When I wrote, “I decided today to go with the Southwestern Company to wherever the heck it is we’re going to sell books this summer” in my journal on March 27, 1996, I had no idea I’d be with the same company a decade and a half later. At the time, I just wanted to [...]
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Have you ever walked into a large party, and moved toward the first familiar face you saw? Or maybe you’ve been to a big conference that sponsored a social event. If you work with The Southwestern Company, you get good at meeting people and making good first impressions in their homes. But what about approaching [...]
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 [...]
Flip a coin. Flip it again. And flip it 15 times after that. What are the chances that it landed on heads all 17 times? Slim to none, I’d guess. 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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
“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 [...]
“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 [...]
It is incredibly common to hear people at self improvement seminars trying to discover their “strengths” and “weaknesses”. Everyone–including Southwestern Company trainers–has their own philosophy on how to deal with these. Some life coaches will tell you, “The key is turning your weaknesses into strengths!” Others insist, “The only way to reach your potential is [...]
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 [...]
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