Hitting the "Send" Button

I've been in sales for 15 years now, in one capacity or another.  It started during my first stint at Mercer when, after doing my time as a cubicle dweller, I got bumped up to an office.  Along with the promotion came a "Sales Goal."  Huh?  I wasn't a salesman.  I was a consultant.  My job was to do good client work and meet my billable hours goal.  What was up with this selling stuff?  Wouldn't prospects be knocking on my door asking to work with me?

Over time, I think I've developed some decent sales skills and I've had my share of success.  I've gone from selling ideas at Mercer to selling transactional services at Aetna and back again.  I've had the opportunity to make sales presentations to organizations with 100 employees and organizations with 100,000 employees and countless others in between.  I've closed deals with annual revenue in excess of $100 million.  I've come to like sales quite a bit.  And, while I've been plenty nervous in sales situations, I've never felt pressure -- until now.  You see, before now I never had to press the "send" button on a proposal.

During my first stint at Mercer, the final proposal was always sent out by a member of the administrative team.  At Aetna, we had a sales support organization in Hartford that did the honors.  But, this time around at Mercer, when the proposal is ready to go, it's me who hits the "send" button.

I just sent out another proposal yesterday afternoon.  The opportunity is a good one.  I assembled a strong team.  We came up with a strategy that will work.  We described that strategy (in a crisp and concise 62 pages!).  We agonized over the price and finally reached consensus.

All that should have been the hard part.  But, the hardest part of the whole exercise was hitting the "send" button.  Yesterday, after reviewing the proposal for the umpteenth time, I literally drafted the cover e-mail, inserted the proposal, and then took a time out for lunch.  Who knows what I thought might change in the interim.  Was I going to get a bright new idea?  Was I going to come up with a pricing option that hadn't already been considered?  Was the prospect going to call up and say "No need to send the proposal -- we're going to hire you without one."  Of course not.  But, I held off anyway.  I guess I was waiting for some sort of sign from God to go ahead and hit "send."  It didn't come.

So, after eating lunch, it was back upstairs to work.  The e-mail was there waiting for me.  I gave it one more quick read, took a deep sigh, moved the mouse to the "send" button, and clicked it.  And there it went.

It's been 24 hours.  I'll follow up with the prospect in a few days.  If things go well, we'll have a finalist meeting and make a presentation.  It would be a great win for us and taking the work from a competitor will feel real good.  But, I'm not worried about any of that.  The hardest part is over.