March 25, 2009

I took a very good sales training class a number of years ago. The instructor was a French-Canadian guy (let's call him Jacques) who used lots of interesting expressions, including "platform speaker." That was his ambition--to some day be a platform speaker (or public speaker), which to this day strikes me as a strange sort of ambition.Another expression this guy used was "unload the guns." In sales, after the engagement is over, there are sometimes hurt feelings. Perhaps you went around someone who was blocking your access to a decisionmaker.

Perhaps one of the customer representatives supported a competitor of yours.Perhaps you lost the deal. Jacques emphasized that "unloading the guns" was critical at this phase.By this he meant re-engaging with those people who might have ill feelings or discomfort with you personally (or vice versa), and re-establishing a respectful, working relationship. Unloading the guns is tricky; it means coming to terms with what seems like unfairness, and acknowledging (at least tacitly) that you may have acted in ways that cause the other party to view you similarly.