My friend and long-time colleague Bob Sherman passed away earlier this week after a battle withcancer. Bob titled his MediaBizBloggers blog “Great Sellers Go to Heaven;” I know Bob resides in heaven now since he was one of the best sales executives (and nicest) ever to grace our industry, working in radio, TV and online media. You can read all his blogs at Great Sellers Go to Heaven. Ironically, his last post from May 2011 he headlined “The Fat Lady Never Stops Singing for the Great Ones.”Just as he recommended to his many fans and followers, Bob never gave up his fight, battling and believing until the very end. Here is Bob’s final blog in full, and I urge everyone to read all of his posts. His archive will remain as a tribute to his leadership and a testimony to his extraordinary career. He will be missed by many. I will miss his advice, humor and support. I know many share my sentiments and we want his family to know how deeply sad we are for their loss. Jack Myers.

The Fat Lady Never Stops Singing for the Great Ones

By Bob Sherman

A friend of mine runs a well known middle market media planning and buying service. This fellow has led companies in both media and technology, always makes sure he understands what he and his clients know and don't know and works hard to forge partnerships that serve his clients.

In his current field, the most serious threat to the continuance of the client relationship, is the appearance of a new marketing "head" at the client.

Now if a marketing executive reaches the CMO level, he's made a few friends along the way who service client marketing needs, and now that he's landed his new job, he "knows" just who can help him make his mark in his new position. Inevitably the contract termination provision is invoked after one or two polite conversations with the existing provider.

So one of my friend's top clients sends him the ninety day notice.

A good executive in a situation like this, gathers the troops and target new customer forays. "We must replace this income!"

My "bud," not a "good," but a Great Seller and Leader also gathered the troops. His message was different.

"You know, we have several really smart new initiatives in the pipeline and no other agency understands this client's opportunities better than we do. We can take their three month "severance" and focus only on new business, or we can earn the three month pay by fine tuning and presenting our ideas. They are making a mistake in terminating us and our hard work these next twelve weeks may help them avoid that mistake."

That's the approach they took and the fat lady never stopped singing.

Great Selling!

Read all Bob's MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Great Sellers Go To Heaven.

MediaBizBloggers is an open-thought leadership blog platform for media, marketing and advertising professionals, companies and organizations. To contribute, contact Jack@mediadvisorygroup.com. The opinions expressed in MediaBizBloggers.com are not those of Media Advisory Group, its employees or other MediaBizBloggers.com contributors. Media Advisory Group accepts no responsibility for the views of MediaBizBloggers authors.