It’s the mantra of almost every top Southwestern salesperson out there. We’ve all been told that to reach our goals, we can’t make any excuses—we have to be unconditionally committed. But I AM unconditionally committed, you say. I don’t make excuses, but I still haven’t reached my goals. What gives? The answer is pretty simple: human beings are far too reasonable.

                Let me give you an example: let’s say you’re a student in the Southwestern Advantage summer program, and you have a goal of hitting President’s Club in personal sales. It’s 9:36 on Saturday night, and you’re one sale away from reaching your goal, but you have no good prospects in your area who have lights on. In fact, the closest prospect lives a ten-minute drive away, and they might not be up, either. After all, you didn’t set up an appointment with them. What do you do? The reasonable Southwestern salesperson looks at their watch and calls it a day. They didn’t hit their goal, but they had a good reason for not hitting it. I don’t want to make these people mad at me! That could give me really bad PR, and I might get kicked out of my turf. And they’ll probably buy if I stop in at a better time, but there’s no way they’ll buy if I wake them up. What else can I do? And they rationalize away their failure to hit their goal.

                That, my friends, it what it means to be reasonable. It means granting a good reason for failure permission to be a suitable substitute for success. Being reasonable is the number one cause of our failure to reach our true potential in work and in life.

                And there is a cure. But like most cures, it’s not pleasant—it’s not comfortable. If we really want to succeed, we must embrace the concept of being UNreasonable. To be UNreasonable is to refuse to let a good reason for failure prevent us from achieving success.

                So looking at our previous Southwestern example, we saw that the reasonable thing to do is to end the week, failing to hit our goal. What’s the UNreasonable course of action? Well, this is where it gets fun! There are lots of UNreasonable things we can do. One is to go knock on a dark door.  Another is to drive to that next prospect ten minutes away. They may not be up, but maybe their neighbors are. We could go to a new area of our Southwestern sales locality and find a family who’s awake. What about going to a convenience store and selling a set of books to the clerk on night shift? Or, we could plan ahead and make sure we have lots of late night appointments, so there’s always someone to go talk to after dark (the best choice!) The possibilities are endless!

                If you ever find yourself caught in a situation where the only way out seems to be reasonable, check yourself. Is the reason really valid? Are there any UNreasonable solutions you could try? And don’t forget to fall back on your emotional purpose: is the reason for failing to hit your goal really bigger than your desire to make your purpose a reality? If it’s not, then it’s time to get UNreasonable.

“What does it take to succeed? Apparently a whole lot of failure. Paul Tough, in the New York Times, reports educational leaders who believe that knowing how to fail is the secret to success. Dominic Randolph, who leads an expensive, top ranked private school in New York City, is concerned about students that have known nothing but success. He states:

Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southernItaly, there was this idea inAmericathat if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful. Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.

These kids don’t know how to fail because they’ve never done it. Therefore, when things get outside their comfort zone, or they first encounter people more capable than they are, they have no skills for dealing with it. We talk a lot about hard work, but school grading generally ends up being based on how well you did on the test, not about how much effort it took to get there or how persistent someone was.

But wait, don’t we want to hire those people who are naturally brilliant and don’t need a lot of hard work to be successful? Well, sure, except that if they don’t know how to fail they are going to be awfully difficult to work with. We hear this complaint from those who employ Generation Y. Many of their parents (and their schools) saw to it that failure wasn’t an option. Everything was fixed or extra credit given or forgotten lunches brought to school.

The ability to bounce back from failure is a key point. But, what if you’ve never failed? What if your parents fix every problem you ever have? What if you never gain this valuable skill? Then you’re far less likely to have true success.  If you’ve never had to try again and again, are you going to assume that the problem is unsolvable if you fail the first time?

Lots of people live charmed lives as long as their parents are pulling the strings or they put themselves in places where success is almost guaranteed. Except that anyone in the working world today knows that failure is not only a possibility it’s a high probability. Businesses fail. Entire divisions get laid off, regardless of how brilliant any individual employee was.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of trying to figure out what the problem in the darn code is.  If you’re a one try and you’re finished type of person, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, you won’t succeed.

