Perspectives That Serve # 9 - Forgiveness

It’s possible you may be asking yourself, “ What does forgiveness have to do with selling?” It has a lot to do with selling. This profession requires a focused mind and emotions that are freely and productively expressed. Bitterness interferes with that.

Clients disappoint. Bosses disappoint. Co-Workers disappoint. Employees disappoint. Forgiveness means walking emotionally free to give your best to your family and a career God has placed you in.

Un-forgiveness stifles life. It will shut you down and close you off almost faster than anything I can think of. Forgiveness isn’t really a gift you give another person, it is a gift you give yourself. And forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Forgiveness doesn’t mean foolishly giving unearned trust. My favorite definition of forgiveness I heard when I was only a teenager from a speaker/counselor named Bob Phillips. It goes like this…

Forgiveness means:

1. I won’t dwell on it.
2. I won’t talk about them behind their back.
3. I won’t use it against them.

This definition has really been helpful for me in learning to forgive. I have added two of my own more recently:

4. Pray that God would bless the person
5. I tell myself that if I had that persons experiences, upbringing,
and pressures I might do the same thing. If you don’t
forgive, it’s often because you don’t know enough of
someone’s story.

Forgiveness does not mean I have necessarily have positive emotions or feelings for this person although they may be developed over time. The feelings may never come.

What I love about those 5 things is that they are all choices. I can grab myself mentally by the back of the neck and make those 5 choices. When I do, the negative feelings and emotions that choke my life get neutralized and I can get on with my life.

Give it a try.

Perspectives That Serve # 8 - Fanatacism

Some of perspective terms have overlap. They are similar and have connection or things in common. But they have differences too. By using different but similar terms that describe the attitudes you want to cultivate in life, you get a full spectrum understanding.

Fanaticism or Fanatic is often shortened to “Fan”. Personally I think Fanatic has a stronger feel or connotation than the shorter Fan. If I say I am a football fan that still sounds tepid or weak to me. If I say I am a Football Fanatic or better yet a Full Fledged Football Fanatic that just sounds stronger, more like you mean it.

I encourage you to be a fanatic about something. Make it something sustainable and life giving. But be a fanatic. I think you can even be a fanatic about 2 or 3 things. Fanaticism has gotten a bad rap. Moderation and tepidness have become the order of the day. I think the Green Bay Packer fans that go shirtless at zero degrees and paint their bodies green and gold may be on to something.

Certainly it doesn’t have to involve sports either. What is it you truly love? Why not ‘kick it up a notch”? Get a little crazy about it. Dare to be wildly in love. Be a fanatic about your spouse or your job or your church. Refuse to live another day as a groveling, tepid, cowering soul.

Perspectives That Serve # 7 - Enthusiasm For Life

There is a focused enthusiasm and passion that is a critical mind set to develop. This one is more general or comprehensive. Like Dennis The Menace it’s great if we can just learn to love everything in life more. “Let’s go everywhere and do everything”. Some people have the ability to open their throat and pour liquid down without slowing up to swallow. I think the technical term is “guzzling”. Beer guzzling may be a stupid adolescent or fraternity game that sometimes leads to alcohol poisoning and tragic consequences, but life guzzling is smart.

After being intelligently discerning, open up the orifice a little bit. Try new things. Go to a new restaurant every week. Try something new off the menu. Go skydiving, hot air ballooning, and bungee jumping. Go buy a magazine on something that you know absolutely nothing about. Take up a knew hobby. Learn the Salsa.

Every once in a while we need to go “Full Throttle”. Put the gas pedal to the floor board. Open her up and see what she’ll do as the drag racer’s say.

Perspectives That Serve #6 - Determined Desire

You got to want to. Red hot burning desire leads to energy, action, and another mind set called creativity. All these work together in concert to accomplish or achieve something.

And all that suggests a prerequisite. In order to have desire you have to have a clear outcome, target, or intention that is naturally compelling. And behind that clear compelling outcome there must be a compelling purpose. The “why” must be big enough to generate desire. “Why’s” are intensely personal. You may have to search for yours.

