I’m Not Trying to Sell You Anything

I’ll do my best to describe a sales trip from the perspective of someone who plans for future sales.

Flash back 20 years and I’d drive up to Vermont with no idea what I was doing. I knew my job was to sell slate tools, but I didn’t really know who I was selling them to. Who did the quarries sell tools to? How many slates make up a square? How heavy is a slate pallet? How many colors of slate are there? What sizes sell the most? I didn’t know any of it. My only objective was to get someone to talk to me because that felt like I was doing my job.

Today I drive up there with a completely different purpose. I woke up at 3:30 a.m., left the house at 4 after a bowl of Frosted Flakes and taking a shit. You never want to begin a road trip hoping you’ll find a bathroom before you need one. I listened to every Glass Animals album, hit almost no traffic, barely exceeded the speed limit, and rolled into Granville around 9.

My first stop was a 20-minute conversation with the president of a company about the slate industry. Then I met with another president. Then another quarry owner gave me a tour of his operation. Then another. By the end of the day I’d spent almost every conversation talking to the people running these businesses, not trying to sell them anything, but trying to understand what they’re seeing in the market, what’s changing, what problems they’re dealing with, and where they think the industry is headed. I wrapped up the day having a few beers at a tap house with another business owner before checking into the Lake Bomoseen Lodge after an 18-hour day.

The second day started with another conversation with a few guys I only sort of knew before ending at a business whose owner I’d heard stories about for years but had never actually met. Looking back, it really wasn’t a sales trip at all.

I think that’s the biggest difference between the person I was twenty years ago and the person I am now. Back then I thought selling meant convincing someone to buy something. Now I think it’s about becoming someone people want to do business with. I’m really just selling myself. If people trust me, respect me, and think I understand their business, the rest usually takes care of itself. That isn’t something you learn from a sales seminar. It comes from spending twenty years asking questions, making mistakes, and slowly figuring out how an industry actually works.

The drive home was miserable. It poured most of the way, and 1,200 miles in two days starts catching up with you somewhere around the last couple hundred miles. I was exhausted when I finally got home.

One thing I noticed, though, is how much more trusting people seem to be up north. Nobody asked for my ID before opening a tab. Nobody wanted a credit card before handing me a beer. There just seems to be an assumption that people are generally honest until they prove otherwise, and I liked that. I also enjoy how peaceful everything feels. It’s probably a little too slow-paced for me to live there, but it’s a nice place to spend a couple of days.