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.

Kenny is engaging, warm, funny, self-deprecating and persistent.  He hi-fives his prospect (physical involvement), deflects questions about the price (the inquiry came during the “demo”), and closes repeatedly.  On the less admirable side, Kenny makes appeals to buying out of sympathy (a little) and not solely out of service. Yet on the positive side, he wears an ID badge!  Well done.  His entire approach/demo is performed (I chose that word carefully) at the door—quite the door demo!  Kenny does reference neighbors, but doesn’t use any names. 

Kenny says he is working to become a TV comedian, and his door to door selling is merely a “stepping stone” to greater fame and fortune.  What are your thoughts on his technique?  Would you consider him effective or off-putting?  Watch this 7:00 minute clip, and you decide whether this guy will make it big.  (Why didn’t anyone approach him for 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!

One young lady from Russia piped up and said [read this in a thick Russian accent], “The second summer would be better than thees one, because, as vee say in my country, ‘The first pancake is always bad.’” 

I liked it.  Her proverb is true isn’t it?

Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly, at first.  The first pancake you create generally is over or undercooked and may not be the best shape either.  So it is with the first go-round at Southwestern: over or underdone summers.  Sometimes students come out of their first experience in different shapes.

If you’re selling, more than likely it’s going to take some time to master the skills–probably more than one summer!  If you’re recruiting, you may blow the initial conversation with a friend.  Your first series of phone calls to prospect may be largely crappy.  Your first interviews will probably not be ideal.  (The first group interview I held, I was 0-5–not the best “closing percentage.”)

Get beyond the first try.  Get to the second pancake. 

I would love to mandate a two year minimum stint at Southwestern once a student joins the team.  Why?  Because it takes time to get good at selling!  Some students catch on right at the end of the summer–then there’s no time to excel.  A second go-round would be better.  If you’ve ever re-taken a class, generally you do better the second time.   Why?  This time you’re familiar with the prof, the class, how he/she grades.  Odds are you improve.

So remember, all things are difficult before they are easy.  “The first pancake is always bad.”

I’ll tell you the greatest secret to my success and the biggest reason most people fail.  It’s not lack of desire, big dreams or even motivation.  It is not a fear to sign up, try or to even get started.  People go to seminars, buy books, join gyms, start diet programs or sign up for a new business opportunity.  Starting is not the problem.  Staying is.  A commitment to consistency is the key.  My definition of commitment is doing the thing you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.  People get excited, they get started, maybe even experience some success, but then they stop or stall.  That start-and-stop process kills momentum and destroys progress in every pursuit–that’s true in your relationships, in your wealth-building plan, with your diet and fitness, and it’s most certainly true in building a direct selling organization.

Hardy goes on to say:

It’s not about who gets started first or fastest, but about who can repeat the simple disciplines, the core fundamentals, over and over, consistently over time….That is why the tortoise beats the hare every time–not because the tortoise is more talented, experienced or faster, but because the tortoise is simply and relentlessly consistent.

I think about the student dealers in the Southwestern Program.  Why do we give the “I Wanna Win” award to those who have their best sales at the end of their summer?  Because it’s harder to finish than to begin.  The greatest feeling in the world is finishing strongly–to acknowledge that you have “left it all out on the field”.  That you’ve spent yourself doing your best.  (By the way, we do not have an “I Wanna Begin” award because it’s easy to start things–way harder to finish.)

Please share your strategies on how you maintain your focus, effort and energy while you sell!

Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach who brought the Green Bay Packers from 15 losing seasons to successive Super Bowl championships, that success was a matter of inches.  A bit more focus, one extra push in practice, second effort for a tiny additional gain.  He didn’t ask his players to be something other than what they were–he asked them to improve their best one inch at a time.  He knew inches add up, both in life and in a sales career.

At Southwestern, we call it the slight edge philosophy–all the little extras top salespeople do to gain a slight edge on the competition: working when you don’t feel like it, making a call beyond the suggested schedule, closing one more time, taking time to memorize your customers’ names, repeating positive affirmations out loud, reading technical material at night after work.

Question: are you doing all those little things you used to do when you were excited about your work?  Are you working with the same focus and enthusiasm as you did the first week?  These little things–these “inches”–separate top sales people from average producers. 

Today, I will be aware that I am a champion in the making.  I may not make a complete turnaround in one day, but I will make progress.

Just as with the coin, sales is a numbers game.  It is 100% guaranteed that you will experience both the winning, and the losing, sides of the coin.  You will hear customers say ‘yes!’ to your product and you will also hear customers tell you that your product is rubbish and, ‘no, I’m not buying’.

