“Pragmatic Sales Psychology” short episode series, writing #24”
I would like to start this writing with a definition: Entitlement – “The belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.”
Typically, a passionate person and an entitled person are not one and the same being. Sales professionals that are high achievers are curious, instinctive and self-starters. I present this next statement as a fact and an observation, not an opinion: ”All of these adjectives (curious, instinctive and self-starters) are diametrically opposed to the character of your prototypical entitled person.” Being curious, instinctive and self-motivated are proclivities of a potentially great sales and business person. I’ve never, in forty years in this honorable profession, seen an entitled person achieve anything near their personal or professional potential. The best they seem to be able to do is not screw up what someone else built and handed down, or over, to them.
I apologize for the fast start and lack of humor in this blog, but I was raised to HATE laziness. My opinion is that entitlement and laziness are first cousins. And now my attitude gets even worse… the business culture and society we live in today allows more of both. As a salesperson who began his career door to door, burning up shoe leather on the streets, I sense a downward spiral that needs to be addressed by the leaders of the sales teams and independent businesses in this country. The issue is entitlement and the army of it’s proponents polluting our culture. This applies to sales and business leaders of all ages. I have been blessed to work with and be around some VERY driven and non-entitled young people. They, nonetheless and sadly, are the exception and not the rule. When my business partner graduated college (the college he worked his way through), he did the opposite of what an entitled person does – he found more business then he could keep up with! That was my first clue that he was destined for significant success in the business world.
Psychologist Jean Twenge, author of “Generation Me” and “The Narcissistic Epidemic”, states some telling things in her many studies. She observes that the younger generations have an increased desire for material wealth, but a decreased desire for hard work.
Great salespersons and service oriented businesses are not self-absorbed as much as they self-examine in an endeavor to find the very best ways to become the best version of themselves. They, more often than not, work not only hard, but smart. Entitlement has no place in this recipe for success. In fact, I will take this opportunity to point out (this is “Mr. Obvious” speaking here) that if you keep score and worry too much about how unfair life is, then you have lost sight of a HUGE universal truth: Life is NOT fair; never has been. You must succeed in spite of this fact.
Your life, your sales life included, will need to overcome many things to reach your own personal pinnacle that entitled individuals will not be able to weather. You must have faith – faith in your direction, your purpose, your meaning, your process and whatever higher being you choose to believe in. If you operate without it, you will learn how difficult it is to get traction in anything you do. Believing in your goals and the values of them, not merely monetary, is essential to being a top performer and a person who also makes the lives of those around them a better place. Question: Why would you think that the world owes you anything anyway? Who fed you that ideology? My best guess is that it was not an unselfish, motivated, person. Entitlement is a poisonous sales attitude and I encourage any of you adopting it to drop it. I also encourage any of you who are around it to ignore it and distance yourself from it.
Here’s what the world owes you: The opportunity to overcome any obstacles in your way and make something of yourself. Nothing more, nothing less. I’ll end with these two quote that are in agreement with the title of this blog:
“People who are given whatever they want soon develop a sense of entitlement and rapidly lose their sense of proportion,”– Sarah Churchwell
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”- Robert Jones Burdette
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