It was the initial stage of my career. Fresh from Engineering college, I chose #salesprofession against the technical one, which many of my classmates opted for. With no proper sales background and no formal #salestraining, I used to learn everything in the field.
Most of the calls those days were gate crash calls, meaning, no prior appointments with the prospects/customers. I still remember one of the sales calls. It was late evening. The EDP manager whom I wanted to meet was busy and he asked me to wait. After almost an hour, he came out to meet me.
After our initial greetings exchange, I straight jumped into my product and explained about it for 10 mins. It was a complete monologue, rather I would say, I was just pouring out whatever information I had in my mind to him. He was listening to me patiently without interrupting me. Once I stopped my verbal diarrhea, he got up from his chair, went to the cabin door, opened the door and signaled me to leave. I was completely shocked by his action. When I asked him what mistake I did for him to treat me like that, he didn’t utter a single word, again showed the door and signaled to leave. It was a total embarrassment. Even today, I don’t know why he acted like that.
Next day morning, we had our daily sales meeting where everyone reported the previous days calls. I could have chosen not to report that particular embarrassing incident in our meeting. Or I could have told that the meeting went on well but the client didn’t have any requirement. Or I could have told that the client was not there at all. I am sure, no one would share this embarrassing situation and expose their #vulnerability. But I thought different. I decided to share that incident with my manager and the team mates. Like me, they were also completely shocked. I got few answers from my manager and others on possible reasons why the prospect behaved like that.
Most importantly since I opened up, I felt relieved. People started looking up to me for my honesty and integrity then on. By exposing vulnerability, I thought people would ridicule me or brand me, but every time, I gained valuable lessons which culminated in me building a strong value system.
I believe in the power of vulnerability.
When was the first time you saw vulnerability from a new perspective?
