Burned-out sales people: Learn from a garden

“Sprout!”
By Alan Vengel & Greg Wright
Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2004



I was just talking shop with someone who retired from one of the big Filipino firms. The friend said: “Back then, middle of last year, I was weary of work and I wanted to play golf everyday… Today, I badly want to go back to work.” When you work, I told him, you miss the world of “play.” And then, when all you do is play – or do nothing – you miss “work.”

The book “Sprout!” began with a story of Marsha Malloy, a topnotch medical supply sales representative who – as the first two lines of the book’s chapter one put it – is: Tired. Flat-out, bone-weary tired.” We instantly what that means: she is experiencing that phenomenon in the field of “work”: Burn-out!

This book, subtitled, “Everything I Need to Know about Sales I Learned from My Garden,” is an engaging narrative to 154 pages, in the tradition of the handy classic “The Little Prince” and the more recent “Who Moved My Cheese.”

It is actually a book on “4 Steps to Sales Success,” written as a story, with characters thrown in, chance encounters in the mythic Garden Store, and an abundance of quotes to deliver selling principles and home-grown insight and folk wisdom. The metaphor is a garden – and it is extended to cover four sales principles: Planning a Sales Garden, Persistent Seeding, Nurturing, and Harvesting & Renewing.

Using a garden as a figure speech to dish out tried and tested principles assures readers of a refreshing time, aside from giving them enough room to decide for themselves the techniques.

For example, Gardener Rawlings, the guru in the story, defines “vision” thus: “A strong vision has details that are so real you can see it, taste it, and smell it.”

So Marsha shares her vision of a garden: “I see a gorgeous panorama of color on a calm July morning. There are rows of deep green plants, tomatoes, carrots, and peppers. The soil is dark and rich. There are also fire-engine red roses. The aroma is wonderful as I stroll through my garden.” As expected, the book equates the garden with “sales territory.”

So, what does one do to grow a garden? The book says it simply: “Plant a seed.” “Seeding,” the book says, is a very important part of sales. Remember the Parable of the Sower, where seeds are thrown into fertile soil, dry ground and soil of thorns and thistles? All the same, the seeding principle is delivered beautifully.

Nurturing, the other part of gardening, is amply discussed. Brenda strides into the Garden Store and tells Marsha what she learned from the Gardener: “He taught me to make sure that the bigger plants don’t overshadow the smaller ones.” That’s true for what are initially smaller customers: someday they will be big customers. I remember a client who told me: “Dante, I’m a small firm now. So quote a modest fee. When I grow big, you grow with me.” His firm did.

Persistence is a word sacred to salesmen, so this book on sales is not complete without it. The Gardener thus enunciates a principle: “Persistence is a constant, dynamic process. Right from the start, you’re seeding in a persistent and determined way, and then when you are nurturing, you’re listening deeper to what your customers are asking for – even reading between the lines.”

There are don’ts that you could pick up from the dialogue of the characters in the narrative. Marsha shares her mistake in forgetting an original customer to pay attention to a new prospect. Alas, the old customer bought a product from a competitor, and prospective customer remained that: a prospect.

Ted, another Garden habitué confesses a grievous error: “I thought I knew everything. I didn’t listen to my customers. I told them what I had in my inventory and tried to sell them what we had, not what they needed… Some customers thought that they were just a commission check to me.” Surely, this book by renowned sales consultants is hitting home.

Warming up to the garden metaphor, Marsha speaks about “doing little extras” for the customers, as she does for her plants in the garden.

What about harvesting? Is it a simple case of getting the checks as payments for products delivered? No. The book has a happy story of Marsha who is tempted to ask a customer to pay $30,000 so she could reach her quota. But, she is due to receive only $10,000. Will she force a “harvest”? No. She decides to get the $20,000 from another customer.

Lesson? The guru explains the metaphor: “Just like in a garden, some customers may be ready before others, all things being equal…Beans, beets, and carrots are best taken sooner rather than later. They are the ones that pass their prime quickly. The same is true for some customers.” What about big accounts? “They’re like big oak trees. We must wait for them to develop and grow.”

Managers have been asked to learn Rainforests. This narrative asks you and me (aren’t we all salespersons?) to develop a “green thumb” for gardening. Rare lessons in seeding, nurturing, harvesting – and an exhilarating feeling awaits us all.