With the Italian adventure over its back down south to rainy Cheshire to start work at my day job 🙂 although I believe we are supposed to be having a heat wave next week. I provide holiday cover within a busy office which means I have to pick things up quickly but at least it provides for plenty of variety. It also allows me to plan my performances in the days that I am not needed. Unfortunately I can’t sing in the office during the day because it disturbs people’s concentration 🙁
This week I’m helping out in the Sales department where it is my job to try and bring in more work for the drivers to do. When discussing different ways to approach prospective customers Terry, the Operation’s Director, suggested an age old method of good lead collection to the Sales Executive Steve. Listening to the developing conversation I thought, I can do that, and suggested that if I went along it would mean we could cover a larger area. I love to meet new people so with my iPad and some sales literature we set off to the local industrial estates to gather information about local businesses. Terry called it “leg work” so I was prepared for the walking but not the weather 🙁
Having survived the down pours and with all my contact information safe and secure my next task is to send all of the people I met a service specification and sales pack, either by telephone or e-mail whichever their preferred method of contact was. Several people told me a bit about their organisation so that I could set out how we could specifically help them.
You might think this sort of job wouldn’t help me in my singing aspirations, however, in previous years when working on the telephones it really helped me improve my communication skills as you have to talk very clearly and more slowly over a telephone than in person. It has certainly helped me gain confidence when talking to people on the telephone as normally most of my contact with friends would be by text so this new skill will help me when I need to talk to people on the telephone about concerts and lining up events.
I’m hoping that working in sales and marketing will help me to have the courage to approach people for new performance opportunities; you can’t just sit and wait for offers to come out of the blue. Terry say’s sales is all about people and relationship building, self-confidence and attitude – so as I did when I was five and at my first swimming lesson – here I’m about to jump straight in at the deep end. Hopefully this time no one will have to jump in and rescue me as the swimming coach did, apparently she’d only told those children that could already swim without water wings to jump in 🙂