Imagine learning how to fly without having wings attached to it... that's exactly the feelings which I'd brought along with on my first sales trip overseas. Fear, anxiety and nervousness all came upon me especially when things did not turn out exactly the way it should be on the day of departure. This is probably the first time in my life I felt so cold-feeted, yet I have no other path to turn to.
Alone on the journey to my destination, I keep thinking of strategies of how to speak to clients, what to say to them, how to present myself in the least embarrassing way, however it doesn't helps. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. I know straight from that moment, I'm losing my confidence.
With zero sales experience and knowledge of the industry, a colleague and I went in for the meetings, like chickens walking into ducks farm, nothing looks familiar to us nor put us at ease. We could only try to calm ourselves down and hope to buy our way through.
It was an awful medicine learnt, yet I guess like our elders always say... it's always the awful medicine that cures. I believe in it. In the evening, I called bro and we had a chat. Lucky for him, he adviced me some techinques to reply to certain questions that caught me baffled. After which, I had also manged to identify some areas that I should arm myself for for the next battle. Incredibly, things turn out so much better. Richard and I returned to the hotel with smiles on our faces, not because we clinched any big deals but we knew that we did not embarrass ourselves this time round. It was like a small victory to us but the war is a long battle, until the day we closed the deal, we are not ready to pop the champagne and go cheers.
I believe that there are some obstacles in life are unavoidable if you want to reach the destination and only by experiencing them will makes you appreciate the journey more. I would like to take this opportunity to thank two persons especially, Bro, who called to check on me on the last day before my departure and Richard, who went through the battle with me. Without them, I might have withdrawn myself long ago.
This experience taught me a valuable lesson in life. There is only so much that others could do for you, however it only depends on yourself solely to make a difference. I'd learnt to keep enough bullets in my pocket before I go for war in future and the way to do it is to never stop acquiring for knowledge. That's the only way for survival.
