As Luck Would Have It

Down deep, I am a blocking and tackling guy. You do everything you can to play the game as well as you possibly can, and you develop the highest level of competency at the fundamentals. You use a sales process that incorporates the principles of good selling and act in compliance with those principles as long as it makes sense to do so.

And, wherever you possibly can, you get lucky.

The Right Place at the Right Time

Anybody who is serious about there successes will acknowledge the role that luck has played. They will also tell you how they were prepared to take advantage of the tailwinds they were provided.

It helps to be in the right place at the right time. You work your tail off to nurture the relationships with the dream clients that you need. And one day you pick up the phone to try to open a relationship with the dream client to whom you have never spoken, and as luck would have it, they answer the phone, they are presently dissatisfied, and you make the appointment.

It’s true that you had to make the call to get lucky, but your dream client answered, they were dissatisfied at the exact moment (the real trigger event), and they agreed to an appointment.

The Right Answer for the Right Questions

It helps to have the right solution to the right problem. You have shown up, you have worked way deep into the organization to understand their needs, your solution is custom made for your dream client’s challenges—and as luck would have it, they know it. They need it.

It’s true that you had to do all of the hard work of diagnosing and building a vision with them, but when it is clear to your dream client that there is no substitution for your solution, that tailwind is good fortune indeed.

Love at First Sight

It helps that your dream client falls in love with you and has a wonderful, helpful disposition of their own. Sometimes, as luck would have it, you just click. You like them, they like you, and you are the kind of people who can easily do great work together. On the maturity continuum, they are way down on the positive end—so much so, that it doesn’t feel like work.

Like all the other ways fate can smile upon you, you have to be there for luck to work. You have to do everything right so that you can capitalize on the advantages that are sometimes presented to you.

As Luck Would Have It

As luck would have it, I once followed a competitor who had just presented to a client in their conference room, and this salesperson’s car was adorned with some pretty nasty, political bumper stickers.

As luck would have it, the windows in the conference room faced the parking luck.

As even better luck would have it, the old Bird Colonel didn’t share this salesperson’s political sentiments. As fundamentals and preparedness would have it, my car had no bumper stickers on it.

What could be luckier than your competitor shooting themselves in the foot?

Questions

What role has luck played in your experiences in sales?

What do you have to do in order to be able to take advantage of luck when it happens upon you?

How do the fundamentals and principles of sales help limit the damage when Lady Luck has really got it in for you?