“Coffee’s for closers only.”
One of the great lines in a movie scene filled with great lines arrives during a motivational sales meeting where Blake, played by Alec Baldwin, bellows at Shelley Levene, played by Jack Lemmon, that you don’t get to have a cup of coffee unless you know how to close a real estate sale. And we know Blake is serious. After all, he’s from downtown, from Mitch and Murray, on a mission of mercy.
As Blake intones, it takes brass ... tacks to sell real estate. And closing a real estate sale offers a kind of euphoria that not much else comes close to, as other sharks like Gordon Gekko would agree.
I tried my hand at sales once. How did it go?
***
I hated it.
I didn’t hate it because of the people, or the product, or the terrible coffee ... and I really love coffee ... but because of what it reveals to you about yourself every hour, every day, every week, and how you end your year. It is a purifier of the body and soul and there’s not much you can do to hide if things don’t go well for you.
My teammate Adam Zaki, on the other hand, loves sales. You’ve probably noticed, because he writes about it all the time, espousing the lessons learned, the need for the hustle, the camaraderie, and yeah, that euphoria that hits. I’m incredibly jealous of his talent and joy in it, because when I tried my hand at it, staring at a phone that would never dial itself up to make a cold call, a root canal seemed more pleasant.
This is why CFO Lisa VanPatten’s thoughts on trying her hand at sales following a successful journey through finance hit me so hard:
“I was very excited at first, but as soon as I made that leap, I panicked, wondering, ‘What did I do?’ As CFO, you think you understand the sales team because you’re constantly supporting them. It was a rude awakening to find out that’s not the case. When the X is on your back to make your numbers, it’s a whole other ball game.”
But VanPatten, unlike yours truly, pushed ahead and stuck it out and then took that new set of knowledge and skills and made her way back to the finance world. As a result, she has a stronger relationship with the sales team as well as creates transformative products for her company Transcend.
Maybe I’ll take another crack at true selling someday, but for now, I’ll stay on the sidelines with great respect for those who have that skill set as a part of their craft.
I don’t really need a set of steak knives anyway.