Nobody Drives to Cornwall in February

Why the visit that is least convenient is the one a customer remembers.

Nobody drives to Cornwall in February unless they have to.

In the first essay I wrote here I mentioned the recruiter who told me I needed sales experience. A few months later I had some. I was a field sales engineer for ITT, covering the South West of England and Wales, with a company Ford Sierra and a territory that was mostly coastline. Some weeks I drove eight hundred miles.

Cornwall was the far end of all of it. It was a long way to go for a small number of customers, and the people selling against me had worked that out. They went in the spring and the summer, when the roads were clear and a day by the sea was part of the trip. In the winter they rang.

I went in the winter.

It was not strategy at first. Those customers were on my list and the list did not have seasons. So I drove down in the dark and the rain and sat across the desk from people who had not seen a salesman since the summer.

Nobody said much about it. But when a contract came up for renewal, it tended to go to the person who had turned up in February, not the one who had rung.

I did not understand why at the time but quickly found out.

A visit in the summer tells a customer you want their business. Everybody wants their business. A visit in February tells them something else: that you will be there when it is inconvenient to be there, which is exactly when they will need you. Customers are not only buying what you sell. They are buying the likelihood that you will turn up when it goes wrong. The visit nobody else makes is the only evidence they get of that before it matters.

It is also the cheapest advantage you will ever find. It needs no budget, no new product and no clever message. It needs you to do the thing your competitors have quietly decided is not worth doing. Their decision is usually sensible, which is why it leaves a gap.

That gap matters most when you are small. If you are on your own or just starting, you cannot outspend anyone. You have no brand to lean on and no track record to point at. What you do have is the freedom to make the visit a bigger competitor has worked out it cannot afford. Their numbers say Cornwall in February is a loss. Yours do not have to.

The miles gave me something else. A car is a long time on your own. I filled those hours with cassette tapes, mostly Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins. I played the sections on handling objections until I could recite them. I would argue with some of it now. But I would hear an idea on the way down and try it in the afternoon and on the way home I would know whether it worked. Nobody was going to train me. The car was where I trained myself. That is still the best training I have had.

You are probably not driving a Sierra round the West Country. But the February visit has other forms. The call to a client when you have nothing to sell. Turning up in person when everyone else sends a video link. Checking in after the job is finished and the invoice is paid. Making time for the quiet client you have not spoken to since the work ended.

None of those needs a clever sales pitch. They show a customer that your interest lasts beyond the next order. People remember that when the next piece of work comes up.

As the business grows, those visits and calls still matter. You get busier and it gets easier to put them off. Keeping them part of how you work takes a deliberate effort.

That is how you set yourself apart: by continuing to make the effort others have decided they can do without.

Field Note

Turning up when it is easy shows you want the work. Turning up when it is hard shows you will be there.

Try This

List the clients you have not spoken to since the last invoice was paid.

Pick the one who is least convenient to reach.

Go and see them or ring them this week, with nothing to sell.

If you have no clients yet, do the same with the prospect everyone else in your field has written off as too small or too far away.