The dictionary defines determination as “firmness of purpose, will, or intention”. I would call determination “sustained desire”. Determination is desire that lasts. When we were kids many of us want to be firemen one day, cowboys the next day, and super hero crime fighters the day after that. We lack firmness of purpose or sustained desire. The problem comes when we don’t develop the mind set of determination moving into adulthood.

How do you develop the determination it takes to stay with something long enough to see it through? Sometimes it is just a matter of discipline and developing the toughness to be with the pain, fatigue, etc… that accompanies the accomplishment of a worthwhile outcome. Determination requires a kind of “doing within while we are doing without”. That is it requires keeping mental image of the desired outcome firmly fixed in our minds as we are getting through the going through stage. It requires us to imagine the benefits set before us.

Lastly, we need to learn how to select purposes, projects, and processes that align with our God given talents, gifts, and abilities. Misplaced determination leads to frustration, failure, and the tendency to be leery of applying ourselves in the future. No matter how determined I am, I’m not going to become a professional boxer or a center on an NBA Basketball team. Had I been more determined, I might have come close as a professional baseball player. I think I had some of the tools but chose not to cultivate the desire and necessary determination.

This is the rub of determination. How do we know if we have selected a goal that aligns with our talents? Our parents don’t always know or give us the best advice. Our teachers and coaches don’t always know either. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

Perspectives That Serve # 5 - Cool, Calm, Collected

This is an attitude or mind set that is fairly easy for me to cultivate because I am naturally pretty even tempered. It’s also one that doesn’t work well in isolation. It must be blended with passion and enthusiasm for balance.

In a selling situation, one way to stay calm is to always have so much in the pipeline that you never need any single account too much. You want an account to feel important and desired without feeling like they are your last meal ticket. Any behavior that resembles begging or desperation is usually a turn off. If you are that desperate they may believe you won’t last or be around to service them. They may also believe you are not that good at what you do. Most people want to work with someone they believe is competent.

One path to calmness is through confidence and competence. That is, when you are competent, that leads to confidence which leads to calmness. In lieu of this, if you are new and still haven’t developed confidence you may have to “act calm”. You can behave your way into almost any mind set or attitude. Adopt the physiology of calm and you will become calmer.

How much does it take to upset you? The more you can do to raise the threshold the better off you’ll be. Most of us, myself included overreact to small stuff. I read somewhere that it’s critical to make distinctions between lumpy oatmeal, a lump in your throat, and a lump in your breast. Sometimes I react to things that are really in the category of lumpy oatmeal like I just got diagnosed with a lump in my breast or some other body part. The irony is, the more often we have those over reaction to lumpy oatmeal events, the more likely we are to get lumps showing up in our body somewhere.

I think becoming perturbed may have reached epidemic proportions in this country. Some of it may be related to compressed time, speed, and the false sense that everything must happen now. Some of us just need to slow it down. Or maybe we can do as basketball coaching legend John Wooden suggests, “Be quick but don’t hurry”.

I find my capacity to handle the little annoyances goes way up when I have a quiet time in the morning. For me this usually consists of spending 10 - 30 minutes reading a Bible passage. It slows me down and entrains me to God’s rhythms. Getting out in nature is good. I like the beach the best. Walking helps too. I think we are natural walkers. Enhance it even more by walking with your dog. Walking with your spouse or a friend is good too. Find a stride or pace that you can both live with. This may even be different than your exercise session which can become very goal oriented.

Perspectives That Serve #4 - Blooming WhereYou're Planted

Russell Conwell wrote a book and a speech by the name of Acres of Diamonds.
He made millions touring the country and selling this book that simply conveyed a message that we all need to hear. Conwell told the story of a farmer who sold his farm to go in search of diamonds. Years later it was discovered that the property he sold had contained the largest diamond mine in the history of the world.

