Activity, skills, beliefs

I had breakfast with a friend of mine this morning who is a professional business trainer. He trains world-class professional consultative salesmen (these are people who multiple million dollar deals to corporations) how to be more effective.

During the conversation, he told me that any good salesman needs these three attributes:

1. Activity (Making the calls, setting up meetings, etc.)

2. Skills

3. And Beliefs

The first two are obvious. Whatever business you are in, if you don't do the work, you won't reap the benefits -- so activity is a given. Likewise, you must have the skills to succeed -- and the good news is that you and I can improve our skills.

But he surprised me with the third attribute: Beliefs.

I queried him, and it comes down to this: You and I have been conditioned to have certain values or beliefs. Sometimes they help us, and sometimes they hurt us.

The salesman who doesn't believe in talking to strangers:

Suppose your mom told you for twenty years not to talk to strangers. Then, I sent you to a two-day course and told you that to be good at sales, you'd have to go out and start meeting strangers. Who would win out?

In reality, you would logically agree that to be a good salesman you must meet people. So you would force yourself to mingle. But you know what? It never would feel right. You'd always have this anxiety about it. You probably would never really excel at it. And it's no wonder: You'd be doing something that you had been taught to believe was wrong.

The political candidate who doesn't believe in asking for money.

Let's take a political candidate who started out poor (I mean he ate government cheese and had to beg, borrow, and steal to put food on the table) and then, thru hard work, became successful. Upon becoming successful, he swore: "I'll never ask anybody for money again."

...And then ten years later, he decides to run for political office.

At first, he tells his staff he will not ask people for money. But eventually, his campaign manager says he must ask for money in order to run a good campaign. The manager explains that candidates aren't asking for money to line their pockets, but rather to help the cause. In fact, the manager says that by asking for money, the candidate is giving folks a chance to invest in your campaign and make a difference.

Now the candidate gets it. He agrees logically that a successful political candidate must ask for money in order to win. And he even develops a good attitude about it.

So why doesn't he ever get around to making the calls???

Because he doesn't believe it's right to ask for money.

In order to be successful, you must believe in what you are doing. Activity, skills, beliefs. It turns out, it's not just for salesmen any more.