Many top salespeople admit they had to overcome their fears before they could move on to greater success. No matter the arena, there is no place for cowards in the winner’s circle. The famous football coach Vince Lombardi once told his team that courage equals mental toughness. He called it a state of mind, “character in action.”
Martin Luther King saw courage as an inner force, “an inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations.”
Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote about the fact that everyday cour- age has few witnesses: “We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suf- fer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out to your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout your coming when you return from your daily victory and defeat.”
5. Competition Winners realize that competition is the only way to get better, to get tougher, and to taste the sweetness of victory. Football coach Don Shula once asked, “How can you prove you’re the best unless you have competition?”
While losers avoid competition, winners thrive on it. Theodore Roo- sevelt encouraged his fellow Ameri- cans with these stirring words: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Most people just don’t compete – simply because they think they are not cut out to win. But avoiding competition means you’ll never find out how good you really are. Sir Ed- mund Hillary, the first human to climb the tallest mountain on this planet, once reflected on what it means to compete: “You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently
motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got, is a very pleasant bonus.”
Competition in selling offers
its share of victories and crushing defeats. In selling, as in sports, there are competitive pressures: the tick- ing clock, the warning signals from the sidelines, and the scoreboards displaying our market share, dollar volume, and industry trends. As we survey the playing field, competition seems to be fiercer with every year. What does it really take to win over competition? Tom Watson, the championship golfer, once offered this sound advice: “Sometimes you have to lose major championships before you can win them. It’s the price you pay for maturing. The more times you can put yourself in pressure situ- ations – the more times you compete – the better off you are. It’s a learning experience that’s worth a fortune.” Competition is like the stone that sharpens the axe. If you want to be the best you can be in selling, you will have to meet and exceed the efforts of your competition. It simply boils down to this: If you want to be the best, you must be able to beat the best.
6. Adversity
Samuel Smiles, the author of America’s first self-help book, wrote, “Success grows out of struggles to overcome difficulties. If there were no difficulties, there would be no success.” Winners know, when they face adversity, they have two choices: seeking comfort or seeking solutions. Losers seek comfort; winners press on. B. F. Skinner, the noted psycholo- gist, once suggested the proper way to look at managing failure: “A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”
Often, adversity is nothing but a wake-up call for creativity. NFL quar- terback Dan Fouts once commented, “The key is to concentrate your way through the bad times. I really believe
that you can have some of your best games that way. You play better be- cause you have to concentrate harder when you’re facing some adversity.” Winners are not afraid of adversity. They accept adversity and failure as part of the game. “To fail,” says psy- chologist David Viscott, “is a natural consequence of trying. To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.”
When salespeople lose a sale, or when they are facing a tough prob- lem, they can treat the adverse situa- tion either as a test of their strength or as a testimony to their weakness. We can manage adversity by meeting it head-on, by working smarter on the next call, and by developing better selling skills to avoid losing the next time. Or we can do nothing, hoping the problem will go away. Many times, winners will turn adversity into opportunity. To win means finding the pearl of wisdom contained in every adverse situation. A little-known story in American busi- ness history involves an insurance salesman named Lewis Waterman. Waterman once worked with a client for several weeks before persuading him to take out a large policy. When Waterman placed the contract on his client’s desk, ready for the signature, he took a fountain pen from his pock- et. As he opened it, the pen began to leak on the contract. Waterman had to go back to his office to get another policy form. By the time he returned, the customer had changed his mind. Waterman was so upset that he gave up the insurance busi- ness and, then and there, devoted his time to the development of a reliable fountain pen. Waterman writ- ing instruments are today symbols of quality in the industry. Winners like Lewis Waterman trust the old saying: “Adversity is nothing but the diamond dust nature uses to polish its jewels.”
SELLING POWER MAY 2019 | 23 © 2019 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39
