In 1981 Tracy Kidder wrote a landmark book that won the Pulitzer Prize
entitled, "Soul of a New Machine." It is the true story of the 1970s
computer company Data General, a company on a quest to create the next
great computer to compete against the, then reigning champion, Digital
Computer Systems, commonly known as DEC. To accomplish their goal the
company went about computer design in a whole new way. They created two
competing engineering groups, giving each crew the clear message, "may the
best team win." They isolated both teams from the minutiae of the day so
they could spend all their energy on creating the next great computer.
They set horrendous deadlines for the developers believing it would
motivate them to do their best work. And, perhaps most interesting of all,
they threw the top-down management book out the window, believing that
small groups of five or six engineers could do the work of twenty if given
the freedom and support to create, instead of simply code. In their quest
to build the next great computer they went looking for the soul of the new
machine in unexpected places. They went about solving a complex problem in
a very unusual way. Becoming a great sales person is like this. Sales
skills alone will not make you a superstar. Memorizing a book on some new
sales paradigm will not insure your success. Thinking sales looks easy and
convincing yourself that anyone can do it is a recipe for disaster. If you
want to be successful in sales then you will have to dig far deeper into
your psyche than you have ever gone before. Becoming a great sales person
is all about discovering your sales soul. It cannot be identified or
measured, quantified or reasoned, discovered or disclosed, yet, you know
it when you have it. Your sales soul is what makes you great; finding and
keeping it is the lifelong journey.
This book is about finding and nurturing your sales soul. It comes from
thirty years of selling experience. It is a book filled with success and
failure, loss and discovery, peril and promise. This is a book for
salespeople, about the selling profession, written by a salesman. It is
not of the "how to" variety but rather the "how it happened." It is a
mixture of travelogue, selling situations, lessons along the way, and self
confession. In order to help you discover and nurture your sales soul I
have to first get inside your head--by letting you inside of mine. I
accomplish this through telling "real life" sales stories.
I want to take you on a personal journey through my eyes: seeing what I
saw, feeling what I felt, and learning what I learned. I cannot make you
successful in sales-only you can make yourself successful. But I do
believe I can help you discover and develop the critical skills and
knowledge you need to be a success. Anyone can learn the basics of selling
but learning to love selling is something completely different. Trying to
explain what being in love feels like has been a challenge of the ages.
Trying to explain what makes a salesperson successful-or not-is a similar
problem. It's not as simple as one, two, three, easy steps to success. But
if that isn't the answer, what is? Good question. Difficult to explain.
Through my stories I try give you a sense of what it takes to be
successful. Instead of telling you "how to do it" I share with you "what I
did." So call it a mentoring book, if you will, intended to help you
through your journey into sales. What makes this book different is that I
share with you the intimate details of what the inner life of selling is
all about. I expose my soul in order to help you discover yours.
Some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty and to leave the
innocent in quite seclusion. Several of the names have been left in-tact.
These are the people who have shaped my life and shared in my adventures.
My parents are prominently featured throughout the book. They were the
ones who set me up for a life in sales; they just didn't know it at the
time. And finally, I have tried to recall the conversations herein to the
best of my ability. Like all memories, mine are open to personal recall.
Every "if, and, or but" may not be exact, but every word comes from
inspired remembrance.
I was not born a salesman, nor will I die one. I was born an
impressionable child who grew up in a working class neighborhood in a
small town in eastern Washington. I will die, God willing, surrounded by
family and friends, reflecting on my life as a husband, father, and
salesman. Selling has been my rock in every sense of the word, "with no
direction home," as Bob Dylan would say, "into the complete unknown."