Most of us, my self included have moments where we believe we could be doing so much better in another job or with another company. And maybe we could. In my work in sales on the West Coast I always believed the best opportunities in my company were in the Southeast where the headquarters was located. Who knows, maybe they are.

There is one thing I am absolutely sure of though. The most important thing you can do today is Bloom Where You are Planted. Give your job your all. Pour Your Heart In It. When you do this your skills will grow. You will maximize your potential in your current position in your current territory. If you do this other opportunities will come along and you will be much more prepared for them.

Part of being a good salesperson is learning to look for the best opportunities. Ultimately this trait can work against them. Salespeople can participate in self-sabotage big time if they are not careful.

Most effective selling requires building your personal brand, credibility, relationships, and knowledge in an industry. At a minimum these factors begin to come together at the 3-5 year point and then compound significantly in the years after that. But a lot of salespeople get impatient. They assume their lack of success is due to the company, their manager, their industry, or unfair territory divisions. Maybe it is. But often in reality it is due to their own lack of hard work or just lack of seasoning and experience.

Career choice is really a place where you want to measure twice and cut once whenever you possible can. Do your do diligence up front. Select a best of breed leading company and stick with it. I’m not saying there is never a good reason to make a change… There is. But all to often sales people start imaging the grass being greener. And all too often sales people sabotage their careers when they start jumping around.

Perspectives That Serve #3 - Ambition

Ambition is an attitude some of us are ambivalent about. We are not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes we think a little of both. I guess it’s true that ambition can drive us to do good things and bad things. It needs to be tempered and modified by some of the other mind sets we are going through.

That being said, ambition, when tempered and directed can be a wonderful attitude to cultivate. Often we think of ambition solely in connection with money. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Ambition can be connected up altruism. I don’t think it too much of a stretch to say that Mother Theresa was ambitious. So I would encourage you to cultivate the attitude or mind set of ambition. Just make sure you are ambitious to do good things with your life that involve serving others.

Ron Willingham talks about what he calls “Achievement Drive”. He says, We release achievement drive when we have a balanced view of selling that is expressed by these attitudes:

1. I feel a professional responsibility to create as much value for a customer as possible.

2. I know that I will, and should be, rewarded to the degree that I create value for other customers.

3. So I will focus on creating as much value as possible for clients, knowing that I’ll be rewarded accordingly.


Ron is right on the money here, both figuratively and literally. I would only add that this is something that works over time and not necessarily in the immediate of every single customer exchange. Don’t walk out and say to your customer, “I provided the value, now where’s my reward”. It doesn’t work that way.

Perspectives That Serve # 2 - Advantage in Adversity

Let’s start with our perspective on problems and adversity. If circumstances were always to our liking we might not have to worry much about our thought life. But most of us are dealing with adversity of some sort on a regular basis. In fact, you could probably walk up to just about anybody on the street and say, “I’m sorry...I heard about your problem” and they would likely answer, “Who told you?”. As M. Scott Peck said in his classic, The Road Less Traveled, “Life is hard. When you accept this fact life gets easier”. My pastor regularly shares, “If you are not currently in some kind of crisis, you either just got out of one, or brace yourself, you are headed for one”.

So how we think about problems and adversity is another foundational skill with regard to strategic thought processes. I like to start out thinking about my problems with the question, “How can I exploit this?” or “How can I use this problem to advance my position?”

The business world is absolutely replete with examples of turning problems into huge cash generating opportunities. Xerox was created by a transcriber who got arthritis. One of my favorite stories is about coffee cup sleeve that I get around my hot drink order at Starbucks. In the late 1980’s, Jay Sorensen ordered a cup of hot coffee at a drive through in Portland, Oregon. Although it was wrapped in a napkin it was still so hot he dropped it in his lap. Watching the Starbucks coffee craze in the 90’s and noticing so many customers gingerly taking their cups from the baristas he had an idea. Using some home supplies he designed a card board sleeve. Originally called the Java Jacket the company today sells about 700 million units each year. Holiday Inn started because Kemmons Wilson struggled to find good accommodations while taking his family on vacation.