And what happens if you’re one of those people who has never failed? Never had to face disappointment and pick yourself up by your own bootstraps? It can be disastrous. But, to succeed you must be able to fail and recover from failure.”

I think of the many college students I interviewed over the years who never sold with Southwestern–it was sad their parents ran interference for them.  Even more sad, these same students who were “protected” from Southwestern summer setbacks, were often shell-shocked when they hit their first career.  I welcome your thoughts and experiences!  I am thankful my parents allowed me the opportunity to fail that first summer with Southwestern.

“He conquers who endures.”  –Persius 

“The odds are with us if we keep on trying.”  –DeGreen 

“It helps to consider ourselves on a very long journey: the main thing is to keep to the faith, to endure, to help each other when we stumble or tire, to weep and press on.”  –Mary Caroline Richards 

“No, there is no failure for the man who realizes his power; who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor; the unconquerable will.  There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when every one else gives up, who pusher on when everyone else turns back.”  –Orison Swett Marden 

“Don’t quit.”  –Mort Utley 

“I get knocked down, but I get up again…!”   –Chumbawamba 

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”  –Confucius 

“You become a champion by fighting one more round.  When things are tough, you fight one more round.”  –James Corbett 

“I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith!”  –St. Paul 

“Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success.  They quit on the one yard line.  They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.”  –Ross Perot

“But on you will go though the weather be foul. On you will go though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak.  And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!  (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)”  –Dr. Suess 

There is value in persistence.  What thoughts or quotes motivate you to continue to work when you don’t feel like it?  Southwestern alumni, current Southwestern students: feel free to comment!

• Step #1: Don’t believe that it’s “real”. Rejection is essentially a subjective experience — your emotion reaction to your interpretation of events. Once you understand that it’s just an emotion, rejection loses much of its power.
• Step #2: Differentiate between valid and invalid rejection. If the rejection is based upon something valid (like your basic approach), then blame your approach and then change it.  If the rejection is invalid — as when a prospect “dumps” frustration on you — it has nothing to do with you.
• Step #3: Believe in your offering. If you believe in what you’re selling, then it’s no big deal if somebody doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it, or just thinks that they don’t need or want it.  It’s not about you, it’s about them, because what you’re selling is worthwhile and important.
• Step #4: Believe in your own importance. It’s easy to feel rejected when “important” people (like CEOs) don’t want to meet with you.  But if you’re selling something valuable that can really help that firm, you’re as important as the CEO.  So what if that CEO is too dumb to see it?  That’s his problem!

When I was refused (aka rejected), I immediately began some mental gymnastics.  A few affirmations (out loud) came in handy:

• “They must be having a tough day–tougher than mine.”
• “Something about this call is going to make me better.”
• “I can, I will, and I’m going to have a good day.”

Then, I switched to better questions, because good questions always provide good answers:

• “How can I learn from this encounter so this will never happen again?”
• “What do I want to happen?”
• “What’s not perfect yet?”
• “How can I turn things around?”

As always, “how” questions are superior to “why” questions.  Examples: “Why does this always happen to me?” or “Why can’t I give good demonstrations?”  These are terrible questions; ask a bad question and your brain will give you a bad answer.

What’s your strategy for insulating yourself against the feeling of rejection?  Please share your thoughts, strategies, or comments!

Let me tell you about the worst rejection of my first summer.

 I ran up to this house and there was a dad in the driveway washing his boat.  I gave my approach to him and he stopped me short to let me know that I was talking to the wrong person.  He said, “My wife is an educator so she deals with all that stuff.  Go knock on the front door and she can help you.”  So I jogged up to the door and knocked, stepped back and waited.  She came to the door and she was a real cool mom.  Let me right in and said she was very into education.  I was hopeful.  I gave my introduction and learned that she was indeed very into education.  She had 2 PhD’s and she actually had started her own charter elementary school.  (A school that cost over $15,000 a year for elem. kids!)  So this lady was definitely an authority when it came to education.  You will run into lots of these people. 

