Episode 19: My Holiday Luck: How I Landed One of My Biggest Deals
My Holiday Luck: How I Landed One of My Biggest Deals
Welcome everyone to the Golden Rule of Selling podcast with Katie Mullen. Happy holidays to you all!
Whatever it is that you celebrate, we're very close to the holidays, and I'm sure most of you are probably not going to be spending a lot of time listening to a podcast this week. However, I wanted to tell you a quick story about one of my biggest sales that I ever got….And it was right around Christmas!
Just as a little inspiration, I know a lot of people tend to check-out around Christmas and the holidays, and I know I do too to spend quality time with my family. But I wanted to share with you a quick story about my very first year in selling medical equipment.
My birthday happens to be the day after Christmas, so that's a very special day for my family. We always have a big plans that we do for my birthday. It’s the same every year.
So on this particular year, I guess it was back in 2005 (I’m so old), I had been trying to get in-touch with this one particular customer forever and I had discovered through my detective work that he was sending out emails very early in the morning (like at 6:00 am).
I decided to give that a try and call him at around 6:00am in the morning. He answered, and he was so chatty with me! This particular guy was the head biomed for about a 13 hospital systems and prior to that he had always been extremely gruff when I tried to get a hold of hi… and he would never chat with me. I guess he must have been a real “morning person.” He was very chatty and he was very interested in meeting with me.
He said, “I'd be happy to meet with you. Let me look at my calendar!” Then he said, “all right, I think the 26th sounds like the best day for me,” and I asked, “of January?” And he said, “no of December, does that work for you?” He then said, “I know that's the day after christmas, but i'm i'm Jewish so I don't celebrate christmas, but I don't know if that would be a problem for you?” I decided that I had to do it!
I think it was a Wednesday because Christmas was on a Tuesday that year. So at first I had a really bad attitude about it, but then I had to wake up the day after Christmas, on my BIRTHDAY and drive four hours to St. Louis to meet with this customer.
But then I realized what an absolute gift this was that I was being given to, to be able to meet with this customer after all this time of trying to get together. And he was obviously in a very good mood and very willing to do it.
He was really in the holiday spirit when I got there and we had an awesome meeting and as time went on and our meeting turned out to be the biggest sale and the biggest deal that I ever had my whole career selling medical equipment. It wasn't just that one meeting, obviously, but that really got the ball rolling and got us started off on a great, great partnership.
So anyways, that's just kind of a fun little holiday story for you. Luckily, I didn't always have to meet with people on my birthday (or the day after Christmas), but I sure am glad that I was willing to do with that particular year.
I am very glad that I was willing to wake up at 6:00 am to give him a call that one time. Anyways, hopefully my story is a little inspiring and gets your juices flowing on something that you might be able to do to get in with somebody who's been hard to get in-touch with. Never give up!
I hope you guys have very, very Happy Holidays, and we'll talk next week.
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