SPG Blog

My family has a cabin that my great-grandparents built in the pine forest in New Mexico. It has a beautiful rock fireplace with a large, deep place to build a fire. We keep a fire going in the evenings for both the beauty and the heat—and occasionally to roast hot dogs and marshmallows.

I was at the cabin recently and I noticed that building and maintaining a fire is a lot like creating and sustaining sales relationships. There is some skill needed to figure out the best way to start the fire and keep it going, and different people have different approaches with varying degrees of success. The same could be said of forming and nurturing sales relationships.

My husband, Mel, used to be a firefighter and, ironically, he can reliably start a fire with one match. He knows exactly what to do, has the patience to make it happen and makes it look easy. Mel enjoys the tasks of the fire. He is perfectly happy sitting for hours reading by the fireside, watching it flicker and change and periodically tending its needs.

My 16 year old daughter has much less experience and skill as a fire starter. She spends close to half an hour scavenging different kinds of debris to use as kindling and trying to coax the fire to life. Sometimes it seems like it is going to catch, only to falter and flicker out. She has an air of panic and frustration so palpable I almost have to leave the cabin. But, like any responsible mother, I stick around to help her cope with the ensuing pain (both emotional and physical).

My fire starting skills fall somewhere between these two extremes. My family wouldn’t freeze if I had unlimited time, matches and tinder, but I admit I’m a bit impatient and want the fire to be immediately blazing and beautiful. I find it boring to nurture it to greatness so I often give up before I achieve the results I crave. It’s lucky that I’m better at the skill of sales relationships than I am at fire starting and tending.

In both sales and fire keeping, there is a point at which we decide to put in the effort. For some reason or other, it’s the right moment. Perhaps the evening is cool. Maybe we have company and we’re looking for the camaraderie only a fire can bring. In the sales context, the perfect moment comes as a spark of recognition that a particular person might assist our professional development or lead to a sale.

Much like starting a fire, when I decide to cultivate a sales relationship I gather supplies. I know to learn about the person, much like Mel knows what materials to assemble by the hearth. I decide on my approach and I begin the relationship in some way—it might be in person, through an introduction or with the use of an online tool like Linked In. Through years of experience, I have found ways that work for me to approach people. I am straightforward, pleasant and genuinely interested in them. I ask questions and learn more about who they are and where their professional or business challenges lie.

Someone less experienced might just start relationships in a disorganized way, haphazardly trying to use relationships to create sales. Much like my daughter’s enthusiastic but ineffective attempts to start a fire, there might be moments when it appears that this arbitrary approach might work, but ultimately the relationship suffocates and burns out. If the efforts accidently start a meaningful relationship, the method still isn’t reliable or systematic. Because it can’t be repeated, it’s easy for a salesperson to feel unsure and a bit desperate.

This is where a sales plan becomes vital to a great selling program. Developing a plan and sticking with it are two key aspects of the Deep Selling program I created, and I regularly coach salespeople on creating and being accountable to a plan. Every salesperson must be able to reliably create and maintain relationships–to spark the fire and keep it going. A sales plan gives salespeople consistent results and the confidence to use their skills to keep the sales fires burning.