From Cold Calls to Care Packages: A Relationship-First Sales Journey

By: Steve Scissors

It was the fall of 2010 and my career in sales had just begun. A law firm hired me,  a “non-attorney,” to bring in new clients. It was an exciting new adventure for both me and the firm.

If we can rewind the clocks to 2010, you might recall that we were traveling every which way to visit clients and everyone was in the office. For me, it was awesome! I flew to Las Vegas shortly after I began to attend a very large conference – 5,000 folks, including many clients. Gosh this was great, so many opportunities, where do I start? The firm had never attended this conference prior, and it really opened the eyes of everyone at the firm as to how just becoming more “visible” provided many great connections and opportunities. 
 
After that, I got the green light to be visible as much as I wanted. I reached out to current clients, perspective clients, lost clients and clients who in the past said no to us. 

It was then I came to understand a “no” simply meant “no” for just today. Circle back in six months, a year, five years is a real thing. Things change all the time in our industry. Folks leave for different jobs, promotions, retirements and so on. And “yes” many of those no’s became a yes over the years! I quickly learned that these changes could work to your advantage. My great connection just went to a different company, boom here is another opportunity!
 
Since everyone was working in the office, having a meeting meant not just meeting with a few folks over lunch, but dozens of folks at the client. I could spend an entire morning or afternoon just saying hello, making new relationships and expanding current ones. 

I thought, gosh this is working out. Year over year more conferences, more visibility, more connections, more clients, more revenue, more matters, there is no stopping this momentum!! And the great part: I wasn’t really selling: I was helping. And then, of course, filling their legal and business needs. I also realized early on that 80% listening and 20% speaking was the winning formula for every client meeting. This was going so great!  
 
Whoops, I spoke too soon! It happened Q4 2019. My wife and I flew out to Los Angeles to see my son. We flew back on 12/31/2019. My wife was catching a very bad cold with a cough. She was very sick and it lasted for a while. Later, in the month of January, she gave it to me. I got sick. Bad cough. Felt lousy.
 
It was not too long after that we began hearing about this virus called COVID-19, On February 6, 57-year-old Patricia Dowd of San Jose, California became the first COVID-19 death in the United States (discovered by April 2020). She died at home without any known recent foreign travel, after being unusually sick from flu. Wow. My wife and I looked at each other: did we have this COVID thing? 
 
With each passing day in March and into April, we saw school closures, business closures, more fatalities, more panic…and with each passing day it kept getting worse. In mid-March, we were being told to shelter at home until mid-May. How does someone in a sales role – requiring lots of travel and face to face meetings – do their job from their home? I knew I had to pivot, and fast. 
 
The first thing I did during those eight weeks at home was make a list of 10 clients that I would call every day. Most clients prior to COVID were very difficult to reach by phone (like me, they were on the road), but in spring of 2020, it all changed. Clients were working in their kitchen, bedroom, basement: they became “trapped”. People I could never get on the phone before now were answering their phone all the time; I had trouble getting them off the phone! They were bored, scared, lonely…their kids were home and everything was blended. We became not just clients, but rather good friends. They just wanted to talk and share their experiences during this time! So, for the next eight weeks, I called and I called and I spoke to dozens of clients and actually built closer relationships during this time!
 
While I came back to the office in May of 2020, most clients did not (some still never have). So now what? How do we keep the momentum going?
 
We began doing webinars – lots of them, with clients all over the country. Prior to COVID, we did most of our programming in person, but now, we began lining them up all the time. No more going out to dinner. So, our marketing director said let’s deliver the family dinner. And, we did. We sent out care packages, full of goodies: in the winter, blankets, in the summer, polo shirts. It was like the holidays all year long. We were still making “touches” with the clients; it just looked a bit different now. For the offices that slowly came back in 2020 and into 2021, we began delivering breakfast and lunches, which they loved. My sales strategy went from on-site visits to many more phone calls, Door Dash, tons of webinars and less e-mail. Phone conversations with clients went deeper; we tended to stay on the phone much longer. 

Before 2020, we were building relationships and trust, but COVID flipped the script, allowing us to build actual friendships. Building business continued, but down a different road:  no fancy software, no AI. Just the phone, time and listening, all the while keeping one common goal in mind: filling needs and giving clients what they required to be and stay successful.
 
As the years went on 2022, 2023, 2024 and through today, I’ve applied the best sales strategies from pre-and-post COVID. For the clients that are back in the office, they get the on site visits. For others that are not, its plan B: the phone calls along with other touches.
 
Nobody had a road map in early 2020. But what we did have, and still have today are relationships, friendships, built on trust and empathy. We simply had to use different methods to build with, and the building continues.