“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.

If you’re out there selling books with the Southwestern Company this summer,  here are some great ideas from Haley Price (author of your inspirational flip book) on how to improve.  If you’re not on the bookfield, these are still applicable to a sales career.

1. Expect it to be a killer week. Don’t hope for a great week; EXPECT one.  Behave as though there is not a doubt in your mind that you will hit your goals this week – and you may surprise yourself in finding that you do!

2. Ask for referrals. Whether Mrs. Jones buys your books or not – ask her if she knows anyone that might be interested in sitting down with you to have a look. 

3. Ask trial closing questions.  Don’t be afraid to hear the word, “No”.  Throughout your conversation, ask questions like, “So far, does this look like something that would be helpful for your family?”   Questions such as these give you the opportunity to asses Mrs. Jones’ level of interest, and also allows for you to cover various objections in advance.

4. Clean out your car every night. 

5. Don’t say a single negative thing from sun-up to sun-down on Monday.

6. Commit to giving 10% (or more!) of this week’s profit to your favorite charity or cause.

7. Give to Get. Gain trust with your customers by offering guidance , advice or insight on school, getting into college, etc.  This will make you far more credible with your customers, and you will likely sell more books.  Worst case scenario: you have helped a family through offering your perspective!

8. Add One Sit-Down Every Day.  On Tuesday, sit down with one more family than you did on Monday.  On Wednesday, sit down with one more family than you did on Tuesday – and so forth.  If you do this through Saturday, you will likely see an increase in customers and units as well.

9. Time Yourself – set a stopwatch and refuse to allow yourself to sit in a house for longer than 20 minutes.  You CAN get a yes or a no in 20 minutes. 

10. BREAK YOUR BELIEF BARRIERS- convince yourself that you CAN hit your goal this week.  Don’t look at it as too lofty or outrageous or unattainable.  It’s POSSIBLE.  YOU CAN – and WILL – HIT YOUR GOALS THIS WEEK. 

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!

“When we succeed, we party; when we fail, we ponder.”

This underscores the value of failing.  Falling short of our expectations causes us to evaluate what we did incorrectly and to make adjustments. 

I came across an interesting piece from Fast Company.  In it, Alex Bogusky, co-chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky suggests that there is little or no value in failing.  He, in fact, never allows his team to study their failures–he only focuses on successes.  For companies which spend lots of time analyzing failures, Bogusky says “you create a fearful culture where you spend a lot of time looking at where you screwed up,” he says.  Speaking at an innovation forum, Bogusky turned Robbins’ thesis upside down.  Check out his comments here. 

So which is it?  Do we learn more from our successes or our failures? 

I say: from both!  Context is everything.  Certainly my daughter learned quickly when she (successfully) reached up and put her hand on our very hot stove!  She pondered her failure as we drove to the clinic, and has never made the same mistake again.  On the other hand, there is value in reviewing what caused success.  When we have a good year at Southwestern, or as a marketing team, we always evaluate afterwards and ponder what we did well and what we could improve on.

Covey suggests taking time each week to reflect.  He recommends thinking about what worked and what didn’t and what you could do to improve.  As long as there is reflection and evaluation, both success and failure can be learning opportunities.

In selling, the emotional weight we attach to our sales calls–how we label our experiences–makes all the difference.  There is no failure, only feedback.  If we miss a sale and tell ourselves, “I failed.” or “I’m not good at selling”, it adds a negative emotional dimension to our memory (and our future behavior).  If we miss a sale and tell ourselves, “I learned from this encounter–I’m learning tons!”, this creates the sense that the sales call has been a success, a learning experience, rather than an outright failure. 

What are your thoughts on this topic?  I welcome your comments.

–Tryon Edwards

“I’m getting ready to commence to begin to start to recruit.”  This isn’t an exact quote, but I’ve heard several excuses from Southwestern Company student managers over the years regarding recruiting and getting their teams started.  Confusion and procrastination are often just cop-outs (“cop-out”, for my international friends, means “excuse”). 

Usually we know very well what needs to be done and we even know how to do it.   As we’ve often said, “Recruiting/selling is simple—but it’s not easy!”  Oftentimes, if we’re honest, we have to admit the “what am I supposed to do?” isn’t the real question at all. 

