I am about one year in to this “new” job in sales and I cannot help but draw comparisons about how the skills I have learned and the scenarios I’ve experienced thus far are so damn similar to dating. I made the career change thinking that it would be a new challenge and that it would bring me more free time and a more flexible schedule. I was right about the challenge part. I was extremely wrong about the more free time part as I am actually working longer hours and grinding harder than I was before when I worked in quality assurance in food manufacturing. Who would have thought!?! For those who do not know what exactly it is that I do: I sell cleaning verification (ATP testing…. look it up) and food safety test supplies/systems and consumables to food and beverage manufacturers as well as to healthcare, environmental, government industries etc….. I bravely and sort of naively took on the largest dollar value/revenue territory in the US for my company with close to no real sales experience. I’ve done pretty damn well as a Territory Sales Manager thus far, partly due to the fact that I will out hustle anyone and I am persistent and personable (for the most part given that I am caffeinated and got my morning workout in). But also, as silly as it sounds I honestly believe that years of participating in dating and online dating gave me some vital skills that have helped me to succeed in sales. And vise versa, I think having strong sales skills will help one to succeed in dating. Let me explain….
Cold calling/first message
Picking up the phone and calling someone knowing that within the first 30 seconds you have to convince them that they should stay on the phone with you and hear you out about how you can help them is basically the same skill as sending a clever and engaging first message to the hot guy you came across on Match.com, Bumble, Tinder, POF, Ok Cupid…etc or walking up to a handsome stranger and convincing them that they need a little bit of you in their life. Many of the other sales managers in my company, even those who have been in the game for decades, dread cold calling and refuse to do it. I on the other hand love cold calling. I will cold call a company or someone I have basically no information on and confidently and pleasantly explain who I am, why I am calling and why they might need my product and why they should give me a chance to find out. I have no shame. If they treat me like a dumb dime a dozen sales person and hang up on me, so what? I will go about my day just fine. This ability to pull out a good tag line and the resilience to being blown off came in part from years of online dating. I think everyone should have to do some sort of cold calling job at some point in their life. Builds character! I do not think everyone should have to experience online dating. That would just be cruel.
Finding new leads = scanning through profiles and swiping
I have been sifting through online dating profiles for 5+ long years now. At first it was fun. Like shopping in the clearance section in Marshall’s or Ross when you keep telling yourself you are going to find the perfect pair of pants for a steal. Now, several years later the appeal of that process is gone. It’s exhausting and depressing. Ironically I got myself into a job that requires you to find your own leads and most of that is done by scouring the internet. I am constantly digging up new prospects on Linked In, CareersinFood job postings, IFT newletters, and Instagram. Like online dating, most of the leads (men) I find are trash, but some are true diamonds in the rough.
It’s a numbers game.
While I would like to believe that we have a soulmate, after years of online dating and seeing just how many people are out there I have come to lean more toward the notion that the soulmate thing is complete B.S. I do honestly believe that to be successful in online dating you have to put yourself out there and actually go on dates. A lot of them. That ups your chances of success and finding what you truly want.
(…..as much as I wished dating worked like this it does not. I do sometimes however leave the side door open just to make things a little easier on Mr. Right should he somehow find himself to my house.)
Same thing goes for a job in sales. You gather your leads, qualify them, put them on your pipeline and try to close them. It’s like funnel, large at the top with all your prospects and then it funnels down narrower to those you will actually close and convert to accounts. The more leads in your pipeline the greater number of successful closes you will have. Same thing goes for dating. Sure there is something to be said about quality over quantity but I do think you increase you odds of success by increasing your face time with potential mates and prospects.
The Emotional Roller Coaster Exists in Both
The highs and lows of both dating and a career in sales will beat you up emotionally and physically. I am lucky enough (sarcasm) to be juggling both this past year. It is due to the constant build up and let down of online dating that I am completely jaded and convinced that I will probably die alone. If I had a nickel for every time I told my friends or family excitedly “so I met this guy… “ and then a week later “just kidding mission aborted” I would be a self-made millionaire and I would not have to be running around all of Southern California trying to sell E. coli and Listeria detection swabs.
