“Pragmatic Sales Psychology” short episode series, writing #25”
Wow, this is a touchy one which will end this series based upon the book “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do”, by Amy Morin. In our world that sprung out of the information age, it is hard to get salespersons to understand the blood, sweat and tears involved in building a book of business and a stellar reputation. The endeavor to maintain your market share AFTER you’ve built it and all the additional blood, sweat and tears to babysit it is also a labor of love and commitment. Most everything worthwhile, 80/20 rule invoked, takes time. Yet, since time marches on, the time it takes to accomplish your sales goals can feel like it goes very quickly. How? Be in love with your mission of providing the consumers whatever it is you have chosen to sell.
Here are some examples of success stories and how long it took for them to reach their stride:
Twitter’s founder took eight years of creating mobile apps and social media products before Twitter took off.
Apple’s first iPod took 3 years and 4 versions before sales took off.
Amazon wasn’t profitable for 8 years. To name a few…
The information age has many people programmed for instant gratification and for some things this is a reasonable expectation. After all “Googling” is a present participle, in essence a verb. For major accomplishments though, an attitude of patience and resolve will serve the salesperson better, depending on how lofty the goal he/she has set is.
Willpower and resolve are the keys to warding off the “instant gratification” psychological mindset. Self-discipline is a funny topic with a mixed crowd of salespeople, some of whom chose the profession because they (laughably) thought it would be an easier than usual way to make a good living. Self-discipline doesn’t fit their perception of what they had hoped would be fun and not as demanding of a profession. They were wrong. To be at the top of this profession it takes some doing, therefore some time. Immediate result expectations can be a millstone around your attitude and kill your joy as you build your base.
I’ll end with a real life story and a quote:
I was a sales manager and trainer for Cox Communications before my wife and I defied all logic, and set out down the long and arduous journey of owning our own business. The decision came down to the fact that we felt like I was making other people pretty wealthy without just opportunity and compensation. This story occurred just previous to that.
I was interviewing because there was an advertising sales opening on my Nashville Staff. We’ll call the interviewee Jason for the sake of this story.
After the niceties and I got some background the conversation unfolded in this manner:
Jack: “So Jason, what excites you most about the prospect of being a professional sales representative?”
Jason: “I am most excited about the proposition of building a customer base real fast and not having to prospect all the time!”
Jack: “It takes a matter of a couple years to build yourself a decent book of business in the advertising world, Jason.”
I could see him pondering my statement but next came the old proverbial stake in the heart to his way of thinking. After a bit of silence, where I surveyed his body language and enthusiasm I added squarely: “and furthermore prospecting is forever Jason.”
Jason: “Forever?”
Jack (after an intentional pause and a nod of affirmation): “Forever.”
Jason sat back in his chair, his game plan blown up, and sighed heavily.
After allowing the reality to settle in I added: “If you don’t want to constantly meet new people and find solutions to maintain and grow your base, attrition will eat your lunch. Decision makers will change, a client will bring in a nephew or niece to run the marketing department and they will discontinue a completely successful program; people will retire, get bought out etc., etc… Yes sir, prospecting is forever for the career sales professional.”
On top of blowing up his dream of being able to build a customer base rapidly, the ongoing commitment to work hard at retaining good results was too much for the young man to fathom. Jason decided that he probably wasn’t cut out for sales.
My wife and I saw him a few months later in a nice restaurant. He had found something he was passionate about and wanted to work his way up in that business. He aspired to be a chef and eventually an owner. I hope it was a happy ending for the young man. The deeply positive development is that he found something that no matter how long he had to work at it, both to maintain and grow his career, he was happy doing it.
That is the true positive of doing something you love, you enjoy the journey knowing the destination is important but is secondary to the living of your life.
“You don’t get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that get results”
– Mike Hawkins
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