There is a beautiful short story by the Finnish author Tove Jonsson,
entitled "The Rock." It is less than six pages in length yet a beautifully
crafted story of a life complete. Based on the myth of Sisyphus (a
recurring theme throughout my book), the storyteller takes us on a journey
of discovery and innocence where a rock discovered changes everything. "It
was lying between the coal dump and the goods wagons under some bits of
wood and it was a miracle no one found it before me," she writes in the
opening line of the story, "It was a huge stone of nothing but silver and
no one had found it." The story is a childlike tale about what it takes to
roll the rock into existence. It is heavy. It takes all she can do to move
it. People she meets along the way, stop and stare. It won't budge when
she needs it to. She even abandons it for awhile deciding it is simply too
big, too hard, too difficult, to handle. But in the end she preservers and
the rock finally breaks wide open, revealing the miracle within.
My life in sales has been like that rock. I didn't ask to find it, but it
somehow found me. And there it remained, constantly in my vision
regardless of where I stood, or how far away from it I tried to run. In
religious terms, it became my cross to bear. The rock of sales knew it was
only a matter of time until I discovered it was my calling to push it
through life and up the proverbial hill, discovering the essence of who I
was meant to be along the arduous journey.
The sales journey is not for everyone. You may discover that you don't
have a desire for sales. You passion may lead you in a different
direction. As I say throughout the book, "many are called, but few are
chosen." Everyone has a destiny; discovering it is half the fun, and part
of the frustration. This book was written to help you discover whether or
not your calling is in sales. People say things like "you ought to be a
doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher." But how do you know? The answer is,
you don't. The same goes for sales, I would argue, four-fold. Sales is
"not" the profession of choice. Parents do not welcome their children into
the world declaring, "Ah, this one is going to be a salesperson." To my
thinking, becoming a salesperson is more like waking up one day and
discovering that mighty rock sitting in front of you. "What is this ugly
thing?" you ask yourself. "Who brought this into my life?" The answer
is-you did-you just don't know it at the time.
At first the rock of sales may feel like a yoke around your neck. You may
even try to run away from it. I did. There will be times you doubt the
rock was meant for you. You may even plead with it to leave you alone. But
the rock will stay in your head if selling is your destiny. All you will
hear are the reflections of your pleas coming from that rock of sales. If
your calling is sales, the urge will never leave you. It will always be
there, lurking in the far corners of your mind, until, one day (if you are
like me), you will submit to it and say, "OK, I am going to break this
open and see what treasures lie within." But long before you discover what
rests deep inside, you must first push that rock through valleys and up
hills, training yourself for a life in the profession. Can I be a
successful salesperson? Can I become a millionaire? Do I really have a
desire for sales? Will I know the signs for success when I see them? These
are the questions that sales people ask themselves every day. If you want
to know the answers then read on. I will teach through story and example
how to sell, not through rules by rote, but through "living example." I
will explain how I made a million dollars not by some unproven formula, or
new fangled closing technique, but rather through perseverance and hard
work (and I came so close to failing it will make the hairs on your neck
stand up). I will share with you the good stories, and the bad ones. I
will instruct you on how to avoid the typical "sales pitfalls" many of us
fall into; Lord only knows how many I have fallen into over the years. But
teach you in the traditional way I will not do. There will not be a test
at the end of this book to find out if you memorized your closing lines
correctly. This is a sales book of a different color. This book is all
about getting your head in the game and keeping it there, regardless of
what comes your way. As my friend Tim from Chicago puts it, "It's all
about the mental game. Keeping your head in it is 90% of the battle."
Amen, brother, Amen.
Anyone who wants to be successful in sales can be: but can is the
operative word. You cannot be successful in sales through passive
participation in the basics. You cannot expect to make a million dollars
without having discovered your inner selling soul. And you cannot go into
sales part-time. It has to become your full-time passion, you non-stop
job. And when, and if, you embrace this great profession called sales, get
ready to enjoy the hard earned fruits of your labor. Anyone who wants to
be successful in sales and is willing to work hard to get there can be
successful-regardless of education, race, creed, size, or statue in
society. This book is all about taking you as far as you want to go. This
book is about helping you discover the passion within you that will make
you great.
Carpe Diem.
It's not the destination. It's the journey.
