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canyonwalkerYesterday I blogged "Feels Like the Old Days" describing how spending several hours on Tuesday meeting f2f with a client then hanging out with my sales colleague for drinks and dinner felt like 'old times' again. On Wednesday I had another face-to-face meeting with a client, a different client, for which I met two colleagues who'd traveled in from out of town. But while that meeting had some similarities with Tuesday's in that people traveled to meet together, it was not the same.
What was missing? What was missing was the camaraderie.
Wednesday's meeting was transactional. My colleagues flew in for the meeting and flew out afterwards. We did chat outside the building both before and after the meeting, but those were a) short chats and b) focused almost entirely on the situation with the client. There was very little that was off the straight-and-narrow of the business immediately at hand.
And that's the difference. That's the difference between what working in enterprise sales was like in the "old days"— which, keep in mind, were as recent as 10-15 years ago— and today.
In the old days we spent time together as a team. We had unstructured hours together that we filled with everything from chat about work, to families, to life in general. We really got to know each other as people.
That's a big thing we've lost in the shift to working remotely. Today we just assemble a team to do a task, do the task, then go back to our separate jobs and lives. There's no camaraderie. And that camaraderie was the key.
What was missing? What was missing was the camaraderie.
Wednesday's meeting was transactional. My colleagues flew in for the meeting and flew out afterwards. We did chat outside the building both before and after the meeting, but those were a) short chats and b) focused almost entirely on the situation with the client. There was very little that was off the straight-and-narrow of the business immediately at hand.
And that's the difference. That's the difference between what working in enterprise sales was like in the "old days"— which, keep in mind, were as recent as 10-15 years ago— and today.
In the old days we spent time together as a team. We had unstructured hours together that we filled with everything from chat about work, to families, to life in general. We really got to know each other as people.
That's a big thing we've lost in the shift to working remotely. Today we just assemble a team to do a task, do the task, then go back to our separate jobs and lives. There's no camaraderie. And that camaraderie was the key.
