What happens if you can’t actually travel for your travel-dependent job?
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Part of a sales engineer’s job is to travel to prospects or customers to help with their needs and meet in person. However, what happens when you can’t travel due to personal reasons? This is something that I’m currently facing as I am expecting to become a first time dad in a couple of weeks (10/10/19). As the date approaches, my ability to travel has significantly been reduced to the point now that I only travel either by car or train and no more then a few hours away from my house. Although, it’s great to be consistency working from home more often, it has brought some challenges into the sales process and how I work with both my customers and the sales team. While some of you may relate personally to this and some may not, most people have at least faced a time when they couldn’t travel for a period of time for one reason or another. Here is how I have been able to mitigate many of the issues this causes with these three tips:
Create a plan ahead of time
When I found out that I will be a dad, I marked the date in the calendar and started to work backwards on all the major milestones that I need to do for work to be put in the best position during my travel hiatus. I outlined the dates on when I will communicate to the leaders, sales team and my peers. I also started to create a timeline for when I should start to slowly restrict my travels so as to ease into the travel ban. Finally, I started to block out specific days each month to start to ensure that I am slowly pulling back from my travels and getting my team and colleagues comfortable that I would still be able to fully support the sales efforts.
Over communicate
When I found out that my wife was pregnant back in February and when the first trimester was over, I started to share the news with my peers, my team and the sales teams. I wanted to make sure that they knew this experience will be coming and it was the first time I introduced that a travel hiatus would be coming. Since the first time I communicated the due date, I reinforced it on a monthly basis via meetings and/or emails. I know for a fact that they were getting sick of it as I felt like I was always talking about it but the point was for them to never be caught by surprise when it came. An important part of my job is to make sure the team knows how I will support them and help them be successful no matter what’s going on outside of work. Now that I am a few weeks away from being a dad, everyone has organized to help support me by always ensuring there is a video conference available (even if it’s a high level meeting) so that I can participate from home.
Back Up Coverage
Part of being a sales engineer means you lose a bit of control with your calendar as the sales team and / or customer fills up your schedule throughout the weeks / month. This has been very important for me to monitor as the due date gets closer. What I have started to do is include another sales engineer to be part of the meetings I attend for back up. I make sure that person has all the background information, a full brief on the status of the opportunity and understands the next steps so they can step in as seamlessly as possible if needed. Again just as I talked about in the section over communicate, the goal is to ensure no one is caught by surprise the moment I need to drop everything and run! Which personally, I can’t wait for. :)
Have you ever had to restrict your travel? Share some of your tips on how you were able to transition into it and make it work.
