The average worker in the United States reads less than one book per year.
Though that statement is staggering, wait until you read this next part:
That same person makes 319 times less money than the top CEOs in our country, who claim, on average, to read 60 books per year.
Check out these other interesting statistics:
1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42% of college graduates never read another book after college.
80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a single book last year.
70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57% of new books are not read to completion.
70% of books published do not earn back their advance.
70% of books published do not make a profit.
To quote Jim Rohn:
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
The average life expectancy of a person in our country is approximately 78 years. As an illustration, picture your life on a measuring tape, where each year represents one inch. Many of us who followed the traditional form of education spent the first 21 years (or 21 inches) of our lives engaged in some type of formal education. This comprises about 25% of our lifetime, and we then live out the remaining 75% (or 57 inches) of our lives outside of the education system.
Many of the masses attend college, and yet 42% of graduates will never pick up a book for the remainder of their lifetime. As the great writer Henry David Thoreau said, “The masses lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” The point is this: if you want to succeed in life and in business, formal education is definitely not the end all. Self-education is the key!
The more you learn, the more you earn!
Or, another favorite: “The person with the biggest library also has the biggest house.”
Self-education can not only launch you to greater success in your life, but it can also lend a richness to your character that is captivating to those who meet you. Have you ever met someone who is truly interesting? Chances are, that fascinating person has never stopped learning and has invested in self-education.
Be sure to come back next week: I will share techniques you can use in order to continue to educate yourself. We will discuss how to make the last 75% of your life count! In the meantime, remember that education can and should still occur every single day. The future is looking bright!
I love this commercial! No matter how you are feeling when you start watching it, you can’t help but feel better after it is finished. We live in a time where the stakes are high and expectations are even higher, and our companies are counting on all of us to be successful.
Whether you are an employee, a manager, or a salesperson, we all at times succumb to stress or lack of motivation, and we struggle to achieve our full potential. Andrew Carnegie was quoted as saying,
“There is little success where there is little laughter.”
Carnegie was a self-made man who realized the incredible value of laughter, and there is little doubt that he was a success. With so much going on in our lives, taking time to laugh is necessary in order to appreciate life and work. Mark Twain recognized the indisputable benefit of laughter when he said:
“The human race has only one effective weapon, and that is laughter.”
Are you consumed by the daily challenges of business and life? Are you so stuck in your routine that you forget to laugh? I mean, really laugh? Think about the last time that you had a really good laugh. You know, one of those gut-wrenching laughs that begins deep down inside and eventually roars out, causing your sides to hurt and your eyes to water. How did you feel? Laughter can improve performance, as attitude and performance are directly related. Laughter has the power to very quickly change our attitudes and moods by releasing neuropeptides called endorphins from the brain cells.
If you improve your attitude, you will also improve your performance.
Do you ever laugh with your colleagues? John Cleese, a renowned British comedian said, “People who laugh together, work together.” Laughter connects people in an amazing way. Laughter has the ability to change our work environments drastically by making people happy, thus bringing a healthy mental attitude and optimism into our companies. Studies have shown that positive emotions are increased while negative emotions are decreased when people are laughing. In the end, laughter is contagious positive energy, and this energy will be felt by everyone in our companies and even by our customers as well!
The secret of laughter can have a tangible impact both on our customers and on our sales. Successful selling is actually about making friends. The best salespeople seem to have a special knack for building rapport. Have you ever gone out to buy something and then decided not to make the purchase because you didn’t like the salesperson? Humor and laughter create instant rapport and camaraderie amongst people. Successful salespeople make the entire sales process fun. It is important to not confuse a salesperson with a comedian. A comedian succeeds just by being funny, but a salesperson succeeds only when the humor helps to sell the product or to achieve a business-related outcome.
For example, a few months ago I was working in the field with a Territory Manager, and we were trying to get an audience with an influential colorectal surgeon. We were in the hospital and went to the surgeon’s clinic where we thought she might be located. Unfortunately, we just missed her, for she had already left the hospital. The rep was extremely persistent, asking the receptionist in a variety of ways how we could speak with the surgeon. The rep finally asked if the receptionist would page her. The receptionist’s response was this: “Do I need to be mean to you to make you go away!?”
