I lost a sale. He lost his job.

I had been engaged with a Sales VP of a target company. There was pain, need, etc.

We spoke on Tuesday  and he needed approval from his Divisional VP to move forward and requested a proposal.

I emailed the proposal on Wednesday and the Sales VP and I agreed to review it today for questions or clarifications before he submitted it to his boss. He accepted my meeting invite for 10:30 am and I thought it had a 75% chance of moving forward.

30 minutes before our time slot, he declined the meeting. Yikes! So I emailed him to see if we simply needed to move the meeting around. No answer.

I called his phone number. His voicemail box was full and I couldn’t leave a message. Ugh!

I called back later and he answered. The company he worked for was bought by a private equity firm this year and there was some changes and he lost his job. I offered my sympathies, he directed me to someone else and we parted ways by phone.

I lost a potential sale. He lost his job. At least he communicated what was going on instead of dead silence.

Moral of the blog: Always Be Hunting! Always Be Prospecting!

You can lose sales and potential clients due to circumstances beyond your control. And it sucks!

So no matter how optimistic a deal looks, it’s never official until the agreement is signed and the money goes through.

Always be cold calling or sales prospecting and hunting for new business!

I’m Ray Ruecker with Connect 5000.