Sales training ideas – What do you let stop you?

This morning I woke up, looked in the mirror, and gasped. I looked like I had gotten the bad end of a fight. You see, a while back I got laser eye surgery and I ran into a few issues with my tear ducts. The doctor told me what to do, and as soon as my eyes were better, I stopped doing what I was supposed to. Thus, when I woke up, my eyes were swollen quite a bit. The additional problem? I was speaking to a group of real estate agents that I had never met in 2 hours.

What would you do? For a split second, I thought about cancelling. Sure they’d understand, right? I then started getting ready and just figured I’d tell them about the situation when I got there. Well, by the time I got there to speak, my eyes weren’t too bad, but I still explained what happened.

So what stops you in your everyday life? What do you do when you get a flat tire, a fire (either literal or figurative) interrupts your day, or something else happens? Do you let it stop you or do you look for solutions?

I remember a situation in which a Service Manager for the last company I worked at, missed a customer meeting because he spilled coffee on his shirt. Not only that, but when he called the customer, he actually gave that reason for not being able to attend. I don’t know about you, but if I had been that customer, I would seriously considered whether or not I wanted to continue to do business with us.

On the flip side, I went out on customer calls in the afternoon on a day in which I had basil cell skin cancer removed from my nose in the morning. And no, this wasn’t something they simply had to burn off, they had cut into me and I ended up with 9 stitches, 5 on the outside of my nose and 4 on the inside. But there I was, ugly bandages and all. Another friend of mine got into a car accident on the way to an appointment. His clothes got torn a bit, he was a bit bloody, nothing too serious, and his car had to be towed, but he called to say he was running a little late and would be there shortly. He took a cab.

The bottom line: Again, what stops you day-to-day? To get to the top in sales you have to be creative and you have to go above and beyond, you have to go over, under, around, and through obstacles.

John Chapin – co-author of Sales Encyclopedia    www.completeselling.com