I’d like to share with you one of the biggest, if not the #1 reason why people don’t live up to their potential. This is THE thing that stops most people dead in their tracks, and keeps them from achieving lots more success.
But first let me tell you a true story about someone I’ve worked with in the past.
This guy is a very well educated person. Has 2 college degrees, comes from a family full of professionals and is highly motivated.
When I recruited him to work in my agency, he was very excited. He saw the big possibilities of this industry immediately and I really didn’t have to tell him much about the opportunity, as he saw the promise of big financial rewards him.
One thing I remember very vividly is his comment to me that he doesn’t want to work for anyone and that he’s an entrepreneur.
Every time we talked he was the one telling me his new ideas on how to grow the business, and how much business is out there, etc…
But the bottom line in that business, as in any other business, is you’ve got to see people.
You have to go on appointments.
Days and weeks went by and he wasn’t setting any appointments or doing anything that would move his business.
I would talk to him daily, telling him that he needed to call people, and set up appointments. Explaining to him that he needed to fill his pipeline and all of that.
And still, there were almost no results. He might have had 1 or 2 appointments in a month. Which is enough to tell you that he wasn’t making any money.
He even went to an advanced sales training seminar with me, and studied for 3 days like a mad man. Memorizing everything, all the closes and the objection handling techniques.
At the end of the seminar, I told him that this is great, but you need to have a someone that will actually give you an objection for you overcome. To which he replied – “Of course”
A few more months went by and he quit the business and got a 9-5 job with a paycheck.
I thought about this for a long time. Why didn’t he do anything.
He wanted to. He put the time and the effort to learn the business, study sales. He had a good personality and seemed to be motivated.
So what was it that stopped him?
Eventually I came to a conclusion that the thing that killed his chances of success was this – he cared too much about what others thought of him.
On the outside he said all the right things. But when it came down to actually doing something, he was concerned about the fact that people he knew would look at him as a salesman.
He didn’t want to come across as someone who sells insurance. There were plenty of people, including his own family who criticized his ideas and told him to go get a safe and secure job.
And he let their thoughts, or more accurately, his perceptions of what others thought of him or his ideas, influence what he did. Or actually didn’t do.
In our society we all grow up with this concept of being accepted and liked by others. We all want to feel a sense of approval. And when we sense some disapproval, especially from those around us, we tend to stop, even if their criticism is erroneous and we know it.
This is big problem for a lot of people. I’ve seen this happen again and again with a lot of people. Especially with the ones that are more educated.
I remember one time I was training a new agent, and he took me to see one of his previous co-workers. During our appointment, I asked the prospects if they would commit to a program if I could help them improve their financial situation and save them money. I also asked them if they would recommend our services to others, if they were happy with everything.
I could see, my trainee fidgeting in the seat as I was asking them these questions, which they were perfectly fine with and the appointment went extremely well. After our meeting, he told me that he wasn’t comfortable asking people to commit to anything and asking them for referrals.
Again, he cared more about what they thought and how they perceived him, than his own success.
As an entrepreneur you can’t let other people influence you in a negative way about what they think you ought or not ought to do.
When I got started in the jewelry business at age 16, everyone told me I shouldn’t do it. Even though they were partially right, I learned some valuable lessons I wouldn’t have otherwise.
At 19 when I decided to go into the financial services business, selling insurance, investments, and mortgages as an independent representative, I can’t tell you the number of people that looked down at it.
One of my friends flat out said, you can’t make any money selling insurance. (Yeah right.)
Others said you’re too young, no one would listen to you. Some people have told me, you really shouldn’t go into sales, as it’s hard, not stable, and you don’t have the personality for it.
Well, I proved them all wrong, but that’s not the point. The thing is, I didn’t let their opinions influence my decision to get started and stick with it.
As a matter of fact, as I started to read about other successful people, I realized that everyone that set out to do something great, was heavily criticized.
So after sometime, I just didn’t pay any attention. It was just like water off of a duck’s back.
As a matter of fact it only gave me more reasons to succeed, and each time someone said something, it was adding fuel to the fire.