Adversity Exploitation is a fundamental mindset and has been summarized by many business writers. One famous writer said it well nearly 100 years ago, “Every adversity carries with it the seed for an equal or greater benefit.” In the Christian Faith, which is central to my life, the Bible teaches that “All things work together for good, for those that love God and are called according to His purpose.” Here we are promised that God is actually in the background working for us. He doesn’t say that nothing bad will happen, only that when it does He will use it for our benefit.

Perspectives That Serve # 1 - Attitude Alternatives and The Alternative Attitude

Today we hear about “Alternative Lifestyles” and “Alternative Music”. In both of these contexts I think the word “Alternative” implies an additional choice as compared with maybe a more common or everyday choice. In this post I want to discuss “Alternative Thinking” or “Alternative Attitudes”. These patterns of thinking are additional choices. They may be quite different from the choices you are currently making or you may simply wish to make them more often.

Alternative thinking is also a meta-thought process. That is, it is thinking about your thinking. An Alternative Attitude is the belief that you have choices about what you put in your mind and what you focus and dwell on. It is a belief that those choices make a difference.

It wasn’t until I was about 19 years old that it ever occurred to me that I had much of a choice about my thoughts. It had never occurred to me that a person might actually select his thoughts like a pair of shoes, an ice cream flavor, or cologne fragrance. I pretty much assumed that your thoughts were your thoughts and that was that. I had also not made the connection that my thoughts were powerful precursors to my emotions and actions.

Today I would say that these truths are among the most powerful and life changing in the world. Yet as far as I know, they are not offered in most any school K—12 and rarely in the college context. In the next few weeks I’ll attempt to bridge that educational gap. The next series of posts will offer many thought choices, each of which should lead to positive emotions, decisions, and actions that in turn should lead to a successful and fulfilling life. In many ways it is square one with regard to Servant Selling.

So this is your first “perspective that leads to performance”. It is your first “strategic thought process”. It is the perspective that you have many alternatives of perspective, viewpoints, and attitudes to select from. You may have dozens of people and pressures pushing you toward a given attitude or way of looking and thinking about something. Your environment may have a bent toward one perspective or another. But at the end of the day, the choice is all yours. Begin to internalize this with great intention. The other perspectives and attitudes won’t install well unless you load this one first.

Attitudes and Perspectives That Serve You and Your Customer

The “mother of all business questions is “What leads to high performance?” Clearly one big thing that creates high performance is quality of thoughts and thought processes. Simply put, there are attitudes, perspectives,ways of thinking and subjects of thought that will make great things happen in your life. Conversely there are ways of thinking and subjects of thought that will attract negative circumstances.

Personally, I don’t believe that your attitude makes things happen mystically or meta-physically although I do believe there is a spiritual connection to your thought life. I would even argue that there are some significant dangers to the recent release of The Secret which continues to sell briskly in bookstores all over the country. Thinking makes things happen both good and bad because your thoughts are what generate your actions. The quality of your actions generate the quality of your life. But thought always precedes action. Sometimes it doesn’t precede it by much but it always does.

Optimism drives action because if you don’t believe something is possible you won’t put out the needed level of effort. Creative thinking opens up a whole world of possible actions increasing the chances that one will work. Enthusiasm makes sustained action possible because it increases energy level. In fact, increased energy level and resulting sustained action is a positive benefit of almost all constructive thought processes.

Some, maybe much of the benefits of thinking productively is biochemical. Cognitive scientists estimate that on average we each have around 60,000 thoughts a day or 1 thought per 1.44 seconds. These thoughts send biochemical impulses through out the body. These biochemical changes have dramatic impact on our emotions, state, and how we feel. They impact what kind of sensations we experience in our body.

As we finish off March and move into the month of April, I want to post on several of these perspectives that lead to performance. I may look at close to 30 strategic thought processes that will help you succeed as a servant salesperson. Then I want to look at several different ways of installing them into your life and business. It does absolutely no good to own a great computer program if you leave it on the shelf uninstalled. Similarly you will have to install each of these perspectives with great intention. Most programs also come with the capacity for updates. Don’t settle for a 1.0 version of an attitude or perspective when the 4.0 version is available.

