Tag: success

What Door-to-Door Salespeople Would Say to Themselves if They Could Do It All Again

Working in door-to-door sales is always a rollercoaster of an experience. Almost everyone sucks to begin with, most people give up or get fired. Some people stick it out and get better and become very skilled at what they do.

So I recently asked a bunch of my friends who I’ve worked with doing door-to-door sales: If your current self could go back and talk to yourself before you started door-to-door sales, what would you tell him/her?

Here are the answers:

“Have some faith in yourself and others. Learn to be present in the moment and enjoy the process of the lows and highs. Shut your inside battles, the fear, the scarcity mindset. The best days of life as a D2D rep is when you are free-flowing, loving yourself, trusting others and yourself.”

“Believe in yourself because you can do more than you know and you deserve self-respect. Also attachment is an unnecessary stress. Money isn’t everything. Friends come and go. Sales go up and down. Focus on you and the rest will follow.”

“I would tell her focus on building yourself up, drink less, party less. Read all the books! Invest in yourself, and believe in yourself because you can be the best! Go young me!”

“Have more confidence with trying something you’ve never done before, even though the job sounds crazy as hell.”

“Be excited to be wrong, you were not born knowing how to do this profession.”

“Trust your instincts no matter what. Health is wealth. Continue growing even while you wander.”

“Trust your intuition.”

“Pay more attention to what you’re thinking and feeling than what you’re doing and saying.”

“Don’t be a follower, find your own way, find who you are and work on yourself for you and not for others.”

“This will be a journey of growth that will pay off in the long run. Effort and struggle must take place before you can become your best self.”

“Turn this into a career instead of a summer gig.”

“Think much bigger much faster and commit to mastery and being the hardest worker in the industry.”

“Work hard even when you don’t feel like it, don’t give up and settle for mediocrity.”

“Work harder.”

“Build a better system of habits – it’s important for success.”

“Try new things, find what you’re good at, focus on what you’re good at and repeat when things aren’t going as planned.”

“Study the sales system with more effort and read more door-to-door related books.”

“Enjoy the process, enjoy the people you’re working with, enjoy the people you get to meet. When you choose to enjoy the whole journey then sales will come, not the other way around.”

“Become more self-aware. Enjoy the moment.”

“No-one after you leave is going to remember you so give it everything.”

“Keep on top of every account and make sure you get paid correctly.”

“Don’t lend money.”

“Don’t do it.”

Although there was a surprising variation in the type of responses, there were some common themes of self-belief, trust in yourself, doing it as a career, working hard, and enjoying it as much as possible.

If you’ve done door-to-door sales, what would you tell yourself? Comment below!

When Being Good Enough Is Better Than Being the Best

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he described the story of Lewis Terman – an American psychologist who tracked children with high IQ scores. He found that although many of them went on to great successes in their careers, there were some who underachieved relative to their perceived potential.

Gladwell argues that after a certain threshold of IQ, it makes very little difference in how applicable their genius really is. For instance, the US winners of the Nobel Prize tend to come from a variety of different universities, not just the Ivy League schools reserved for the upper echelons of genius students. Albert Einstein had a high IQ of 150, but there are people out there with IQs of around 200 that dropped out of university and now work in menial jobs.

Of course, as Daniel Goleman would attest to in his book Emotional Intelligence, emotional intelligence is just as important as IQ in determining career success. An extremely ‘smart’ individual would find it difficult to navigate the world if he had little social awareness or issues with emotions like anger or extreme sadness.

This leads to the question whether companies should follow “affirmative action” guidelines to hire a more diverse set of individuals for their firms, at the expense of hiring the “best-qualified” candidates. While it would be foolish to hire a lawyer with an IQ of 70 because they fit a racial quota, most people who apply to be a lawyer would have an IQ above around 120 anyway. After this threshold, the more important factors are those such as communication skills, strength of character and creative ideas. A member of another social class, religion, race, sexuality and gender are more likely to add to the pool of collective knowledge and ideas too. The concept of diverse thinking is further demonstrated in Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed.

What Does It Mean to Be Emotionally Intelligent?

Emotional intelligence is a phrase we see loosely throw about in conversations, but what does it actually mean to be emotionally intelligent?

Yale psychologist, Peter Salovey, split emotional intelligence into five domains:

Knowing One’s Emotions

The more we understand our own emotions as they arise, the more self-aware we become and better able we are to describe how we are feeling. We are also better equipped to deal with whatever emotions crop up from moment to moment. An inability to recognize emotions in ourselves leaves us at their mercy. Being in tune with our emotion leads to more certainty in decision-making and we trust ourselves more.

Managing emotions

This builds on the self-awareness of emotion. When we recognize that we are irritable, sad, angry, or anxious, can we soothe ourselves or find a way to act towards a goal despite of these negative emotions? An inability to do this can lead to impulsive decisions or a constant battling of distress.

Motivating oneself

Success towards a goal is largely attributed to delayed gratification and impulsive control. The more we can manage our emotions and still do what we set out to do, the more chance we have of succeeding. Emotions can hijack the brain and without the willpower we can go astray. Being able to enter a ‘flow’ state is another skill emotionally intelligent people are adept at, so that time passes by without distraction.

Recognizing emotions in others

This is probably what most people think of when they hear the term ’emotional intelligence’. How empathic are we? Can we recognize when someone is starting to get irritated, or feeling sad or happy? The more that we understand how someone is feeling, the more we will understand what they need and want. This is crucial for career paths in sales, management, teaching, and caring professions.

Handling relationships

This all culminates in how we are able to handle our relationships effectively. Our quality of life is often attributed to the quality of our relationships, so the better that we can manage the emotions of ourselves and others in our important relationships, the more fulfilled we will be. Having a high emotional intelligence will enable us to become better intimate partners, better to work with, and better to spend time with.