By the way, years later, every one of those people said that I’m a natural. You’re so good at this business. One said I was lucky. (That really ticked me off, but I didn’t say anything.)
So you see, it doesn’t matter what anyone says or thinks about your business venture.
As long as you know in your heart that this is what you want to do, stick with it and prove’em wrong.
So let me ask you a question, whose opinions are controlling your life?
And is it stopping you from getting what you want?
July 28th, 2008 at 8:21 am
[...] You can read it here. [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hello Vitally.
Very interesting stories you write.
Actually the first thing that came to my mind reading this story was that: He did not do it! He did not do the walk. He talked the talk but did not do the walk. He should have just done it. He is probably one that needs to be instructed to call this people, close at least 10 deals by the end of the day.
I mean that in any given day and time, it should be possible to lift up the phone and get a lead or close a $50 000 dollars deal in this world.
Now I am not going to criticize him because I myself have sold a business last year, and have done nothing since. Even if I have studied a lot of new businesses, market segments, marketing, business development, tried some things out, etc, I have not picked up the phone and created work. This is mainly because I am relaxing from a 4 year hectically work period I had, and I want to use time to find something I am really interested in doing for a longer period of time.
He might have been in a position where he was not ready to focus 100 % and he probably did not stay away long enough from his own work to see what he did wrong.. You know sometimes it is healthy to ask yourself: What am I doing wrong?
The article you wrote about going back to basic is important, and after 10 years into the business world I nearly forgot what worked. I had to go back in my mind to see what work. I did this because now there is a depression in the market, and I had a lot of customers that did not afford to pay me, when I saw the overdue list, it said 100 clients overdue. This is the first time in 10 years I had so many overdue for more than 2 months. I don’t have more than 2-5 a year, and maybe I lose 1 invoice a year, and I never send things to collecting of file bankruptcy of people or businesses, because I think that what I do should provide enough value for them so they can afford to pay me to. Sending invoices to collecting agencies and filing bankrupts is for amateurs in the business world that does not know what they are doing.
I am defiantly not going to file bankruptcy on somebody I have been living of and doing business with over 10 years just because we hit a hump on the road. What I have done lately is to delete invoice and debt from everything from $ 50 dollars to 60 000 dollars per customer so they can get over this, and helped them for free to get their business on track again.
It is important to sometimes not win, to just scratch the debt of others with a pencil stroke, this is what governments, banks and large corporate must do now to ease down the panic in the market, because desperation makes people do a lot of bad irreversible things in desperation. I have received more hoax offer now than ever before.
It really knocked me off from the horse when I got that list in my hands, and I sat down and said to myself:
After 10 years of doing business do I not know what it takes anymore to earn money anymore?
Do I not know how to create value for my clients anymore so they can earn money to afford to pay me?
Can’t I make my customers businesses work so they are happy with me?
I came to some conclusions:
Yes the market is in a recession.
Yes the market demands and focus have changed.
Yes people are more immune to traditional product marketing; they are more into being entertained.
Yes super capitalism is growing and the need to do things super effective and in a large scale to be competitive is needed.
New people are entering the money market in the world, going from living in the nature, of the nature, to moving into apartments, and to buy food instead of growing food. This people need money too, and we do not print enough right now.
Yes global prices have grown and are still growing.
Yes many people do not know how to create value and should be paid to stay home, not everybody is fit to do business and to be in business.
Yes I realized that I had gone of course because I now was a high player, and totally forgotten the basics, that I had to watch more over my customers businesses from going wrong.
I Realized too that people in the western world is comfortable with the level of income they got and that things are established, so it is hard to break out of the loop.
Many people tells me, I sell now more than ever now and I earn less than ever, but I do not want to grow my business anymore it is big enough; it is nearly killing me with work. People need to learn how to build larger organizations and deploying tasks and assignments to others around them, and let them self grow.
They also need to understand that even if your are growing, the prices and cost for everything is growing too, if you stop up, the operating cost is going to catch up with you if you not allow your business to grow too.
This things + not changing and developing them self has hurt my clients lately now because the world is constantly in development. It is like your story with the dog laying on the nail in the article: “This One Will Make You Think . . . I Promise”
Fredrik