There’s No Business Like Snow Business
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
As I write this my travel plans have been disrupted by the major winter storm blanketing Ohio with up to a foot of snow. I happen to be at the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the University of Cincinnati, which has a major theatrical performance section, which is perhaps what inspired the title above. My son had a competition for merit-based scholarships to the university today and is scheduled for an audition for entry to CCM tomorrow. Now the storm has forced an unplanned overnight stay upon us.
So the weather has forced me to improvise a new plan on the fly and I’ve found an empty classroom to get some work done – including this blog entry.
This past week I’ve been immersed in a variety of sales activities:
- Coaching a National Sales Manager in Michigan on how to develop his team – including better performance in improvising new approaches on the fly within a sales call based on client behavior.
- Preparing a sales training program for next week – including custom modifications based on the unique circumstances of our client in Indiana.
- Selling our services to a new prospect in Dayton, which meant modifying sales call objectives on the fly as my sales team rapidly ascended the learning curve in this first-ever meeting.
Improvisational skill is essential to business survival. Rapidly changing conditions, whether it is the weather or the economy at large, require the ability to think on your feet and adjust as necessary.
This skill demands intelligence, affinity for high-pressure performance and, above all, preparation. My son and I could not stay here in Cincinnati tonight if we had not planned for the situation – he brought his French Horn with him – which he will need for his audition tomorrow.
Adjusting sales call objectives in real time based on client interaction is most effective when preparation lays out a series of options you can adopt based on the situation.
We all have varying levels of intelligence and different employee productivity in high-pressure situations – these are things over which we have little or no control – but we all can control our level of preparation and when the snow hits the fan it is those who have prepared most thoroughly who will come through the storm in the best shape.
