Why People Fail

THE SECRETS OF FAILURE
Everyone loves secrets, the attraction is magnetic. One of the most prolific words in copywriting is the word secret. The concept is that somehow if you learn the secret you can magically master life. The reality is that secrets are myths. There are no real secrets, there is of course the unknown but that is very different from the essence of a secret.
People travel through life not knowing what they don’t know. They are not seeking what they don’t know and therefore never know what they don’t know. Those who are most successful in life seek out knowledge and they continually discover the unknown. Truly there is much known which is predominantly unknown by the majority of the public. Often times this unknown known is referred to as a secret.
One of the greatest copywriters of our time Dan Kennedy wrote the following:
“Most people do not apply themselves to acquiring know-how nor apply the know-how they acquire. In short, they have the attention span of a gnat, the diligence of an idle, random breeze. They certainly don't study.”
I like to refer to 4 levels of knowledge:
1. Unaware
2. Aware
3. Awareness
4. Wisdom
The most amazing reality is that moving through the 4 levels of knowledge does not require any special abilities or high intelligence. Moving though the levels of knowledge does however require initiative, desire and commitment. At the core of learning is reading, so yes one must be able to read in order to successful navigate the 4 levels of knowledge. Once again here is what Dan Kennedy wrote on the subject:
I have become quite rich and somewhat celebrated, reaching the pinnacle of success in not one but three different fields. At each required skill-set, I once sucked. For me, there has always been a crawl to competence, then a fast rise to superiority. Part of the process is getting through of a lot of information in a hurry but also continuously. For nearly 25 years, I read a book a day plus newspapers, trade journals, newsletters, visited the public library weekly; took on a needed skill and so thoroughly and intensely studied it as to become a world class expert. When I was teaching myself to be an advertising copywriter, for example, I studied no less than an hour every day, listened to recorded material on the subject constantly, sought out and got to know the top people in the field, and when one told me to take great direct-response ads and write them out longhand 21 times each, to teach my subconscious the rhythm of such writing, I did that with 100 ads. I collected over 200 books on the subject and immersed myself in them.
The key secret to failure is refusing to read. Whatever the excuse not reading is a sure-fire method to fail at anything you undertake. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the man who will not read is no better off than the man who cannot read. The power of reading is in the ability to obtain information and put that information to good use. Basically this can be called know-how. All success is engineered through know-how.
I spent a great deal of my life in the great game of baseball, as a player, coach and scout. The essence of success in baseball is common to all of life, it is called fundamentals. In baseball it’s catching, throwing, running and hitting, in basketball it is shooting, dribbling, passing and running, in football it is blocking and tackling, in life it is reading, associating and implementing. Most of these life fundamentals are taught to us at a very young age and supposedly help us grow into our full potential. The unknown factor though is personal initiative. Without personal initiative people would accomplish absolutely nothing. So while the fundamentals are available to everyone the unique difference is personal initiative.
Commonly the pathway to success is littered with excuses. Truthfully there are an unlimited amount of excuses but the most common excuse is lack of time, followed by lack of money. Everyone who embraces the negative aspects of failure will use time and money as their crutches for lack of success. In this manner there is a vast amount of the population who are crippled while they walk freely on two legs. The crutches they lean on are excuses. Another secret to failure is making excuses.
So how does this impact you as a sales person? The foundation for all enterprise is the concept of value. In all sales you as a salesperson simply exchange value for compensation. Since the beginning of time value in the form of products and services has been exchanged for compensation. Yet as the world becomes more and more sophisticated the simple concept of providing service for income becomes greatly complicated with all types of miscommunication and misdirection or manipulation. Somehow the process has become jaded and reduced to a series of manipulative techniques. This has been taught and reinforced through the industry of sales training. The very nature of sales training should be the essence of coaching. A coach is one who seeks to help their trainees reach their full potential through constant teaching, exhortation and holding their trainees to full accountability.
Everyone needs a coach. The greatest athletes, performers and producers all have reached their full potential due to the network of coaches they have been associated with. Now you too need a coach, one who can get you to push forward towards your highest potential on a daily basis. The time and money you invest in yourself is the key component to your present and future success. This includes the full understanding of the power of failure, for it is failure that propels one the attainment of their full potential. Once again if one wants to rely on “secrets” the great secret to success is that it is manifested through failure. As John Maxwell said; “Fail Forward, fail fast and fail often.” As a sales person there is continuous opportunity for failure and the success is panned through the myriad attempts that end in failure. It’s not the failures that count, it is the successful completions in the process that count. Attempts are necessary efforts required to obtain successful results. The best examples of this are in the biographies of Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln and Colonel Sanders. In the end you must embrace failure and use it to propel yourself to success.
Sales coaching will identify the strategy and activities that will develop your ongoing success. The coaching will help you move through the 4 levels of knowledge, help you improve your relationship building skills, and most importantly help you identify and work through the behaviors that are working for you and against you in the sales process. It is the behaviors that ultimately determine the breadth of your personal and professional success. No individual is able to honestly assess their own personal behaviors, this always requires an independent and objective 3rd party. That party is a coach. Changing behaviors is a demanding experience. Fortunately behaviors become habits so once changed they can be reinforced through repetition and commitment.
The Transparency Selling platform is behavior based. There are no manipulative techniques behind becoming a transparent sales rainmaker. Transparency is about relationship building and helping people make smart decisions about money. The prospects and clients you work with are also driven by their own personal behaviors and as a successful sales rainmaker you are becoming their coach. You will identify the behaviors that are continually forcing people into poor decisions with money. When you help people move through the 4 levels of knowledge you will be consistently compensated better than you have ever before.
Transparency Selling will show you how to double, triple or even quadruple your business through a 5 step process. This consistent process will be the foundation of all your future business growth and help you grow your business each and every year. One of the most sought after and least obtained facets in a sales career is consistency. The ups and downs much like a roller coaster ride is the common trait of all sales people. This creates stress, discomfort and even depression among many sales people. Our work at the Advocacy Network has helped sales people become rainmakers and overcome the inconsistency that haunts most sales people. You simply don’t need to live with the ups and downs in your sales career, you don’t need to experience the stress and worry that makes your day’s dreaded events. Now you can be yourself every day and stay congruent to your natural behaviors. You activities will simply be relationship building which will transfer into a client building practice. Each day you can awake with confidence and clarity in knowing exactly how your time will be spent and how much your compensation will be. No more hoping, wishing or relying on luck. Your advocate based financial services practice will grow and thrive allowing you create plans for continued growth.
Let’s talk today and see how your practice can benefit from our relationship.