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?