Any young athlete knows what to do: you don’t miss practices, you sacrifice video games after school, and you drill new techniques over and over until they feel natural and automatic.  Good students, too, understand that they need to hit the books no matter how they feel.  They practice good study habits until they have good study habits. 

Achieving your sales goals, reaching your recruitment goals, having an improved new year consists of conscientiously repeating positive actions—nothing real mysterious or confusing about it.  We must be willing to exercise the discipline if we want to reap the rewards. 

Today, I will welcome the patterns that lead to success, and this will lead to a very Happy New Year.   As always I welcome your comments!

The metaphor for CPR comes from my “Bringing Your Presentation A.L.I.V.E.”  disc on my 6 disc audio program “The Audience is NOT in their Underwear”.

The C stands for “Cut” open the wound. You do that by simply bringing up a pain point or a point of dissatisfaction for your prospect or audience. Simply bringing up a topic like this in your presentation will generate some emotion in your audience. If in sales you could say something like “has it ever happened to you where [your last product] failed on you?” Or as a speaker you could say “have you ever had [specific negative experience] happen to you?” Most presenters make it this far.

However, where the real magic happens is with P which stands for “Pour” salt on the wound. Pouring salt on the wound means that you allow your audience to focus on the pain and to an extent re-live whatever that negative experience was. This of course is critical as a presenter because it generates a wave of emotion and we know people don’t buy on logic; they buy on emotion – regardless of whether you are selling a product or an idea. The way you “pour” salt on the wound is by asking a feelings question like “how did that make you feel when [specific negative experience]?” Or ask the audience to tell you more or at least think in detail about that experience. Only the best of the best presenters and salespeople ever do this.

The R is the simplest part which stands for “Remedy” the pain. Most of us are fairly good at naturally explaining whatever our product or idea is and that is what you do hear. The reason why we don’t have better results from our communication is because we haven’t prepared our audience for this part yet. The difference is that now you have emotionally prepped them to receive your message which is critical in any communication process.

Rory Vaden, former Southwestern Company superstar,  has accomplished much since graduation: he was the 2007 World Champion of Speaking 1st Runner Up, he has authored two books, and co-founded Success Starts Now!, a top-tier sales training organization.

If you look at your most successful professional athletes, sales professionals, CEOs, students, politicians or even parents, there are a couple things  they share in common: 

   1. They know what they want and understand the price that must be paid to accomplish it.  Vince Lombardi was quoted as saying, “Once you agree upon the price you must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, and the temporary failures.”
   2. They simply fail more times than anyone else. And they are okay with it.

Anyone who has achieved great successes in life has also experienced countless failures and setbacks on the way to their eventual success.  Here are some famous examples:

    * Thomas Edison’s experiments failed approximately 10,000 times before he invented the working light bulb.
    * Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company went bankrupt 5 times before he finally succeeded in the auto industry.
    * John Grisham is one of 21st centuries most accomplished authors.  16 agents and 12 publishing houses rejected his first novel, A Time to Kill, before being picked up.�
    * Brett Favre is the career leader in interceptions thrown. He is also the leader in touchdowns, passing yards, completions and wins as a quarterback.

Besides obvious talents in certain areas none of these people are any different then we are. I will repeat that again. None of them are any different then we are! The sooner you buy into and embrace this fact, the quicker you will begin seeing your own level of successes.

Three things you can do now to move from a setback to success:

   1. Know what you want.  Clearly decide what you would like to be, do and have.  I would highly recommend the book, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, by Jack Canfield.  

   2. Write 2-3 personal setbacks to success stories.  This reminds you that you can accomplish many things when you put your mind to it. You have proof from past experiences.  

   3. Be prepared to fail.  There are two certainties of Failure: 1) It is guaranteed 2) It is essential to growth.  Learn to look at failure as a positive and not a negative.  The faster you can fail and learn from your mistakes, the faster you will succeed.

If you will do those three things you will be well on your way to experiencing the kind of success that you so richly deserve. I will close by sharing a quote I heard from one of my mentors, Zig Ziglar:

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly, at first.”

Go Forth and Fail and love the journey.  Be Free!

–David Shoup