Do you find you don’t do the things you know would make you successful?
You know you should be doing them. You want to see the results of having done them. But you don’t want to face actually doing them.
If so then you are like me and this idea is for you.
Maybe what you could do is build yourself a success trap to get you where you want to go. Let me explain.
A friend of mine loaned me his copy of You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar by David Sandler and I’m working through it now. In it Sandler talks about how much he hated cold calling. It made him so stressed that he’d sweat through his shirt. But in his particular line of sales, effective cold calling was vital to his success.
So he built himself a success trap.
He’d get a sales manager on the phone and offer a free, valuable service. Here’s what he’d say on the phone.
If you will allow me to visit your next sales meeting, I will give your people some tips about how to overcome call reluctance on the telephone. I’m sure they will find it worthwhile. If you’re impressed with my information, then all I ask is that you give me an appointment to talk to you about what I might do for your people as their sales trainer.
When he’d got an agreement to that deal, he’d show up to the meeting with the sales force. He’d talk for a few minutes about how much sales people hate cold calling and see that they agreed with him on that.
Then he’d tell them to open the yellow pages of the phone book to any category. And he’d dial the phone. He’d use that 30 minute teaching time to demonstrate some techniques, all the while making calls to set appointments for his own business.
He found he got a much better return on his calling time, he set a much higher ratio of appointments, when he was making calls in front of an audience than he did when he was making calls in his office. His adrenalin was flowing. He said things he might not say when he was alone so that he could use them as teaching techniques.
He had the built in accountability of the appointment with the sales force that got him to the phone calls. He wanted to appear confident in front of the audience so he didn’t let himself choke. He had the instant feed back of the discussion with the group when he got off each call so his techniques improved rapidly.
He turned something he hated to do, but knew was necessary to his success, into something that was challenging and fun.
He built a trap for himself that forced him to take actions that would lead to success. Brilliant!
So the question is how can you build yourself a success trap to force you into doing those things you know would make you more successful?
good post and will help, cold calling is difficult but it is hard to avoid, my of my favorite quotes is from Tom Hopkins,’how to master the art of selling”"You are not judged by the number of times you fail but rather the number of times you suceed and the number of times you suceed is in direct proportion to the number of times you can fail and keep trying, so keep trying
We gotta get back up! You’re right Jim. That’s the key.
Hey Chris,
Nothing to do with sales, but a way to force myself to plan ahead.
I just recently started listing future posts on my blog. If I do it in public, I am forced to comply.
I always try to keep a promise, and to me that is making a promise to my readers.
It worked this week so far, hopefully, I can keep it going to make myself more a more successful blogger.
Joe
Hey, Joe! That’s exactly the sort of thing I was getting at. The post example was from a sales situation, but there are tons of other ways we can build success traps for ourselves in other situations.
One of the best ways is to build in accountability around us. What you are doing is creating accountability for your goals by making your intentions for future posts public.
That accountability really gives you a strong incentive to actually write the posts and provides you with a success trap to “force” you to do something that will make you more successful.
Great example! Thanks for sharing it with us.
Thanks, Joe and Chris,
After the last two comments, I reverted to the age-old crippler, “but what if I fail?”, and am reminded of Eleanor Roosevelt. Franklin asked the same question and she replied, “then don’t”. He: “don’t try?”. She: “don’t fail”.
Carolyn
Or you might even give yourself permission to fail as long as it comes with the caveat of getting back up regardless. That way no matter what happens you win. I know personally I tend to learn the lessons better from my failures than from my successes.
But on the whole I prefer not failing, given the choice!