind the door? Well, that's the million dollar question, and one that can't be answered without opening it and going inside.
I usually spend to about 11:30 on the phone each day, sending emails and working on my CRM software (client relationship manager). That's all about creating a pipeline of potential work and moving client-potentials along the pipeline to pop out the other end as clients. But hiding behind the phone isn't my way, I'm all about face to face meetings; the phone is for making appointments, face to face is for doing business.
So around 11:30 each day I head out into the world and kick doors down.
This means I drive around targeted locations and walk into companies and businesses that I feel might be potential customers. I don't do this randomly though, there's strategy involved.
I'm in the transport and logistics, trucking, warehousing and shipping industry so any business or company that produces a product and moves it is a potential client whether they bake bread, make milk or beverages, fabricate steel or concrete products, packaging, building products, clothing, paper, raise cattle, timber or whatever...You know, everything that needs moving. Just about everything you see every day has been transported and that makes for a target rich environment for a hunter like myself, but of course, there's other hunters and other transport companies.
So back to kicking down doors and those clients I secured.
Each of them began life as a door I kicked down; a reception desk I approached, a warehouse or dispatch office I entered and from there each turned into business.
It's easy for the receptionist to say no over the phone, to tell me the logistics or operations manager is unavailable, basically, to fob me off. But face to face a person with the right skills can open doors, once through the door, so to speak and one never knows what's behind the door until it's been entered
The thing is, it's difficult to do what I do, even for me, it's awkward and uncomfortable at times depending on how receptive people are...But unless I do it, kick that door down, I'll never know what might lie in wait behind it. So, I've developed skills that help me overcome the obstacles and to be more effective, more rapidly, in those scenarios. The presentations I do in boardrooms are bad enough, but getting past the gatekeeper, the receptionist, can be just as difficult, so I need to have the right skills, presentation and dialogues.
I don't think I'm especially skilled or talented at what I do; sure, I have some excellent skills built over thirty-five-plus years of being in the workforce but especially talented? No, I'm not.
What I have is passion, ownership, initiative, self-honesty and respect, responsibility, discipline, persistence, flexibility, work ethic, ability to rebound from failure, and other such attributes that keep me focused, able to strategize and evaluate and - one of the most important things - able to deal with rejection.
In business, these things have kept me on-point and has brought success. In my personal life I'm less structured but most of those things still apply.
With my personal relationships with friends, family and my partner, sporting endeavours, the tasks I set myself, the DIY projects for instance, and even in my recreational endeavours passion endures and all launch from a platform build on that passion. I've singled it out as everything else is built on it in my opinion...including the ability to kick down doors and do what's required, to make things happen from a business perspective. If I didn't have the passion to do those things I know I'd have had less opportunity in life, and probably most often would never have learned what's behind the many doors I've come across.
Have you applied similar attributes to your life; personal or professional? What's worked for you and what has not? What failures have you had and how have you dealt with them? Feel free to drop a comment about this, or anything you feel is relevant to this post. I'd like to hear about what's worked or not, I love learning new things.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised so be humble and kind
Any images in this post are my own