Beginnings

Often, when we begin a new experience, we learn several things very rapidly in our effort to adjust to a new situation.  Sales was no different for me.  On April 26th, 2013, I flew out to Oklahoma, and the next day I began selling.  Before this, I had been given a sales manual to read in preparation, which I did.  I soon learned that the experience itself could be far different than what I saw on paper.  Here were some things I learned within the first two weeks of selling:

1.  Selling can be a lot like a (Mormon) mission.  The routine and schedule are very familiar, as are the daily team meetings and setting goals.  But more than that, it is a refining experience that develops personal qualities in ways that nothing ever has before.  I had to use faith, patience, confidence, diligence, and trust in the Lord almost daily.

2.  What you say is not nearly as important as how you say it.  I could parrot the phrases in the sales manual like any other human with average intelligence, but I came face to face with the fact that the verbal aspect of communication constitutes a very small part of the information we really transmit.  My posture, stance, hand movements, facial expressions, tone, pitch, volume, and everything else painted 99% of the picture.  Confidence is shown, not told.

3.  It's a roller coaster.  There are days when you sell nothing and you go home wondering why you ever left your bed that morning.  For me, it was easier to go to the Lord at those times and wonder what I was doing wrong or how I could improve.  And then there are days when a lot of success comes and you feel on top of the world.  Unlike a mission, salesmen are not reminded constantly that regardless of their individual efforts, all their success comes from the Lord as a gift.  It was easy to forget that.  It was and is easy to think of myself and my accomplishments.  I learned different things from being on the bottom and on top, but overall, the truth is:  You've got to learn that nothing is permanent.


4.  Nobody learns this overnight.  Every new salesman who sees a natural at work thinks that his kind of talent must have been there the whole time, that he's a "born salesman".  It's just not true.  Everybody who's reached success in this field has had to work at it, night after night, for months and years.  Everybody has days with no success and wonders if they're cut out for the job.  I could endure a single day with no success, but after several days like that, the hardest thing was the unavoidable question, "Am I ever going to be good at this?"  There were some times that the only thing keeping my going was that I knew God had me here for a purpose, and I owe a lot to that.  Everybody has plateaus, not only in their results, but in their own progress in learning their skill set.  As long as you're putting the effort in, wait a few days and the progress will come.  Nobody learns this overnight, but:  Anybody who's persistent can and will reach success.


What I learned helped me to get past the difficulties I faced.  I wouldn't mind forgetting about the end of April (I didn't sell anything and had a less-than-pleasurable experience with the Yukon police), but May and June were good months.

We had a good group of guys.

We helped each other when we needed it.

We spent countless car rides reading Og Mandino and pumping each other up.

We saw our first tornado.

We had a way-too-close shave with another tornado.

We laughed about the crazy people we ran into.

We laughed at how crazy we were sometimes.

We ate a lot of Buffalo Wild Wings.

But just as all good things must come to an end, all easy (or doable) things must get hard.  And before long, it did.  But that will have to wait until the next post.