#1197 Desire Wins!
A life without worries or hardship was his downfall. He was born on third but thought he hit a triple, and believing that, he could never understand why he remained stranded at that base for years.
When I regularly hired salespeople, I would only hire PhDs, “Poor, Hungry and Driven.” (A term I borrowed from Ace Greenberg.) We used to joke that our interview questions should be about abusive or absentee parents, or asking if the applicant was familiar with WIC, food stamps, or“Lo Straccivendolo” (literally the Rag Man), the used clothing guy.
Our best salespeople all came from challenging childhoods.
DESIRE WINS
We didn’t have graduate degrees; in fact, many of us were college dropouts, but we were hungry and, in the end, desire is what separated the killers from the names and faces I don’t remember.
That isn’t to say that a Wharton grad whose parent was a Fortune 100 CEO can’t be hungry and successful. We just didn’t rub elbows with those folks. What we knew was that within our pool of applicants, difficult adolescence produced great salespeople.
Selling and entrepreneurship are similar in that both require resilience beyond handling an occasional rejection. They literally seek constant rejection.
The non-stop desire to be successful separates great salespeople and entrepreneurs from the also-rans.
If you told the average person that there is a fortune under a particular rock, they’d likely overturn it and look for the fortune. Not finding it, though, many would only check a few neighboring rocks before they gave up.
Tell a great salesperson that there is a fortune under a rock somewhere along the coast of Ireland, and they’ll walk the shores, flipping boulders for months until they unearth it.
I don’t have the personal experience to tell you emphatically what makes a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, a world-renowned artist, or an Olympic champion, but I’d bet it is the same desire.
Desire transcends pain. Failure doesn’t quell desire; it fuels it.
DESIRE WINS.
Success is about having a big enough why. Great salespeople have unreasonable expectations of success. Success to them means financial freedom and social currency. They want the money and things, but only because the money and things mean that they have risen above their station. The best see themselves as a Horatio Alger story regardless of where they begin. Tough times often bring out the best in people. Heroes can’t “Hero” without some adversity. If Metropolis never had crime, Clark Kent would have been stuck at his desk writing fluff pieces for The Daily Planet.
One of the complex parts of coming from a tough background is believing you deserve a place at the table.
People talk about impostor syndrome all the time. I spent a 30+ year career as an imposter. I think imposter syndrome is a breeding ground for success. Having the “who I want to be” completely fleshed out and held in my mind’s eye means I’m not him yet, but I can try to act like him until I become him. During the process, I inevitably feel like an imposter, but DESIRE WINS, and I see slow and steady growth while I imitate my future self.
I want to believe popular psychology that tells me to be kinder to myself, but I find that holding myself accountable and challenging myself is the only thing that moves the needle. I believe it is healthy to recognize where I could have done better, identify that my failure is mine, admonish myself, and step up to do better next time.
I can buy into the idea that intense negative self-talk is very often debilitating. I am not suggesting or condoning constant self-flagellation.
The trick for me was to tame my inner drill sergeant and convert him into an avuncular coach. Growing my inner Bobby Knight into more of a Ted Lasso took years. He still holds me accountable, sets some lofty goals, and gently chides me when I get off course, but there’s no more chair-kicking or name-calling.
All this to say (without sounding too much like a fluffy office poster hanging in the HR director’s office), adversity builds character. I can ride a razor scooter over a paved path in the park, but if I want to get to where the razor scooter crowd can’t go, I need to overcome rougher trails. Not only that, but I need to see the value of getting off the paved path and intentionally pursuing rougher trails, knowing that they will lead to something more awe-inspiring than the swing set.
Own Your Sales Gene…