Olympic Special | Success is Paid for in Advance
Success requires a combination of talent, skill, and desire.
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Olympic Special | Success is Paid for in Advance
Millions of people watched this past weekend as Michael Phelps accomplished what many thought to be impossible. This got me thinking about what it really takes to be a winner in sales.
On Saturday night, when it was all over and Michael Phelps had done the impossible – winning 8 gold medals in a single Olympics – we stood in our living room and cheered for him. It was an inspirational performance that even had my son and his friends reenacting the 4×4 races in our pool and fighting over who would get to be Phelps on the butterfly leg. I’ve watched these kids idolize baseball, soccer, hockey, and football players, but pretending to be Olympic swimmers was a first. As I watched them play and cheered them on, I realized that they, like so many others, had no clue of the brutal training regimen required to compete at the Olympic level. Most people cannot imagine what it would be like to train for thousands of hours, seven days a week, for a single race.
Athletes at that level make it look easy and, because they do, we forget about the hard work that comes before their amazing feats. Now it wouldn’t be fair to discount their God given talent without which they would never have made it that far. But talent alone is not enough. Talent needs to be molded with training, enhanced with skills, anchored in repetition, and unleashed with desire. To be successful at anything, whether sport or sales, requires a combination of talent, skill, and desire.
Unfortunately many very talented people forget this and try to succeed on talent alone. They win some and lose some but ultimately fail to live up to their potential. Instead, because of ego, laziness, or ignorance they live and work in mediocrity. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the field of sales.
True success in the Sales Profession leads to high incomes, a flexible lifestyle, and the attainment of goals that most people only dream of. If you look around you, top sales professionals make it look easy. I’ve even overheard average sales reps describe the consistent high performance of top earners as “magical.”
You see, these reps can’t imagine the effort that top performers put into training. They don’t understand that success in always paid for in advance. But Top Performers do. Olympic class Sales Professionals read constantly. They subscribe to multiple sales ezines, read sales articles and trade magazines, buy sales books, and listen to sales audio programs. They do whatever it takes to stay at the top of their game. Frankly, on this podcast, I’m preaching to the choir because our subscribers are almost always the top sales people and sales leaders in their organizations. The average and poor performers don’t have time to listen, think that reading is a waste of time, and complain when they are sent to training. And because of this they never live up to their income potential, and many struggle to make ends meet.
Another trait of the mediocre is that they train only when they are in trouble (sort of like waiting until right before the Olympics to start training for an event). Just this week one of our eZine subscribers wrote to say he wanted to unsubscribe. When we asked him why, he said that he was doing well now and that he didn’t need to be bothered with reading more articles. Top athletes and top salespeople train constantly. Training is a way of life. When the whistle blows or a big deal is on the line they are always ready to win. I received a letter from one of these sales pros who says he listens to the Sales Guy podcast episodes and other audio programs on his iPod between appointments to stay sharp. That is a sign of a champion.
To be great in sales you must invest in yourself – mind, body, and spirit. You must train like and athlete. You must stay on top of your game. You must re-learn and practice the basics again and again. And you must add to your knowledge base, improve your skills, and manage your attitude through reading, listening to audio programs, and attending training.
If God gave you the talent to sell, coach, lead, or swim, live up to your potential by investing in yourself and turning your talent into excellence.
This Jeb Blount, the Sales Guy, if you want to learn more about being your very best pick up a copy of my book PowerPrinciples. The 5 Power Principles are the real secrets to success in sales.
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