The best salespeople are fanatical about being on time. They're crazy, and I mean squirrel-crazy, about leaving with plenty of time to get to appointments.
At one point in my career I ran a business owned by BellSouth in London. I had two sales representatives who had similar names, Colin Clisby and Colin Copsey. I ended up accidentally blending them together to produce "Clopsey."
Colin Clopsey No. 1 was insane about being on time. Colin Clopsey No. 2, however, was always late unless he left early by mistake.
Clopsey No. 2, hereafter called Clopsey, had a sales territory which was in downtown London, and I would often make sales calls with him. We both lived outside the city, so we would meet and ride into London together. He was always late picking me up and so we were under pressure from the start.
London traffic is horrible. The closer you get to the downtown area, the slower it gets until it just stops. When the traffic would begin to crawl, Clopsey would begin to panic. When traffic stopped, his panic reached epic proportions and he would simply pull over and park. We would then sprint to the nearest tube (subway) station to ride the rest of the way downtown. We were almost always late to each appointment.
Clopsey's customers were busy people working in the financial district of downtown London and often did not wait for him to show up. He was actually quite a good salesperson in that he listened well, understood his product and had excellent closing skills. But being chronically late reduced his sales opportunities.
At the end of the day, we would ride the tube back to the station where we left the car and go home. Except for one day.
It was Wimbledon week and traffic was chock-a-block (British for "jammed.") I warned Clopsey to be early. He was late. Clopsey panicked early, pulled over and down into the tube we went.
Late that afternoon when we were finished, we got on the tube to head home but Clopsey couldn't remember where we parked. After more than two hours of popping up at every station we came to, we took the train to my car which was parked at the station close to my home. We got in my car, drove back toward London and retraced our route until we found his car, parked right where we had left it. Except it was now adorned with a boot locked to the front wheel.
I transferred Clopsey from outside sales to the in-bound call telesales team. But what did we learn from his lesson?
Being "early" is a practiced sales action not a goal.
Schedule preparation time. Schedule time on your calendar to prepare for each meeting. Schedule this long before the meeting. You don't want to be late because the copier jammed.
Become mobile with some work. People are often late because they have so much to do. Determine what work can be taken with you and set it aside as "mobile work." When you're early, open your mobile work folder.
Build delays in to the time it takes to get there. Your customer may only be 10 minutes away but it can be a 30-minute journey allowing for red lights, weather, parking and a crowded reception area.
Manage and organize your time. Interruptions can manage you if you let them. Take e-mail as an example. A new message pops up and you read it. The next thing you know, you're late.
Assume that if you are late, your competition will get the sale. Dr. Michael Mescon, the Dean Emeritus of the College of Business at Georgia State University, tells us, "If you want to devastate virtually all competition, show up, on time, dressed to play! You won't even have to break a sweat."