Have A Wonderful Resurrection Easter Sunday!

The Irresistable Offer

Mark Joyner wrote a book called “The Irresistible Offer”. I don’t agree with everything he writes but I do agree with his major premise, that all great organizations have an irresistible offer. Consider the following examples:

Ipod - 1000 songs in your pocket
Dominoes Pizza - Hot and fresh to your door in 30 minutes or it’s free
Federal Express - When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight

Jesus has the best irresistible offer ever. Believe in me - Live forever. This simple message has been communicated all over the world through his words found in the Biblical verse, John 3:16. “God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son to die on a cross for our sins. Whoever trusts in Jesus death and resurrection will live forever.” Today Christians all over the world are remembering that death. Sunday, they will be celebrating His resurrection.

The central message of the Bible is that none of us can be good enough to earn God’s love and forgiveness. We can’t do enough good deeds. We can’t refrain from enough sins. It’s been done for us. Jesus did it on the cross 2000 years ago. Spend some time thinking about that today… and have a wonderful Easter!

Heart Language

My posts this week are looking at the methods of Jesus as they might apply to the business of selling. Yesterday we took at look at some material from Jeff Medefind and Erik Lokkesmoe’s book The Revolutionary Communicator. I’m going to do the same today.

Medefind and Lokkesmoe suggest that each of us holds a unique heart language. These are activities, symbols, and even objects in which we find special pleasure and delight. Sometimes a heart language is a literal language like Spanish or French. If you’ve ever seen an immigrant light up when hearing their native tongue you know exactly what I’m talking about. Law enforcement officers report that the heart language of young gang members is respect. If you are into sports you understand that each one has it’s own unique language that allows for insider communication. Most all professions have a unique language. If you’ve shopped for a computer you are probably aware that techie type people have a language.

Jesus used language that was pregnant with the language of his culture. Although he was a builder by trade, only a handful of examples came from the building trade. Instead, the bulk were drawn from the daily labors of the farmers, fisherman, and homemakers who filled his audience.

Advertising giant David Olgilvy once said, “If you are trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think.” I have seen this over and over again in my selling work the last 15 years. Your ability to learn and speak the language of your customer is foundational to Servant Selling.

The Revolutionary Communicator

All great sales and marketing is really just a specialized form of communication. But what is communication. Jeff Medefind and Erik Lokkesmoe point us in the right direction in their book The Revolutionary Communicator:

“Communication, Community, Compassion, Communion. Obviously these words grow with their roots entwined. All of them spring from the Latin term, com, together. The word ‘communication’ is itself from the Latin ‘communicare’, meaning to share together, or more literally ‘to make common’...True communication, however, is never monologue; it is dialogue, the coming together of two living beings, even when separated by chasms of culture and language, age and distance, opinion and race. This connection, just as with electric lines, is the fundamental necessity of communication. Without connection, exchange is impossible, no matter how high the voltage. But when the wires touch, energy crackles, and life begins to flow. Great communicators, before anything else, seek means of connection.”

Medefind and Lokkesmoe continue, “Jesus life was continually a work of connecting to those he sought to reach. His every act of communication, whether verbal or otherwise, was anchored in choices to connect with his audience—always moving toward, reaching into, drawing from their daily experiences.”

Sales is all about communicating, and communicating is all about connecting. The big mistake most sales people make is believing that communication is just about giving information. Regrettably, even our clients and customers sometimes buy into this. We walk into their office and they say, “okay, give me your pitch”. Great communication is so much more than that. Increasingly I don’t like the word “influence”. I much prefer the word suggested by sales trainer Christopher Hagerty… “CONFLUENCE”. “CON” is in the same Latin family as “COM” and simply means “with”. Great sales and marketing is something you do with your customers not something you do to them. It’s a partnership, a dance, a movement together.

