What you carry with you from your past experiences can greatly affect the success of your future experiences.
I have a female friend who is moving back out into the single scene again. She’s filled with trepidation over the issues that come with dating in your early 40s, and she asked me for some advice. Basically, I told her that if she wanted something, she should simply ask for it – even if that pushed her outside her comfort zone (and as it turns out, asking men out is WAY outside her comfort zone). I then used a quote from one of my mentors, Patricia Fripp: “Life is a series of sales situations. If you don’t ask, the answer is always ‘no.’”
She then asked me a very interesting question. She said, “Come on, Troy, you know how rough it can be to ask someone else out. Tell me about one that really crushed you.” And then a funny thing happened. I honestly, truthfully couldn’t remember one of those moments. It’s not that it didn’t happen – believe me, I got shot down a lot – but none of it stuck with me. I realized that, therein, lies one of the big secrets to selling success. Oh, and then I broke my kneecap on Saturday, which reinforced my thoughts.
After realizing that I couldn’t remember a ‘no’ from my dating days, I probed my memory banks further, and started thinking about the many “no’s” that I’ve heard in the world of selling. Here, there were some that I could remember. Interestingly enough, however, every “no” that I could remember from selling had a lesson attached to it; i.e. I lost the sale because of a mistake that I made, not because of general ‘rejection.’ Lost sales have only been impactful enough for me to remember if it was my mistake that caused me the sale. Hmmm….now there’s food for thought.
I knew I was onto something that would be valuable to you, and then I took a road trip. I left with my wife and a couple of friends on a motorcycle road trip around Iowa last Thursday. On Saturday morning, it happened. The leader of our little group, approaching an intersection that we had planned to simply pass, suddenly slowed and put on his turn signal. I was following him in a staggered position (on the other side of the lane from him). Those of you who know me know that I’ve only been riding for about a year. My instinct told me to continue straight through the intersection, stop safely, and then turn back and see what the situation was.
Then I decided that I could make the turn. Wrong decision. I slowed quickly, hit a small patch of gravel, and went down at about 25MPH. My knee hit a rock or something, fracturing my kneecap. That was the only injury I suffered; I was wearing quality protective gear such as a jacket and Kevlar lined jeans, as well as an expensive, high quality helmet. To make a long story short, I spent the next two nights at the hospital in Carroll, Ia, getting my knee surgically repaired. I’m back home now, and my mobility for the next few weeks will be reduced. Fortunately I can still work.
I’ve been asked if I’m going to ride again (yes), if I’m going to be miserable for the next few weeks (no), and if I’m angry at the other rider (no). Don’t get me wrong; I’m not delighted to be hobbling around on crutches, but the result could have been much worse. Besides, all of the answers above come from a philosophy that has helped me succeed.
I choose to leave past negative experiences in the past, where they belong. That’s why I can’t remember women who I asked out on a date and who turned me down. I have made a conscious choice that those events will be left where and when they happened.
I retain those experiences that taught me lessons. I can remember failed sales efforts in the past – IF the failure resulted from a mistake that I made, and that I learned from. I can still, for instance, recall a sale that I lost in my first year of business because I tried for the second sale before I won the first. That one still sticks in my craw a bit because I know better now, and I knew better then. However, lost sales that simply resulted from a bad fit? I honestly can’t remember them.
I choose not to dwell on current pain or negativity. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my recliner with my laptop on my lap (funny how that works). My right knee hurts. It’s not agonizing; it is, however, achy and annoying. The doctors gave me medication to manage the pain, and it’s doing so about as well as can be expected. Yet, this morning, I’ve completed two telephone consultations with clients and locked in two speaking engagements for the first quarter of next year. That’s because I have made the conscious choice to focus on things other than my knee.
These attributes, in my opinion, are core attributes of a successful sales attitude. The successful salesperson keeps successes current, and leaves failures in the past. When obstacles occur, the successful salesperson finds ways to adapt and improvise to work around them. Here’s your take-away from this article; think of it as “four ways to make the most of every sales opportunity:”
- When you fail on a sales call, examine it quickly for lessons to be learned – and then leave it behind you. Nothing kills the next sales call quite like the last unsuccessful one.
- Keep reminders of success close by; consciously remove reminders of failure. I once visited a company where salespeople pinned contracts that fell through to their walls. Not surprisingly, they weren’t getting many wins – because of the constant reminder of failure.
- Don’t live in your pain. My knee hurts right now and it’s hard to get up and move around – but I am focusing on the work that I can do at the moment, coupled with what I will be doing when I am able.
- Allow customers to re-sell you. When you’re in a slump, one of the great things to do is ask current customers for testimonials; they can re-sell you on why you do what you do in the first place.
During my conversation with my female friend, she said that she had asked two guys out in her life – one in high school and one in college – and they had both been bad experiences, and because of that, she was afraid to do it again. My first response was, “Wow – that is a long time to carry that around!” What I realized, though, is this – in life, what we carry with us from our past determines our future. When you carry bad sales calls into your next sales call, you poison that well. Instead, carry your wins with you – and you’ll find that they repeat themselves.
