I’ve spent the last few decades working with college students, training them in the field of life. My history is varied: I was a mild-mannered lecturer in the Univ. of Kansas English department by day; by night, I was the Rhythm Keyboardist in a glam rock band, complete with a cape, thigh-boots, and light makeup.
Life has calmed down. I’m a dad, a manager, a husband. I enjoy reading (both books and faces), music, and God-stuff. I swim and train as a Masters swimmer with Excel Aquatics. (Be thankful I’ve elected not to include my Speedo photo portfolio.) Just before I began my first summer with The Southwestern Company, I had the opportunity to meet Anthony Burgess when he came to our campus. Who is Anthony Burgess you ask? He is my favorite British author, most famous for writing A Clockwork Orange, later made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick. (Assignment: go attempt [...]
How do you regain perspective when you are in a sales slump? When I was selling as a student with Southwestern, I had attitude adjustments made from within and from without. Last week, I was taken by a touching story from the Olympics . It reminded me how we can get perspective when we’ve lost it.
Alexandre Bilodeau [...]
What can we learn from Super Bowl XLIV that could apply to Southwestern student managers? For me, one principle stood out: the value of attitude and confidence! The game was a classic case of the technically-flawless Peyton Manning and his confident Colts losing to the underdog Drew Brees and the formerly-hapless Saints.
I fully expected Peyton Manning to [...]
Noticing. That’s all it takes.
Focus. What do you focus on? This blog seemed to tie in to Valentine’s Day coming up, so…
How can you fall out of love with your job? At Southwestern, you can notice how few people say yes, on the heat, on random negative thoughts, on how you dislike the feeling of failure, on the [...]
“You take your luggage with you. ”
This is something I probably say 50 times during each checkout season at Southwestern. During that time, hundreds of student salespeople are finishing their summers and are considering returning for another summer. Or not.
“I think I could learn this stuff somewhere else.”
“I don’t like selling.”
“I hated it.”
True, more or less. [...]
“My life stinks.”
“I’ve got major problems.”
“This whole thing sucks.”
Whether you sell books with Southwestern, or sell real estate, cars, clothes, insurance, stocks, or sales seminars, you experience frustration from time-to-time. When it happens, we make blanket statements which convey our upset. We declare our negative feelings through our self-talk. Our self-talk, in turn, leads us [...]
“Any act often repeated forms a habit; and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. At first it may be but as a spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.”
–Tryon Edwards
“I’m getting ready to commence to begin to start to recruit.” This isn’t an exact quote, [...]
Whether you sell books with The Southwestern Company, or you sell cars, or medical equipment or Coke products, or real estate, you’ve experienced failure. All of us in sales have survived setbacks, slumps, and difficult slow periods. Question: were we thankful for these challenges, or did they just make us upset?
When I was selling with Southwestern Company as [...]
Our marketing team at The Southwestern Company is listening to an audio project from Dan Sullivan called The Gratitude Principle. In it, Sullivan proposes that we can achieve endless progress and success in our lives as long as we are thankful each step along the way.
Have you ever met someone who was thankless? Someone who feels life [...]
As Southwestern Company’s sales trainer, I’m always interested in seeing how other companies’ salespeople perform when they’re making a sales call. You might say I’m a keen observer of their techniques, or lack thereof.
This week, my wife and I were considering consolidating our phone services, and getting new phones for our daughters. We headed into a [...]
