And I would.
“Tell me again about the countertop material.”
And I would.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
Mustering the patience to review information already reviewed countless times before made me feel like a long-distance runner training on a track—and not a long, outdoor, 1/4-mile track, but one of those short indoor ones—around and around the conversation would go with only the same lined rubber oval in sight.
In between those calls, I also had to keep tabs on a custom home builder customer of ours who had a large project stalled at the starting line. All the material for the job had been selected by the home buyer, takeoffs were complete, orders were even written, but suddenly, for reasons we never knew, the house had been put on hold. Fearing that this builder was doing to us what the tract builder was doing to our competition, I kept in close contact with him. Though we had no work in progress with him, I made frequent visits to his office to keep in touch. With this customer, I felt like I was in the home stretch, but somehow the finish line seemed to keep moving off into the distance.
I began to think that perhaps the cliché should be altered to “Sales is not a sprint, it’s several marathons, each with a different course.”
Then, in the early spring, while driving to yet another prospect, my phone started ringing. First it was the tract builder ready to give us a try. Then it was the remodeler’s client—he didn’t even ask me to tell him anything again, he just gave me the order. And then it was the custom home builder explaining that his client had personal problems and had totally backed out of the house, but he’s finishing it himself on spec. The marathons were finally ending—and our company was at the head of the pack.
But of course all three customers wanted their materials yesterday. So now it was a sprint.