I started to give my demo and after about 5 min she stopped me.  She said very politely that she was not going to buy my books.  I was like “ok”.  This was nothing new, as I had heard  ‘no’ from others before.    But then she asked me if it was ok if she offered me some thoughts.  I figured that wouldn’t be so bad as I packed up my sample books.  She started off by saying something like this:  “Matt, you are going to have a very tough summer here.  You seem like a really nice kid with lots of potential.  But I think you are in the wrong job.  I own my own school, Matt.  And I would not recommend one family in my school to buy these books from you.  As an educator, that’s what I’m for.  And our textbooks are good.  I have a very hard time believing that I can’t find all of this somewhere on the internet.  For free.  Why would anyone pay for this?  I would be surprised if you even have a family buy these books from you.   $300 is a lot of money and people just don’t have $300 to blow on books.  (She had a boat, remember.)”  But I kept listening because she was being very nice about all this.  She was very motherly.  She continued:  “And in this day and age, Matt, no one is going to let you into their door.  I only let you in because you look nice.  (This was right after 9/11)  You should go back to Nebraska and get a job where you can actually make some money.  Wait tables or something.  If I were you I would get back into your little red car and go home today.  This company is exploiting you.  You are working these long hours out here banging on doors for them.  There’s no way that your mom knows you are doing this right?!  I would never let my child do this.  Seriously Matt, you should go back home today.”

Ouch.  I packed up my bag and thanked her tongue in cheek and ran to my car.  When I got to my car I punched the steering wheel and cussed a lot.  I was angry.  Who was I angry at?  Not her.  Me.  I remember feeling like I couldn’t believe that I had been duped into doing this job.  What was I thinking by coming out here and doing this crazy book selling job?!  I vowed to myself at that moment that there was no way that I would come back the following year.  I was dead certain that she was right and that Southwestern would be out of business within a few years.

STOP.

Question:  What part of the summer did this happen to me my first summer?  Beginning, Middle or End?

Truth is that it happened in my last week.  AFTER I had already made over $20,000 for my summer job!!!!  And I believed her!  That’s what is crazy about rejection.  It will cause you to lose perspective and become irrational.  How could I believe her that no one would buy?  People had already bought that same day!  It’s the “experts” that will give you this type of very logical rejection.  Be careful. 

The rest of the story is necessary too.  After punching my steering wheel, what did I do?  I went to the next door.  With a crappy attitude.  2 hours passed with a bad attitude. I got in zero doors.  Then I stopped for a minute and realized how poor my attitude had gotten.  I decided that I was going to make a change so I threw some water on my face and said a prayer.  I went to work with a new mindset.  3 doors later I got in.  And guess what.  The mom and her kids were totally into my books.  The kids were in high school and they were in honors classes and they were definitely going to use the books to save time.  Mom was pumped. She thanked me and told me how great of a job I was doing.  She gave me a Coke for the road and she said, “Matt, you are going to do great here in Mendon.  People are really into their kids and you’ll have a lot of families buy these.  Thank you so much for stopping by and showing us these books.  My kids are going to love them.  Can’t wait to see you when you deliver!”

I walked out of the house and got into my car.  Then it hit me.  As I pulled out of her driveway, I looked down the street and saw that dad just finishing up washing his boat.  I realized a very valuable lesson at that moment.  Some get it.  Some don’t.  This lady who just bought from me totally got it.  The teacher from earlier in the day did not get it.  Oh well.  The answer to every problem lies behind the next door.  Make sure you go to it.

Do you have a similar rejection story to share? or a comment or solution that would help other readers?  Be sure to comment!

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.  But what I often remind them about is that our program didn’t create the personal shortcomings they experienced—it simply revealed them.  Difficult circumstances reveal what you’re made of.  So we (I do the same thing) tend to rationalize away our sub-par behavior and blame our situation.  

“Southwestern made me this way.”  Nope, sorry.  Southwestern (better yet, the challenges) revealed your character. 

