What Your Commitments Mean: A Look Into the Future

You are being measured. Your dream client is measuring your actions against your words. This isn’t so much a moral judgment, and your dream client isn’t (often) trying to play a game of “gotcha!”  Your dream client is keeping score because your ability to keep your commitments, following up and following through on your word, is the single best indication as to what they should expect from you regarding future commitments.  If you commit to doing something, to taking some action, and then you don’t follow up or follow through, your dream client will come to believe that they should also expect that you will not keep your future commitments—commitments that become much more critical once they are your client. 

Failing to keep your commitments, large or small, will cause your dream client to question whether or not you can be trusted. And without trust, your opportunity is lost.

What Your Commitments Mean: How Much You Care

Failing to keep you commitments is indication that you don’t care about your dream client, their time, or their outcomes.

Many of your dream clients know this story. It goes like this: attention, attention, attention, heavy lifting of execution, lack of attention and follow through. It’s easy to talk the talk when it comes to executing and keeping commitments; it’s much more difficult to walk the walk.  A big part of trust is caring enough to ensure that  someone else gets the outcome they needed and expected. If your dream client doesn’t recognize that you care by your actions, then your opportunity is lost.

What’s At Stake: More Than Your Opportunity

Honesty and integrity are table stakes. If you are dishonest or you lack integrity, you are not going to have or win opportunities.   But what is at stake is more than your opportunity.What are at stake are your reputation and your character. Heavy stuff, no doubt. But this is, ultimately, the whole game.

Questions

Why is it critical to keep your commitments even when they are relatively minor commitments?

What methods do you use to capture your commitments to your dream clients, great and small? How do you prevent things from slipping through the cracks when life comes crashing down around your intentions?

When someone fails to keep a commitment they have made to you, what do you believe about their ability and their willingness to keep future commitments? What does their failure do to your ability to trust them?

When someone fails to keep a commitment they have made to you, what do you believe about how much they care about you? What does their failure do your ability to trust that they care enough about you?

Why is trust critical to sales? How do you personally engender the trust that builds relationships?

So, how about it?  How is your follow up–literally?  Do you do what you say you’re going to do?  Do you execute the “little things”–even with yourself?  If you need simple ideas on how to build trust go check out an older post of mine, called “The Four Habits of Referability”.   Merry Christmas!

I was conducting a webinar on how to have a I Wanna Win finish, and it reminded me of the greatest finish I witnessed in swimming history–the U.S. men’s 4 x 100 relay at the Beijing Olympics.   Do you remember?

At the 50 meter halfway mark, Jason Lezak peered through his goggles at the lane to his right and briefly lost hope. 

“The thought really entered my mind for a split second,” Lezak said. “There’s no way.” 

The anchor swimmer took off from the blocks well behind Frenchman Alain Bernard and, after sprinting for 50 meters, had not closed the gap.  Bernard, who began this race as the world-record holder in the 100 freestyle, had not put the race out of reach — something he all but guaranteed by declaring the French would “smash” the Americans in this event. 

When he flipped and pushed off the wall, he was still half a body length behind.  As a Masters swimmer, I can tell you that is huge in a sprint race. The United States was going down and taking Phelps’ quest for eight gold medals with it. 

But just as quickly as that glimmer of despair flitted through Lezak’s mind, it was shoved aside by fresh determination. 

“I changed,” he said. “I thought, ”That’s ridiculous. I’m at the Olympic Games, I’m here for the United States of America. I don’t care how bad it hurts, I’m going after it.’  I just got a super charge.”

Lezak closed the gap and out-touched Bernard by .08 of a second.  Less than a blink of an eye.  The greatest comeback I have ever seen at the Olympics.  People went crazy.  I went crazy.  It was very cool, unless you were French.  Here is a link to a video of the whole race: 

Are you in the final stages of your school year?  a big multi-faceted B-to-B sale?  building your team for the summer?  This is the time when people give up a little, and think, “no way.”  Decide it’s important to hit your goals–you may not have millions of fans cheering for you, but finishing strong(ly) is a great habit to adopt.  Your thoughts/comments are welcomed!

The reason people do not reach their true potential is because they subconsciously build barriers that cause self-doubt.  They don’t believe they can hit high goals.  The three most important characteristics for breaking belief barriers are commitment, control, and confidence. 

1. Commitment is doing the work–putting in the effort with no excuses!  Top producers do not make excuses; they stay committed. 

When I think of commitment, I am reminded of a time when I was selling books door-to-door with The Southwestern Company.  While in Missouri that summer, I had over ten flat tires in three months!  I had so many flat tires I started timing myself with a stopwatch as if I were on a NASCAR pit crew.  So I find myself in the middle of nowhere, on a mile-long driveway (scenery common to that area).  The driveway passed through a canopy of trees.

As I was changing the tire trying to beat my pit crew record time, I noticed my arm looked like my skin was crawling.  Upon further inspection I realized I was completely covered in ticks!  I don’t know about you, but when people ask me what my favorite critter is I don’t say ticks.  So what did I do?  I reacted the same way any other rational human being would-I flipped out!  I stripped down buck naked and threw my clothes in a plastic bag so ticks would not get in the car.  

Then I drove to the nearest gas station.  I hopped out, but realized I’d better put my pants back on.  So after that embarrassing act, I ran into the gas station with no shirt and no shoes.  An older lady looked at me and said, “Son, what’s wrong with you?”  I replied, “I’ve got ticks!”  So I grabbed a razor and ran to the bathroom.  Now as I was looking at myself in the mirror and trying to pick the ticks off, I had a deep sense of doubt.  I wanted to quit what I was doing, go home, and use this as a reason why I didn’t hit my goal.  But, something inside of me said No.  I had committed to my sales manager, my friends, parents, and (more importantly) to myself I was not going to quit on a single day, week, or month.  So I shaved the ticks off one by one.  I went on and finished my day.  That day was not my most productive day, but it was my most important because after that experience I knew nothing would stop me from fulfilling my commitments from then on.

We find ourselves in different situations everyday.  After reflecting upon that extreme example of what it means to be committed, I found that sometimes we cannot do anything about the situations in which we find ourselves.  In order to reach our Maximum Earning Potential, the level of commitment we need to have should be deep enough that it goes past being committed to someone else, and the dedication to the goal is based on personal accountability. 

Soon, we will dive into the second success factor for obtaining Maximum Earning Potential—Control.

Dustin Hillis is Co-Founder of Success Starts Now!  He was a phenomenal salesperson as a student dealer with The Southwestern Company, setting the company record in 2004 and making over $97,000 in a single summer.