Working in sales I would argue is the same sort of ass kicking. You wake up to an email about a huge P.O. from a deal you have been working for the last six months and you think “yes, today is going to be a good day!”. Flash forward to that same afternoon when you talk to a prospect who has decided that they are going to go with the competition and there goes your potential $40,000/year deal. After both a dating let down and the loss of a huge deal you just have to pick yourself up, drink a big ass cup of coffee, go lift some weights with some gangster rap blasting and tell yourself to keep up the grind. Okay, so not everyone has to do the coffee/weights/rap part. That is just how I choose to cope with the roller coaster of dating and sales. I think most people in sales just drink their sorrows away.
First dates = first meetings/demos
First dates… many people dread them and get nervous. I honestly do not recall if I did at one point, but not now. At this point I’m a veteran and they are just fact gathering interviews that I rarely get excited for, much like first meetings with a new lead. In fact, I think I get more aroused when meeting with a big dollar value potential account than a hot guy. Ya’ll are a dime a dozen and usually can’t pay my bills like locking down a good account will. In both first dates and first meetings there are the unavoidable first impressions and assumptions made. Even the build up process to both are the same…. the messaging back and forth, trying to get them commit some time to you (asking you out) and then trying to set up a date and time that works well for both parties. At the end of a first date, just like the end of a sales meeting, you must have what they call a “closer”. For instance “what are the next steps?”, “when should we connect again?”, and/or “when can I follow up with you?”. It is that verbal contract to keep moving forward with the process, assuming both parties want to. This is a skill one needs to master if they are going to get anywhere in sales or in dating.
“Don’t show up and throw up”
My new boss offered me up this piece of advice as I was preparing to go out and do first meetings/ demos on my own. I love this mantra and it’s been my favorite sales tip thus far. In the sales world this equates to: do not present or push too much at your prospect, let them talk, do not try and sell them every damn SKU you have. Actively listen to find their pain point, plant the seed of interest with how you will fix that for them, and leave them wanting more. Do not overwhelm them and be too in their face.
In the dating world “don’t show up and throw up” is referring to not giving it all up on the first date, maintaining some sort of mystery there, and again, leave he /she wanting more. Could also in the very literal sense this tip suggests that you are to limit your number of drinks so as not to get sloppy and end up with your head in the toilet at the end of the night. I can semi- proudly say I have only done that once in my online dating past. Pretty damn good for someone who gets drunk off of one light beer if you ask me.
Is this a fit?
Trying to qualify a new lead is basically the same thing as running over the list of deal breakers and deal makers a prospective mate has and determining if there is potential for a business or personal relationship there, respectfully. This “qualification” process is what first dates or first meetings are for. Figuring out what they are looking for and if you are a fit. And also to see if they are ready and able to commit. In sales, this is finding out if they ready and able to put forth the money and the time to bring in your products. In dating this is determining if they are really looking to be with someone or if they just like the attention of someone being interested in them. As far as the first impressions part: they say you can learn a lot about a man from his shoes. I do not know how true that is. Some validity to it I suppose. This past year I have developed the sales equivalent: when I walk into a new company and use the bathroom (I drink copious amounts of coffee), if it is immaculately clean with nice soap, air fresheners and high end toilet paper, you know they have money. I am quoting them at retail. If there is that pink soap and single ply T.P. you know you are going to need to try a little harder to even get that significantly discounted price quote approved.
I know you are getting my voicemails and emails = WTF dude how are you leaving me on read you jerk?
Getting “ghosted” whether it be in the dating world or by your prospect is the worst. It is actually a sick form of irony that I got into sales and now have to deal with this “ghosting” phenomena in both my personal AND professional life. At work we recently had a “best practices” sales team meeting in which we talked about what to do when the lead you met with, provided quotes and demos to, and spent your valuable time on now will not respond to your repeated attempts to follow up via phone and email. We talked about potentially trying to call the company and ask for a different contact as a means to get to yours (the dating equivalent is texting the friend) , or even stopping by the company and paying a surprise visit with the “oh I just happened to be in the area” excuse (in the dating world this would be stalking the potential mate and lurking outside their work or house). Another more sensible approach was to leave yet another message but this time more clearly reminding the prospect/man why they wanted to talk to you in the first place. Example: “Recall that I would be saving you $3,000/year”, or “ I’d like the opportunity to provide a more robust testing program with better customer service”. Or, in the dating world, texting the guy “We had amazing chemistry and conversation” followed by “please close your eyes and mentally recall how good my ass looked in those white jeans”. Then you wait 🙂
In the dating game I have a hard time bringing myself to chase a man. I am little more flexible and persistent when it comes to my sales position. I will bite my pride and leave three voicemails and emails over the course of a few weeks and then give up by sending them “the break up email”. Yes, it’s really called that. You folks who are or have been in sales will know that. It is a really good tactic and one that I have applied few times in my dating life, sending a text something to the extent of “can you just grow a pair and man up and tell me if you are interested any more or not?”.