Each individual varies in how well they rank in the five domains of emotional intelligence. Some people may be better at soothing someone else when they are upset, but when they are upset themselves they may find it difficult. Others may be self-aware but oblivious to the subtle cues that others give to them in a social setting.

Even so, what we should all recognize is that our emotional intelligence can be learned, even if some people seem more naturally adept than others. Our brains are remarkably plastic – they can be shaped and biologically influenced based on our input.

Personally, I found that I became much more attuned to other people’s emotions after working in sales because I was engaging in much more face-to-face communication, and it was important for me to get better at it.

Daniel Goleman puts forth in his book Emotional Intelligence that EQ is much more predictive in success than IQ. As a social species, it’s hard to disagree.

Success Leaves Clues, but We Shouldn’t Disregard Luck

A quote popularized by Tony Robbins – “Success leaves clues” – can get us very excited about lofty goals. If we were only to follow the playbook of mega-successful entrepreneurs, sportspeople, politicians and artists, we could (and should) achieve the same results. But what most people are poor at understanding is the role of luck in success.

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, highlights books like Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras that describe common characteristics of successful companies that are built for growth and long-lasting success. Kahneman argues that the companies that are chosen for their success are statistical anomalies, rather than the consequence of skill. Many companies run exactly the same way would fail due to the role of luck and chance. Therefore, the conclusions made in these types of books could well be useless.

Although it is difficult to get your head around, Kahneman’s point makes sense. A year after their inception, Google were willing to sell their company for $1m, but the deal didn’t go through because the buyer said the price was too high. There are likely a multitude of other ‘lucky’ events in the company’s history that will have helped Google to get where they are today.

But just because a lot of success is down to luck, doesn’t mean that we should no longer try. The real question is: How can we put ourselves in more positions to get lucky? We are much more likely to get signed by a professional football club if we play in front of scouts and spectators than if we played in our back-garden where nobody saw us.

Relentless: The Mindset You Need to Consistently Win

I recently read Tim Grover’s Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable. Grover was the physical coach of the biggest basketball stars in the world such as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. The book explains the mentality these unstoppable athletes had, and what separated them from all the other competitors. It’s a fascinating read, and is much more hard-hitting than a typical self-improvement book, similar to David Goggin’s no-bullshit style in Can’t Hurt Me.

Grover outlines three character archetypes – coolers, closers and cleaners. He describes in detail the different responses of these archetypes in different situations throughout the book, allowing the reader to identify with at least one of the archetypes, and maybe to strive towards the rare, ultimate title of ‘Cleaner’.

Coolers let others decide whether they’re successful; they do the job and wait to see if you approve. Closers feel successful when they get the job done. Cleaners never feel as if they’ve achieved success because there is always more to do.

Here’s the 13 characteristics of a cleaner:

You keep pushing yourself harder when everyone else has had enough.

You get into the Zone, shut out everything else, and control the uncontrollable.

You know exactly who you are.

You have a dark side that refuses to be taught to be good.

You’re not intimidated by pressure, you thrive on it.

When everyone is hitting the “In Case of Emergency” button, they’re all looking for you.

You don’t compete with anyone, you find your opponent’s weakness and you attack.

You make decisions, not suggestions; you know the answer while everyone else is still asking questions.

You don’t have to love the work, but you’re addicted to the results.

You’d rather be feared than liked.

You trust very few people, and those you trust better not let you down.

You don’t recognize failure; you know there’s more than one way to get what you want.

You don’t celebrate your achievements because you always want more.

As I read the book, names of cleaners would pop into my head, mainly from the world of professional football – Roy Keane, Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Bruno Fernandes, Steven Gerrard. The media typically describes these types of people as ‘natural-born leaders’ or ‘serial winners’. Roy Keane literally got fired from Manchester United because he was so ruthless when analyzing his teammates after a drop in standards; Sir Alex Ferguson would play mind games with his rival managers and referees to get the edge needed to win; Mourinho infamously poked a rival manager in the eye during a big game; Bruno Fernandes can be seen instructing his teammates what to do all game; Steven Gerrard dragged his less-than-fantastic Liverpool side to win multiple trophies in his career.

While reading Relentless, I realized that cleaners are few and far between – it’s tough to have a mindset like that. In the end it could be summarized by saying a cleaner is someone that is 100% secure in themselves, is never satisfied, and isn’t afraid to upset their teammates or anyone else in order to get what they want.

Do you think you can be a cleaner? If so, would you? If you could, would you hire a cleaner in your team?

Let me know in the comments below!

The Four Agreements: Always Do Your Best

I remember in 2014, when I first became successful.

I was reading The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters, the same book Ronnie O’Sullivan studied before he won back-to-back World Snooker Championships in 2012 and 2013. Steve Peters defined success as “doing the best you can do at that specific time”. My paradigm of success was decimated, and a new empowering worldview replaced it.

If success is doing the best we can do given the circumstances, success is controllable and achievable. Instead of success being something in the far future, success can be achieved from moment to moment in the small decisions and actions we take. Success isn’t reserved for the elite, it can be practiced by the masses.

Doing the best we can do in each moment leads to progress. It forces us to leave our comfort zone, and over time our best increases in capacity. We begin to snooze your alarm a little less often, until eventually we wake up on cue every day a minute before our alarm is due to sound. We gradually lift more and more weight in the gym until one day we look in the mirror and notice we are a Herculean specimen. We stop lying so much. Our short fuses get longer. We become nicer to be around.

Don Miguel Ruiz, the author of The Four Agreements, explains that doing our best makes us action-takers, and it makes us happy. Most importantly, if we can do our best to keep the other three agreements (be impeccable with our word, not to take things personally, not to make assumptions), we will live a beautiful life.