New Book ‘Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way’ – Excerpt #6 

The leadership qualities that any sales executive must possess in order to produce exponentially profitable results are rooted in five powerful beliefs. Although, strictly speaking, it may not be necessary to build all five beliefs into your life, choosing to leave even one of these beliefs underdeveloped means missing out on opportunities and, ultimately, leaving money on the table. 

Because of publisher constraints on the size of excerpts allowed, we will only be covering the first 3 of the 5 beliefs covered in the book.  The other two beliefs will be covered in the next posting. 

Belief #1: You Have Everything You Need 

You already have all the tools you need to make leadership selling a central reality of your life. Your job is simply to build on the qualities and resources that you already possess. 

It doesn’t matter what happened to you as a child. You are not missing anything. You can begin with what you have, and who you are, right here and right now. The sooner you accept this, the better you will get to know the leader waiting within. 

Belief #2: You Can Improve Any Area of Your Life That You Choose 

Every great leader in human history has found a way to use the process of self-discovery to expand his or her personal capacity and sense of self. 

I realize that some part of what you will encounter in this book may not sound like you yet. One or more elements on the list of leadership traits may not feel like you yet. You may not believe that you are that kind of person yet. 

Here’s my question: Do you believe that you are capable of improving yourself in any area of your life that you choose? 

Great leaders are always more interested in what they don’t yet know than in what they do know. They realize that any hope for future success can only come from learning and implementing new strategies. They believe they can improve themselves in any area of their lives that they choose. For these leaders, knowledge truly is power, because they are searching constantly for new knowledge that they can apply in their lives, and applied knowledge is what leads to success. If you wish to follow in the footsteps of the great sales leaders, you will need to make a personal commitment to learn and improve yourself in all of the areas we’ll be discussing. 

Get a great discount on “Lead Sell or Get Out of The Way” from Amazon today https://tinyurl.com/cb8ufm  

Belief #3: Everything Is Possible 

I challenge you, from this point forward, to approach everything that may seem to you to be uncomfortable, unfamiliar, or difficult with the highest possible level of open-mindedness. Truly successful people find ways to abandon biases that hold them back. They believe great things are possible. They assume things CAN be done. 

There’s a catch, of course. To achieve results that exceed what you are currently experiencing, you must change your actions. To make great things possible, you must be willing to revise your strategies, your level of intensity, and your focus.  After all, if what you’re doing right now were generating the results you desired, you would already be where you wanted to be! 

You must grow as a person, and be prepared to do things differently, if you wish to sell more. 

I will also be challenging you to learn about some new selling strategies and to give them an honest try. You may well trip and fall while trying out these new strategies; in fact, you almost certainly will. It’s extremely rare to succeed at any given venture the first time that it’s attempted. But when you encounter difficulty, you will pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again — just as you did when you learned how to ride a bike. 

You may wonder why you need to go through any of the discomfort or pain of changing; actually, you don’t. You don’t have to believe that whatever you want next in your life is possible. You don’t have to grow. But you’ll be happier in the long run if you do. Happiness requires growth, and growth inevitably involves pain. I’ve found that there are really two types of pain that are strongly associated with growth. It’s important to be able to distinguish between the two. 

The first kind of pain is the type that people generally try to avoid at all costs — that of arriving at a given point in life (for instance, the end of the fiscal year) and realizing that they have fallen short of a specific goal that they had set for themselves. That really is painful, since failing to meet a personal financial goal means that they did not support the goals and lifestyle that they had in mind for themselves! 

The other kind of (more manageable) pain is one with which successful people deal regularly. It’s the pain of trying something new and not really knowing how — or even if — it’s going to work. 

This is the discomfort of unfamiliar effort, of figuring out what new steps you should be taking and then putting one foot in front of the other — even though it’s a little unnerving to do so at first. This discomfort is similar to the minor aches and pains you get when you use muscles that haven’t been used in a while; it’s the pain of expanding your comfort zone.  It’s what you should be feeling on a daily basis. 

The good news is that you get to decide which type of pain you will accept: the enduring pain of failure or the passing pain of change. 

Sometimes, salespeople remain close-minded simply because they are afraid of trying new things. Open up your mind and assume the best. Allow yourself to venture forth into a new mindset and a new way of selling. Start assuming that the best is possible! 

—— 

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (www.wiley.com) from Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers by Ron Karr.  Copyright © 2009 by Ron Karr.  

 To order the book on line at one of your favorite retailers, go to https://LeadSellorGetOutofTheWay.com