Find a Bible and turn to the sections Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read these four short biographies of Jesus’ life. Notice how he communicates. Watch how he connects.

Jesus On Selling

We are looking this week at ways we can apply the principles and teachings of Jesus to business and the business of selling. Some will find this offensive, but the reality is that Jesus spent most of his life in the marketplace. Even theologians have noted that he talked more about money than most any other topic. As I read his teachings closely, it seems to me he was concerned about the whole person. He wanted to show us a way to lead a complete full life, and that would include our business and professional activities.

One of Jesus’ central teachings was the idea that serving is always the core thing if you want to be great.

Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.
From Mark 10:43

This entire blog is really built around that whole premise. This idea of service to greatness is in many ways both counter cultural and counter intuitive. It was in Jesus day and it still is. Most sales training, when you boil it down, is about manipulation and getting everything you can. I jotted down some title’s I found in the Sales and Marketing sections of Barnes and Noble and Borders last month:

The Hypnotic Salesman
Buying Trances
Hypnotic Writing
Getting Your Way
The 7 Triggers To Yes
Closing Techniques
How To Sell To An Idiot
Get Them To See It Your Way, Right Away
Persuasion… The Art Of Getting What You Want

These are the more blatant examples. Many other books have titles that are less up front about the manipulative content.

Yet when you study many of the great businesses and great business leaders, they come from a place of serving and adding value to the lives of their customers. Isn’t great selling simple? Isn’t it really just finding out what will add maximum value to a customer’s life and helping them get it? Depending on your business, you may get really sophisticated in how you execute this simple idea, but it all comes back to serving the customer better. Jesus taught this principle. It worked 2000 years ago. It works today. It will always work because God designed it that way. It’s inextricably woven into the very nature of reality.

Did Jesus Make Sales Calls?

This week is Holy Week or what I prefer to call Power Week in the Christian Faith. Next Sunday, millions will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ as they attend mass and church services around the world.

My posts for the next five days will look at what Jesus might teach us about how to live in business and especially in the profession of selling. Did Jesus make sales calls? Did he go out and knock on doors to drum up business? I don’t think that’s a stretch. Until around the age of 30, he worked in a carpentry business and was likely self employed for at least some of that time. Most of the guys he hung out with were small business types who undoubtedly engaged in marketing on a regular basis.

Most of us, if we think about Jesus at all, probably pigeon-hole him to the religious section of life. I don’t think his first followers were that much different. Yet, I would suggest that maybe there is more here than first meets the eye. One of my very favorite stories about Jesus is found in the Bible and comes from Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5:4-7
4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.”
5 “Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.”
6 And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear!
7 A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.

So… get the picture. Jesus is finishing up a sermon that he gave while standing in a boat out on a lake and he gives Simon (who many of us know us Peter) a business tip. You can almost hear Simon say, “Jesus, you stay in the religion department. I think I know the fishing business.” But Peter relents, takes Jesus advice, and ends up with what was probably the best day of fish sales in his whole career.

Let’s take a couple of days and check out what Jesus might offer that would help your business and sales career. HWJS… How Would Jesus Sell?

I'm Recharging Today

Serendipity

I consider myself a directional opportunist… In some areas I am very goal oriented. In some areas I am very laid back and let in happen. Mostly though I tend to be a directional opportunist. I almost always have a direction and a flexible agenda. With that direction and agenda I carry with me a healthy dose of opportunism. Another way of describing this is Serendipity. Serendipity is defined as looking for something good and finding something better… or if you prefer, finding something better while looking for something good.

The term serendipity was coined by English writer Horace Walpole. He loved reading old Persian tales and came across one called Three Princes of Serendip (Serendip is now know as Sri Lanka) . It told of three young princes who went into the world to seek their fortunes. None found fortune, but each found something even better. One found love, one found beauty, one peace.

