(b) Tough Luck
After weeks of effort and a quota of zero this month, my coach came along to one of my visits to a potential customer from my own circle of acquaintances to do a quality check. Basically I burned all my reseves in the first two months and now I'm left mostly with those numbers where people don't answer or if so only sporadically. I'm talking of the financial consulting job.
My coach's quality check revealed two things:
First, I still don't master the script by the letter. Whether I'm calling new contacts for a first appointment or making the company presentation, I know the idea of the script, but I can hardly say anything off by heart, let alone sound natural when doing so. There are promissing moments when practicing some of it intensely with my coach and/or coworkers. Ironically, neither my coach nor my senior colleagues follow the printed script by the letter. The difference is that they're generating results whereas I'm not.
Secondly, I seem to have been hanging with the most unwilling crowd as far as making business goes. At any rate, my coach could not kindle my contact's interest. True, the company I work for does not wait to be called: calling customer contacts or networking is their way of staying in business without asking high consultation fees from customers or investing in costly advertising. What's really ironic here is that people who don't agree with networking usually are the first to complain of the way the economy is going, of banks raking in all the profits, of rents eating up the largest portion of their budget, of rising prices, ailing retirement plans, etc.
In a way it's a relief to know that it isn't just me. It just depresses me a little bit that all this time my economic potential was so close to nil. It's going to be hard work to build an existential basis here and it won't happen overnight. Plus I get the feeling I'm far from being above dawdling.
My coach's quality check revealed two things:
First, I still don't master the script by the letter. Whether I'm calling new contacts for a first appointment or making the company presentation, I know the idea of the script, but I can hardly say anything off by heart, let alone sound natural when doing so. There are promissing moments when practicing some of it intensely with my coach and/or coworkers. Ironically, neither my coach nor my senior colleagues follow the printed script by the letter. The difference is that they're generating results whereas I'm not.
Secondly, I seem to have been hanging with the most unwilling crowd as far as making business goes. At any rate, my coach could not kindle my contact's interest. True, the company I work for does not wait to be called: calling customer contacts or networking is their way of staying in business without asking high consultation fees from customers or investing in costly advertising. What's really ironic here is that people who don't agree with networking usually are the first to complain of the way the economy is going, of banks raking in all the profits, of rents eating up the largest portion of their budget, of rising prices, ailing retirement plans, etc.
In a way it's a relief to know that it isn't just me. It just depresses me a little bit that all this time my economic potential was so close to nil. It's going to be hard work to build an existential basis here and it won't happen overnight. Plus I get the feeling I'm far from being above dawdling.