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2020 has been an outlier year for everyone, with the pandemic and all the social unrest. It’s been an extremely tough time for everyone, especially salespeople. In today’s post I want to remind salespeople to never give up, by sharing some ideas to ensure that never happens. Anybody can quit, and frankly most people do. If this were not so, the winners circle would be a lot bigger, and far more crowded. Therefore by simply hanging on and refusing to give up, you dramatically increase your chances of winning.

To put this into perspective consider this 100+ year old Jacob Riis quote from 1901: “When nothing seems to help look at the stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that gone before.”

So nothing is produced if the stonecutter throws in the towel after pounding the boulder 75 or 90 times, so with that in mind here are two good reasons to never quit:

First, losing like winning is a habit, meaning all quitters are good losers. So if someone habitually loses, it absolutely will become a way of life for them.

Second, if you quit, the opportunity to achieve your dreams will be lost. Chances are, if you quit once, you’ll never bounce back.

A great example of this principle is a guy I know named Gary, who came to work for a services company in Orlando after answering an ad for salespeople. The manager told Gary that he had been instructed to hire three folks by week’s end, and although Gary had no prior sales experience, the manager told him he was breathing pretty well and hired him. Gary went home and told his wife he took a sales job, primarily because it came with a 3-month salary guarantee, but that he didn’t feel like he would make it long term there.

Gary became a sponge and soaked up everything he was taught, but didn’t sell much during that three month probation period. He said he wanted to quit nearly every day and somehow endured a lot of rejection. He was very close to leaving the job more than once, but mostly because his wife was very encouraging and a great motivator, he stuck it out. Eventually he found his niche by working closely with service employees to secure sales leads and took off like a rocket. By the end of his first full year he qualified for his company’s annual President’s Club incentive trip and hasn’t missed qualifying for this annual trip since. I heard last month that Gary just celebrated his 25th work anniversary with this company. Gary didn’t stand still while his dreams collapsed around him and he refused to give up.

————Help For Your Sales Meetings————

The Leader Guide Doug developed to accompany his book, Sell is NOT a Four Letter Word eliminates time spent by managers on meeting preparation. Take a quick tour of his website and see if you think it might work for you.

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When YOU experience tough times here are three helpful strategies:

The magic of 30 days – When you feel like quitting make one last surge with a 30-day goal. Thirty days is short enough for you to see the end in sight, and it’s long enough to allow you to build some momentum. Little victories can mean the difference between giving up and seeing enough hope to hang in there until things get better.

Employ a reward and punish system – Set your weekly goal and if you achieve it by Friday night, reward yourself and take the weekend off and relax. If you come up short on your goal, punish yourself by working Saturday, to ensure you get back on track for the upcoming week.

Give your efforts time to compound – Often people quit when they are so close to breaking through. The problem can be impatience, which doesn’t mean failure, but becoming panicky for not succeeding fast enough. This may be an extreme example but I just achieved a personal financial goal earlier this year that I established in 1984. Efforts + time + compounding are winning combinations. Winning is never easy but its always worth the price you have to pay.

I’ll conclude today’s post with three DON’Ts:

Don’t compare yourself to others – Be proud of where you are and who you are and that you don’t have to apologize to anybody for anything.

Don’t get discouraged – There’s a story told that the devil’s favorite tool is discouragement, because with it he can pry open a person’s consciousness and use all his other tools to do their work. Because of this, never, ever give in to discouragement.

Don’t almost do enough – Most people almost work hard enough to win. Most people almost hang in there long enough to win. Most people almost have enough determination to win.

When you feel like giving up make a promise to yourself to hang in there one more week, one more month, and when that time is up…do it again. Somebody will cross the finish line, and it might as well be you.

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