Fact of every salesperson's life: Your company will screw up. Being a hero is all about how you deal with it.

A man we'll call "Don" knows this. He spent three decades in the chemical industry, much of it in sales. Here is one of his favourite--and exemplary--stories from the road.

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Don had flown into Milwaukee to visit a number of accounts. It was a miserable, snowy winter day, back in the time before cell phones. At one stop, he got a call from headquarters: There was a big problem with a customer down in Chicago--a mid-sized plastics company, a US$5 million account. That 90-mile drive in the snow wasn't easy, but Don managed to scramble down there by 5 p.m., just as the roads were beginning to close.

On arriving, he was ushered into the president’s office. The beating began.

It turned out Don's plant had shipped the wrong polymer. As a result, the plastics company was critically behind on a delivery for an order to its biggest customer during a very busy selling season.

That's when Don switched gears from salesperson to customer advocate. Customer advocacy means going the extra mile and further for a client. It's about getting things done, no matter what, even if it means getting pretty banged up.

After taking the heat (quietly, patiently), Don dug in. From a desk in the president's outer office, he sounded the alarm.

First, he called his boss at home (it was after hours by that time). Next, he tracked down the second-shift manager for the plant that made the product. Good and bad news: The correct polymer was available at the plant, but was being shipped that evening to another customer.

Don arranged a conference call with his boss and the division vice president. They decided to reroute the available goods to the Chicago customer. The pre-empted shipment would go six hours later; Don's shop would eat some serious overtime.

By 9 p.m. a truck carrying the correct polymer rolled off the loading dock and headed for the Windy City. Don called the livid chief at home and told him the material was on the way. Rather then returning the next day, Don stayed at the customer site until he could personally inspect the goods.

The reward for his (and his company's) labours: A new five-year sales contract with the same (previously) disgruntled customer. Total sales volume of the account: roughly US$10 million a year.

Take it from Don: Customers understand screw-ups; it's what you do to correct them that can make all the difference.

If you have valuable lessons from the road, please share them. E-mail me at gdpor3811@aol.com. Good selling!

Glenn D. Porter has 25 years of professional sales and sales management experience, much of it with IBM. He is the founder of Dolphin Nextgen, a business advisory company.

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