Today, Serendipity, the term Walpole coined has been redefined to mean happy accident. But people who say serendipity is a happy accident miss Wolpole’s main point. To him, serendipity was something that could happen only if a person was aware and wise, and only if they were seeking something specific, which gave them a basis on which to judge something else as better. Serendipity is a mindset that people can develop. It requires (awareness, understanding, observation, alertness), and it requires that we be seeking something (have goals, aims, objectives). The definition suggests that as we combine our wisdom with our structure, we will cause the phenomenon of discovering things that are better than what we were pursuing.

A father, looking out his office window, notices that it is an exceptionally beautiful afternoon and decides he could finish the work he is doing the next morning. He goes home early and takes his three-year-old to the zoo.

A businessman reads an article that gives him a new idea. He changes his schedule and makes some phone calls which end up providing him with a lucrative new client.

A mother has set a goal to clean out her refrigerator but just as she is starting, she notices that her two-year old is looking at picture books on his own for the first time. She puts off the refrigerator for a while and reads to the child.

A couple on their second honeymoon is waiting in line in an airport to get a rental car. They strike up a conversation with a woman in the line, who happens to tell them of a marvelous, quaint little hotel. They change their reservations from the plan given to them by the travel agent and end up discovering a “perfect place”.


Goals are a good thing. You need them. But always allow God to do something even better than you could ask for or imagine. If you are reading this blog regularly, chances are you are pursuing success in business or sales. As you read the posts for next week, be open to something even better.

Using Failure As A Stepping Stone Toward Success - Part 5

Basketball great, Bill Russell was cut from his high school basketball team.

Football quarterbacking great, Johnny Unitas was cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers before trying out for the Baltimore Colts.

After Ty Cobb retired from baseball, he became a scout for the Detroit Tigers. He was sent to Memphis to check out a twenty-one year old first baseman. He returned after three days to Detroit and said, “Forget him. He’s clumsy as an ox in the field and he can’t hit curve balls.”
Three years later, that young first baseman named Lou Gehrig was playing for the New York Yankees and became one of the greatest players in the history of the game.

Popular Mechanics forecasting in 1949, “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”

In 1943, IBM Chairman Thomas Watson said, “I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers.

An advanced computer engineer at IBM commenting on the microchip in 1968, “But what is it good for?”

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Comment from Ken Olson, President, Chairman, and Founder of Digital Equipment

An internal memo at Western Union in 1876 read, “This telephone has too many short comings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”

“This wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” This came from David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio during the 1920’s.

Using Failure As A Stepping Stone Toward Success - Part 4

Charles Darwin was college drop out and wrote in his auto-biography, “I was considered by all my masters and by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard for intellect”.

Walt Disney was fired by a news paper editor for lack of creative ideas and went bankrupt several times before opening Disneyland.

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade and only became Prime Minister of England after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks.

Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as both unable and unwilling to learn.

Famous Opera Star Enrico Caruso’s teacher said he had no voice at all and could not sing.

Scientist Louis Pasteur was a mediocre pupil and ranked 15 out of 22 in his chemistry class.

Henry Ford went broke five times before finally making it big.

Multi-Million Copy best-seller Jonathan Livingston Seagull was written by author Richard Bach. Before being published by Macmillan in 1970 it was turned down by 18 publishers. By 1975 it had sold over seven million copies in the U.S. alone.

Using Failure As A Stepping Stone Toward Success - Part 3

Abraham Lincoln lost 5 elections and several appointed positions he sought before being elected President.

Department store founder R H Macey had 7 business failures before his New York store caught on.

English novelist John Creasey had 753 rejection slips before the first of his 564 books were published.

Novelist Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous War Novel “Mash” only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow picked it up.

Playwright Tennessee Williams was angry when his play “Me,Vasha” was not selected at a Washington University competition. His teacher recalled that Williams criticized the judges choices and their intelligence as well.

The employers at a dry goods store where Retail Giant F.W. Woolworth started out said he didn’t have enough sense to wait on customers.

A “football expert” once said of Vince Lombardi, “He possesses minimal football knowledge and lacks motivation”.

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and was called by his teacher “hopeless as a composer”.