(along the same lines…..) Are we doing this or what? I got sh*t to do.
Following up with a prospect and trying to make them move with a P.O. and skillfully doing so, without making it seem like you are bugging them is an art form. One that I admittedly have not really mastered and I do not enjoy. I don’t like chasing a deal or a man for that matter. But sometimes people do really need an email or phone call for that extra push. Like” hey, you said you were going to present this quote to the boss last week, did you do that yet?”.
The men I meet dating often need the same push. Like “where do you think this is going”, or “are you just looking to kill time and hang out with someone?” I am really good at being able remove myself from a situation if I do not think it is going anywhere. Is this why I am still single? I am still working on getting better at this skill when it comes to sales. My boss always says “go for the NO”, because it prevents you from wasting anymore time and energy on something that is not going to pan out anyways. A valuable tip for both dating and sales.
Working in sales as well as being single and dating both require you to put up with flaky and shady people. There are prospects who cancel on you literally the morning of the meeting because “something comes up” and you just have to take it and act polite when really you are steaming mad because they were part of the reason you drove all the way to stinky Bakersfield. In the dating world it similar, but not quite the same. There is a lot of the “we should hang out sometime soon” and then it never really happens because people are afraid or reluctant to actually meet up in person nowadays. There are also a significant number of people who partake in online dating who are just doing it out of boredom to kill time and fill their day or get attention from others.
Pressure of not being single during the holidays = pressure of hitting your quarter numbers
Ah the dreaded quarterly sales target. You keep your eye on your quota number as the quarter progresses just hoping to have a stronger week than you did before, still thinking you’re doing pretty okay and then, BOOM! …..there are five shipping days left in the week and you are at 85%. Fuck. You need a hug and a miracle.
This is the dating equivalent of the season of pumpkin spice latte and uggs rolling in and you look around and realize that you are single AF with maybe a few weeks left to find a man and con him into sticking around for the holidays so that you can bring someone to your crazy Thanksgiving and Christmas family dinners. The pressure is real.
I’ll admit to getting a little (okay, very) desperate as that last week of the quarter comes up and I am “dialing for dollars” as my boss would say. Pestering people to put the pressure on getting that P.O. in and offering 5% discounts if they’ll order before 12 noon on Friday. It’s a little sad. This is called “thirsty” in the dating world. Thankfully I have considerably higher standards and morals when it comes to my dating life and have survived the last 6 holiday seasons single. Though I will admit that hearing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” does fuck me up every year.
Recycling: Digging up old flings= reviving old leads
Remember that guy with whom it just didn’t work out with that you had amazing chemistry with but the timing just wasn’t right (or he is and will forever be a fuckboy and just did not want to commit) , but you still have him in your phone? That guy is the lead that you visited a few times, who acted totally into getting your product. You talked about training and implementation but then the he/she will not answer your follow up calls or tells you that they cannot move forward right now but to reach out to them next year. In times of weakness such as Valentines Day (dating world) and trying to hit end of quarter targets (sales world), it is extremely tempting to try and go back to and revisit these flings/dead leads. You ask yourself “What if they changed?” and “what if they want me now?”.
I’m going to keep on hustling….
One year down doing the sales hustle. I hope I figure out the trick to mastering sales faster than I did mastering dating, seeing as I have pretty damn single with a few false alarms over the past 6 years. Giving it some time as things are finally starting to fall into place and I am hitting numbers. Though if Mr. Right wants to come break into to my house soon and start to pay all my bills such that I don’t have to work, that would be just fine too. Had a lot of fun (mild sarcasm) writing this post, recollecting on the how dating and sales are similar forms of torture. But with both, you keep at it with the promise of the reward.
A little glimpse at sales me vs. dating me…..