After a moment of awkwardness, the rep responded brilliantly, “Hey, I’m a redhead—people have been mean to me my whole life!” The receptionist burst out laughing, gave the rep an endearing smile, picked up the phone, and paged the surgeon. The surgeon called, and just like that, we got our meeting later that day! Self-effacing humor can be effective. It reflects strength and confidence. It shows that you are secure enough to laugh at yourself. It can defuse tension and creates a quick rapport.
Will humor work with every sales opportunity? We all know that there is no “silver bullet” in sales success. Nothing works all the time. However, ask yourself this question: Would having a good laugh with someone who was trying to sell you something work with you? Most people love a good laugh and are receptive to humor. Every situation is unique. Each interaction with a customer requires you to assess the situation. You must survey each individual situation and then use good judgment. Common sense is a prerequisite for using humor successfully, and humor will never be a substitute for effective sales techniques. You also need to know your product well and should be able to solve problems, and you must persist in your followup interactions.
In the end, humor can give you the sales advantage because we are not only in the “medical device sales” business, but we are also in the “people” business. Discover for yourself that those who love to laugh have more fun, and then you can laugh all the way to the bank!
Do you have the tenacity to keep moving closer to your dream of being the #1 sales rep in your company?
Over the last three weeks, we have reviewed how we need to keep dream crushers at bay, write our goals down on paper, and count the cost for becoming the #1 sales rep in the company. If you missed those posts, feel free to review them now and complete the activities in them—activities that will help launch you to your success!
Now that you have set your sights on the goal, and as you begin to transform your dream into reality, how do you plan to deal with challenges, obstacles, and adversity that will come your way?
Our dreams won’t work unless we do.
When it comes to success, there are no escalators that will effortlessly take us to the top—we must take the stairs, which means hard work. We can’t do whatever is easiest, as the easy path will not get us any closer to our goals. The harder the journey is, the more magnificent the view will be when we get to the top! Success that is easy to obtain will cheapen the esteem we feel when we achieve our dreams. In his book entitled Life’s Little Instruction Book, H. Jackson Brown writes,
“Rule #1: Take one more step.”
“Rule #2: When you can’t take one more step, refer to Rule #1.”
We are either taking steps forward or taking steps backwards, but there is no standing still. Things will get hard, and—trust me—there will be days when you want to give up.
A true mark of the successful salesperson—whether at ConMed or elsewhere—is this: when the passion fades, the results seem minimal, and success looks impossible, he or she maintains the intensity and keeps going with tenacity. When you are chasing your dream of becoming the #1 salesperson in your company, your perseverance says much about who you are.
A few months ago, I wrote about Florence Chadwick and how she learned to focus on her end goal of swimming 26 miles between Catalina Island and the California coast. She fixed her mind on the end goal, which gave her the ability to persist to the achievement of her goal. There is no barrier that cannot be overcome; there is only the lack of enough persistence!
I have observed that the distinguishing characteristic of a #1 sales rep is this: the #1 rep will always run towards the dream, even when things aren’t going well. Top sales reps learn from their failure and view it as part of their success. When the #1 reps stumble, the setbacks only push them to try harder—they are tenacious about always pushing themselves one step closer to their dream.
I love Sam Parker’s book, 212: The Extra Degree. Parker presents a concept that has taken the business world and the pursuit of personal achievement by storm; he states, “At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water, comes steam. And with steam, you can power a train. Just one extra degree makes all the difference.”
Watch this and push yourself to achieve that one extra degree!
You have a dream, you have written it down, you know what you are willing pay to realize your goal, and now, in order to realize your dream of becoming the #1 sales rep in the company, you must pursue it with tenacious intensity!
Are you willing to pay the price to achieve your dream of becoming the #1 salesperson in your company?
Over the last few weeks, we have discussed the importance of limiting the influence of naysayers—those disheartening dream crushers. We have also seen the importance of writing your goals down on paper, as data proves the fact that capturing your goals on paper makes you more likely to achieve those goals.
