This morning I am awestruck by the essence of timing in our lives. Yes- I’m a real sucker for love stories that have their serendipitous union of two people where everything just fits together- the design is right. Yesterday, my friend Lisa told me about her brother Joel who has been single for a long time and had given up any hope on finding love. To make matters worst, his grandmother passed away and he now was responsible for clearing her belongings out. So he called around and finally found a moving company to assist him in the process. The owner of the moving company had his sister helping him out for the day and ..well…you can guess the rest. The sister and Joel met, fell in love and are now engaged. I’m humming the You Can’t Hurry Love tune by the Supremes in my head right about now.
In my training, I deliver tactical sales skills and encourage salespeople to diligently practice the basics and once each skill is mastered, the chances of closing more oppportunities are strong. But what I don’t teach is timing, that’s right, I don’t have a program titled “Sales Timing; Take it or Leave it” or “Sales is All About Timing” or “When the Timing is Right, Your Deal will Close.” Why? Because it’s one of those airy fairly California group hug in a hot tub type of talk. When a EVP of WW Sales is chartered to increase sales revenues by 160%, the last thing they want to hear from your territory manager is “the deal will close when it’s meant to close.”
And yet sales is very much about timing, no matter how you slice it and how much you work a deal- it’s absolutely dependent on timing. You can’t force timing just like you can’t hurry love. Timing has it’s own master, it’s in a class on it’s own, it keeps pace with itself, it revolves around it’s own orbit. What I know about timing is that you have to have the courage to let go when it isn’t right and the perserverance to keep going with the hope that it will come together.
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