Oftentimes, the desire to move on to other opportunities is another form of “the grass is greener” syndrome.  You can change your job, you can switch your role, you can get a different spouse–but you still have to live with yourself.  You take your luggage with you. 

If only the weather were better, people were friendlier, there were more folks employed, less traffic, a different administration, better prospects, a new sales territory…we’d probably be happy right where we are.  The problem is there’s too much pressure here, too many frustrations.  The answer seems simple enough—move, switch, change jobs, quit! 

The problem is that when we move on in our search, we take ourselves along.  Where we are is where we’ve chosen to be.  If we don’t look at ourselves, we’ll choose the same people & predicaments again. 

There is enormous freedom in realizing this truth.  So, own up.  Remember, you take your luggage with you.

When I was selling with Southwestern Company as a college student, I learned to take emotional pain in stride.  One of my favorite affirmations was: “Something about today will help me become a better father, a better teacher, a better husband…”.  In other words, I was attempting to put frustrating circumstances into perspective–I was trying to reframe the situation.   I told myself, “Someday this will be funny–it’ll make a great story.”  (Some of you may remember The Dirt Pile story, as an example.) 

Most of us survived those sales ordeals, and the fact that we went through them made us better.  Think about it–most of the stuff you’ve been through by way of pain has had a refining element to it.  If you workout, you can relate to what I’m saying–you push yourself, you strain your muscles, you experience pain.  (During my workouts with the Masters Swim Team, I often wonder why I’m swimming at 52…).  When you’re finished, when the pain ends, you feel good, you look better, your resting heart rate is low, endorphins flood your body.  (In my case, you smell like Eau de Chlorine.)  When you compete and win, all the pain you went through is now minimized and in perspective.

And now to the world of music!  I was listening to Alanis Morissette the other day while driving.  If you’re a fan of hers, you can hear the pain and anger–especially in her earlier work.  Alanis has faced some life challenges, but has worked through them and is even thankful for the experience.  Check out the chorus of her song, “Thank U” :

thank you india
thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you thank you silence

If you’re experiencing a tough period in your sales/recruiting career, be thankful!  What you’re experiencing is on purpose.  Pain is a teacher.  Difficult circumstances are the great Kiln of Life, and your “impurities” are being burned out–like dross.  Be thankful, instead of put out, by your circumstances.

Do you have a story or comment about the positive side of negative circumstances?  Share!

The players had varying reactions: some wept, some were angry, some sat stunned–all were disappointed.  Now the character of the team will be revealed.  Aside from trades, the draft, salary caps, etc., we will see how this cohesive team responds to big-time adversity.  As Coach Fisher said in the post-game interview, “Most of the players are in disbelief because we had goals all year that we planned to accomplish.  There was no question that we planned on winning it all.”

So, what do we do with adversity?  What happens when you blow a big sale?  when your potential recruit goes elsewhere?  when everything you’ve worked for goes awry? 

At the Southwestern Company, we’ve always taught students that it’s not important what happens to you, what is important is your response–your reaction.  I remember my third summer selling books which turned out to be a disaster: everything that could go wrong, went wrong.  My roommates quit, my sales locality (seemed to) suck, I was steadily decreasing in sales production, nothing was clicking.  My team was large…largely unproductive that is to say.  I had a mild car wreck to top things off.

Needless to say, when that summer ended, I was ready to throw in the towel.  (“Thanks, Southwestern!  I learned a lot, I grew a lot…now I’m outta here.”)  I was rationalizing and responding to my defeat in a negative way.  I had no intention of returning the following year for another dose of failure.  Thankfully, I had senior managers and mentors who were willing to listen to my frustrations and offer hope that things could be different next year.  After much processing, I decided to return. 

The good news is the next year was great!  I rebounded in sales, recruiting, and in my team production.  A happy ending to the dismal previous performance.  The problem was not the program–the problem was how I performed at it. 

So back to sports.  We’ll see how the Titans players respond to this major setback.  Can they rebound and learn from their experience?  Will they be willing to pay the price again to get as far as they did this year?  Or will they disintegrate as a team and become mediocre?  I hope not.  We’ll see how their collective character responds to adversity.