Matter of fact, you will likely hear the latter more often than you will hear the former.   This is not bad news; it simply is the way it is.  But how bland would your job be if you heard ‘yes’ all the time?  The reason making a sale feels so good is because you know that we’ve worked for it.  You put the time and energy into it, and you earned that sale.  Hearing nothing but ‘yes’ would take the excitement away.  Just like it wouldn’t be much fun flipping that coin if it always landed on heads.   You will hear a ‘yes’ eventually… if you are willing to stick around long enough and see it through.   It is statistically impossible for you to go at it day after day, time after time, try after try, and not make a sale.  It may take a day or a week or a month, but it will happen.  It’s got to happen. 

Colonel Sanders drove around the US for two years trying to sell his chicken recipe.  He was turned down 1,009 times.  Talk about believing in the numbers!

The people who excel in this world are not the lucky or the smart or the naturally gifted.  They are the patient, the persistent, and the tenacious.  They are the ones that got back up after they’d been chewed up and spit out. 

So get used to the word ‘no’.  Expect, embrace it, and learn to enjoy it.   Because that ‘no’ means that you are now one ‘no’ closer to your long-awaited YES.  

Haley Price sold books for three summers (2003-2005).  She is the author and illustrator of Today is the Best Day of My Life.  This book contains bite-sized life principles, presented in a light and simple way, that are intended to help guide people toward a more productive, more meaningful, and more fun life.  She tailored a version of this book specifically towards Southwestern students, and it was used for the first time in their sales kits in the summer of 2009.  While not writing, Haley works in global advertising sales for Microsoft in New York, NY.

Every week without fail, we take her to the batting cage to practice hitting.  You can imagine how excited she is! “Can we just skip this week?  Do we have to?”  (And just for the record, we aren’t the stereotypical, psycho I’m-living-my-life-through-my-kids parents.) 

“You play like you practice!” we say.  ”If you want to be good at something, you have to do extra work!”  “If you train hard, rewards will follow!”–all wise parental maxims.  

So it is with sales improvement and personal growth.  We may see no progress made by a long series of consistent, dogged efforts.  You may study your sales presentation, gain product knowledge, increase your calls, improve your demonstrations…all without apparent progress.  And then it happens.  All of a sudden you turn a corner, a truth is revealed, a bad habit loses its grip. 

But all this doesn’t happen suddenly.  The gain was made, one close at a time, one call at a time, one swing at a time, by all the seemingly ineffective, probably forgotten efforts before your breakthrough. 

Longfellow, the poet, once wrote: 

Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate,

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait. 

Have faith in the process of growth.  Don’t expect a medal for each lap run.  

What’s your story?  Share a story or comment for everyone, please.  (Oh, and good news!  Katie batted between .500 and .700 with two triples in the last couple tournaments.  Persistent effort pays off.)

 I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell‘s new book, Outliers, The Story of Success.  One of his chapters is entitled “The 10,000 Hour Rule”.  After studying numerous successful people, from Bill Gates to The Beatles, he concludes that is takes 10,000 hours of immersion into a skill area to achieve mastery or genius.  The Beatles appeared to have come on the music scene out of nowhere, but they played and honed their performance skills sometimes 8 hours a night, 7 days a week in Hamburg, Germany.  All told they were live onstage somewhere in Hamburg for 270 nights in a year and a half!  (On a personal note, my old band only played live 9995 hours…which is why you’ve never heard of us.)

 So, how many hours have you invested in your sales career?  Have you gotten frustrated because you haven’t yet mastered selling or closing or prospecting?  The old adage “practice makes perfect” applies to this skill area also.  At the beginning of a Southwestern summer, most rookies do “suck at selling,” but they get better with practice.  After 2 weeks, their 360^th demonstration is far better then their first.

 As one observer of the Beatles put it: “They were no good onstage when they went there and they were very good when they came back.”  Sounds like a Southwestern summer to me.  So, log those hours; there is value to putting in the practice.

CNN: When you were talking to the students, you spoke a lot about being fearless.

Costner: Their choices are going to be questioned not only by their colleagues, but by their parents. You only get one shot at this life. They can go to college and learn a lot of things, but they should also be encouraged to try things, even if they don’t succeed. I am trying — even if I don’t succeed. You know, failure is completely underrated in America. (smiles)

“Failure is completely underrated in America.” What you are doing on the campuses is giving young people the opportunity to experience the possibility of failure. Courage and self-confidence in the face of that possibility will be an essential trait throughout their lives. And we all know if they will do the things we can teach them and show them how to do, they will not fail. They will have confronted the possibility, and then through their own efforts (and with the help of everyone in our company who works so hard to assist them) triumph over it.