Separating the Strong from the Shallow

Take two average businesspeople with little-to-no selling skills and the same amount of knowledge about the product, clients, and industry. Put them in locations where they frequent about the same amount of prospects. And let them sell XYZ for about a week.

On the first day, they both end up selling next to nothing. They’re both disappointed when they return to the office and get the pep talk from the boss before heading home.

Employee Number One brushes everything off, thinking it was a bad day. With the mindset of “luck not being on his side today,” he goes home and forgets about work. Because tomorrow, luck will be on his side, and sales will go through the roof.

Employee Number Two takes a different approach, and asks the boss for some tips on improving his selling skills – as he thinks his poor skill set is the reason behind the lackluster performance.

After getting the tips from the boss, he goes home and practices for an hour or so before dedicating time to his family. Now, he feels he’s better prepared to face the task at hand.

As the week rolls along, Employee Number One gets the same results throughout, except for one day when he made pretty good on his sales. And he constantly blamed his poor performance on bad luck and circumstances surrounding the location he was in.

Meanwhile, Employee Number Two kept asking for tips and acquiring more on how to be a better salesman. Thanks to this approach, Number Two was getting better and better at approaching his prospects. And as a result, he was able to increase his sales volume constantly.

The story’s lesson (as bad as it was) is this: you need to stop having an excuse for failure.

Failure presents an opportunity for improvement. But you won’t be able to take advantage of it if you just blame your lackluster performances on everything and everyone but yourself.

Instead, try taking a cause-and-effect approach.

Find what went wrong during your task or project. Get the information needed for you to fix the problem. And put it into practice. Constantly.

Having a shallow mindset will get you stuck precisely where you are forever.

A strong mindset will help you achieve your goals.

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