The next part of this equation for success is found in asking ourselves this question: “What is it going to cost us to get to our dream?”
The motivation to become the top salesperson in your company is personal, and so are the sacrifices we are willing to make for our success. It’s one thing to strive for President’s Club, but to become the #1 rep in the company? That is going to require some sacrifice. I love hearing about the ways our sales reps have sacrificed to reach their personal goals. Don’t get me wrong—I am definitely not recommending that you sacrifice everything in order to vault to the top of the company. For example, if you can’t walk to the stage and accept a sales award with your integrity and ability to share your success with loved ones intact, then, in my opinion, the sacrifices were not worth the end result!
I would like to encourage you to get a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and make two lists—one on each side of the dividing line. On one side, write down all the things you are willing to do to reach your goal. On the other side, write down all the things that you are not willing to sacrifice. You have essentially captured what you are willing to do and what you are not willing to do—and these lists are absolutely crucial to your future success.
Now that you have completed your list, I want to focus on the things that you are willing to sacrifice for your goal—the price you are willing to pay. We all agree that dreams of becoming the #1 salesperson are fun, exhilarating, and exciting. Picture yourself walking to the stage and collecting your award while listening to a thunderous ovation. And, if you work for ConMed, don’t forget about getting your name inscribed on the huge plaque in our training room, along with a vacation for two to an exotic location! Fantastic dreams, don’t you think?
But here is the reality of life: the visualization of our dreams is free, but the path to achieve them isn’t.
When we realize that we need to accomplish something, the hardest part is transitioning from our dreams to our reality, because, in real life, no goal is achieved without paying some sort of price for it. Why is this the most challenging part? Simply put, as soon as we set our dreams into motion, we immediately begin to encounter obstacles and challenges.
Have you ever talked with a top salesperson who told you that his or her rise to the top was easy? I have yet to meet this person—all successful salespeople have made tremendous sacrifices to get where they are today.
I encourage you to take the piece of paper from the exercise above and make several copies of it—put a copy on your mirror in your bathroom, in your calendar, on the dashboard of your car, as a screen saver on your laptop, and on your arm as a tattoo (not really, but you get the point!). We all need constant reminders regarding our goals and what we can do and are willing to do in order to achieve them.
Stay tuned for next week’s final principle that will help establish you on your way to becoming the #1 salesperson in your company!
Last week, we discussed the first in a series of principles that are helpful for accelerating your journey to success. This week, I want to introduce another principle that has been of great benefit to me in my own life. I have found that I can greatly increase my ability to attain my goals by putting each and every goal down on paper.
I am a firm believer in this process and have seen it yield results time and time again. When you write things down, this action begins a chain of events that can change your life. Mark McCormack, in his book entitled What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School, tells about a Harvard study conducted between 1979 and 1989.
In 1979, graduates of the MBA program at Harvard were asked to set clear written goals for their future, along with their plans to accomplish these particular goals. Interestingly, only 3 percent of the graduates had written goals, 13 percent had goals (but they were not in writing), and 84 percent had no specific goals at all—other than finishing school and enjoying the summer.
Ten years later, in 1989, the researchers again interviewed the members of that same graduating class. They found that the 13 percent of students who had goals that were not in writing were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent of students that had no goals at all. Most surprisingly, however, the researchers found that the 3 percent of graduates who had clear written goals were earning, on average, 10 timesmore than the other 97 percent of their graduating class.
The only difference in these groups of students is found in the clarity of goals they set for themselves when they graduated. Those who clearly visualized their goals were able to consistently achieve them, and this success was reflected tangibly in their income.
To summarize these posts: constantly visualize your success as the top salesperson in our President’s Club, don’t allow others to dissuade you from pursuing your goals, and give yourself the best chance to achieve these goals by writing them down!
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About Sean Moore
A highly driven, performance-focused Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Conmed, a world-class provider of medical equipment for minimally invasive surgeries and monitoring. Extensive experience establishing and managing top-producing sales organizations. Direct involvement in large deals as a sponsor or closer with a proven success record generating, Read More »
Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership – by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi, and Drea Zigarmi
Consider the following statistic:
