Fear can either motivate action or inaction. Make it motivate your actions.
Two weeks ago, I attended a “Coaching Camp” for speakers run by Darren LaCroix and Patricia Fripp. If this sounds familiar, it’s because this was my second time attending one of their camps and being coached by these two. If you happen to be a speaker (aspiring or professional), I give these two the highest of recommendations. It was inspiring for me, in more ways than one.
At these camps, not everyone is coached (I was). Most are there as “observers,” to soak up the information, learn, observe, and serve as the audience when the coachees are speaking. And, some observers are more vocal about their feedback than others. One such person caught my attention because he was very vocal and opinionated about giving feedback, advice, and staking out his position on what a coachee’s speech ought to communicate. Some of his feedback I agreed with, some I didn’t (and in the interest of full disclosure, he had quite a bit of feedback for me that I disagreed with); that’s normal. What wasn’t normal was my experience with him after the camp was over.
As it turned out, he’s from Kansas City, too, and he and I were on the same flight home. As we were waiting for the plane, I asked him about his background as a speaker. He indicated that he didn’t really have one – he’d been attending these camps and other functions for a couple of years, “honing his message,” and learning. That’s OK, of course, but my mind immediately went to a rather vocal disagreement that he and I had had the day before during my coaching time. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’ve never spoken anywhere, and yet you knew more about what I should do than I do?”
He explained that he was still working up to the chance to speak somewhere. I attempted to be helpful. “Look,” I said, “There are 32 different Rotary clubs in Kansas City. Each one of them needs to fill a podium 52 weeks a year. That means that just in the Rotary, there are 1700 speaking slots that need to be filled, and they’re always looking for speakers. If you’re serious about speaking, you should start contacting these people and getting up on stage. That’s the only way you’ll really get a feel for your abilities and what you have to improve.”
He responded that he didn’t feel that the time was ‘right’ yet. The truth is that I hear this all the time – from speakers and from salespeople. Salespeople are constantly waiting for the time to be ‘right,’ when in fact, the ‘right’ time may be passing them by. How do I know? Because it happened to me.
Back in 1997, I targeted an account that was a big user of industrial plastics – which I happened to sell. And I prepared. Boy, did I prepare! I researched. I honed my message. I practiced. I even role-played my sales calls. And then – finally, after a period of about five weeks of doing this – I called the plant manager. The plant manager informed me, “You’re too late. I just signed a contract two weeks ago with a different company.” I was crushed.
It was, of course, my fault. Had I made my first call on the prospect weeks before, I might have had the opportunity to be part of their buying process. I might not have made the sale – but I’d have gotten dealt in at the table. By waiting, I missed the opportunity. That particular opportunity never came back to me, either; they had signed a three-year contract, and by the time it was up, I had moved on to a sales management position elsewhere.
I missed because I was motivated by fear – the fear of failure. Since then, I’ve been motivated by the fear of missing out. I prefer the fear of missing out much better; it causes me to ACT instead of prepare. I see salespeople all the time who look for the perfect phone script, the perfect questions, the perfect words – and they usually don’t exist. Instead, they miss out on potentially great opportunities because they don’t get into the arena.
Whether you are a speaker or a salesperson, my advice to you is simple. Whenever you think of delaying an action, ask yourself this question: “If not me, who? And if not now, when?”
