LIFE of a Salesman During Lockdown
In our latest blog, IFB’s Business Development Manager, Mark Kuszpit reflects on life as a salesman during lockdown. if you know IFB – you’ll know Mark – as one of your first points of contact at IFB, who has been part of the team for 11 years and worked in sales for 25 years!
While many review the gradual return to the office, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on “Life as a Salesman During Lockdown” and how this personally affected me mentally. The start of lockdown was a shock!! I had to contact pending appointments to say due to restrictions, I need to cancel our account review meetings and rearrange over video chat using Skype initially. Life as I knew it changed instantly, the suit and tie changed to polo shirt and jeans, and I lost the human interaction that I thrive on and the ability to read people’s expressions and mannerisms to help in building rapport and closing the deal. Working from home wasn’t too bad initially, however as the days started rolling into nights, conflict with my wife on working in the kitchen, then the bedroom, I soon realised this new way of working was going to be the new norm for much longer than anticipated and I had to adapt and decorate the spare room to become my daily office going forward.
People soon stopped answering phones, returning emails, and arranging meetings, this threw me off and began to drain on my mental awareness and motivation. I wasn’t used to this lack of contact and in-person communication that has been part of my life in sales for so long that I knew I had to make changes to bring back the motivation. I swapped my morning office drives to early morning walks at 5:30am along Newburgh beach with my blue eyed husky Nanook, having the morning radio on changed to listening to inspirational Audiobook’s from people like Tim Peake, Captain Louis Rudd, David Goggins, Mathew McConaughey, Robin Sharma, Jay Shetty, Gary John Bishop and funny one from John Clease along with another 130 titles over the period.
The office coffee and kitchen chats stopped, the motivational morning discussions in the Green Room stopped and changed to morning video chats via Microsoft Teams. People started gradually returning emails and arranging video meetings. As an outgoing social salesman, this has been a challenge and a fresh look at the ways things are now going to be and how we must adapt to the new way of communication and learn from the younger ones on the daily video conversations. The focus changed from salesman to consultant, I started to listen more to customers and understand how we can help them get through this and stay in operation.
As a business, we were okay, Team IFB set up remote working over a year ago with home connectivity and the move from traditional phone system to MS Teams Voice. I started arranging meetings with customers all over the globe, bringing them closer and building a better understanding on working together to make sure they secured their new network. with an increase in VPN sessions, improvement on security with multi factor authentication and IFB’s new Threat Intelligence Platform to help mitigate risk, also introduce Mobile Broadband to enable staff to work anywhere. We worked with many on maintaining our mission to maximise and support our customers uptime, while they concentrated on sourcing additional laptops and headsets.
Overall, there are many things I have learned over the last 18 months and many things I will take into the new hybrid way of working, like early morning walks, listening to more audible books and helping companies in the daily video meetings. It’s proved that with some small adaptions, I can still have meaningful and engaging conversations and meetings with customers and prospects over phone or video, but I do also look forward to in-person networking in the future too.
I would love to hear how you managed personally and what changes you will take with you into the new hybrid way of working. Happy to set up a video chat or traditional call anytime, or you can join me on my early morning walks. 😊