So Close...But Still in the Air

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When you are in sales and are paid mostly on commission, every sale counts of course. As I have always said of my sales job is that the advantage is that it is business to business. That just means my customers are always going to need more of what I sell. Once you establish a customer, he's yours until either you really screw something up or something else changes. A couple of weeks ago I was working on some augers for one of my customers. He's got a new plant setup and he needs 5 of them. Those are big money. Big money. The profit is also enormous—enough that in one sale I could make as much in commission as I might make in a month. He emailed me last night to tell me to go ahead and get the augers on order. I made a note to process the order today when I get into work. Only to get a follow-up email after I asked if he needed a purchase order number to say, "Hold that until we discuss what the augers include." No worries. I reached out to my auger vendor to get some more details, and once I have those will discuss with the customer what he needs to know. The sale is not lost, it's just "in waiting." But it does kind of put you a bit on edge because even if it is still pretty much a done deal, there's still room for something to go wrong. Fingers crossed I will still be typing that order up today.