Do You Sabotage Your Own Success?
Imagine for just a moment that you are on a small deserted island with a single palm tree in the middle surrounded by the most beautiful beach. The waves are calm, and the sun is shining through a cloudless sky. The temperature is a perfect 74 degrees with a gentle breeze and you are sitting up against the palm tree, eyes closed, perfectly relaxed and totally enjoying the moment. Are you there? While you are in this place, you can’t do anything that might otherwise be considered productive work. You can’t talk with anyone, attend meetings, complete projects, go on sales calls. You can’t be a spouse, parent, sibling, son or daughter. You can’t do anything while you are on this island. Now, I have a question for you: While you are on this island, what is your value you bring to the world?
If you are like most, your answer would be that you are of low value while on the deserted island. You believe that the value you bring to the world is a function of the role you play and how well you play it. But this is simply not true. Just ask your mom or dad what they thought your value was when you were a newborn baby. Unquestionably, your parents would have said at the moment they were holding you just seconds old that your value is immeasurable. When we are babies, we can’t do anything that would be considered productive similar to being on the deserted island and yet, your parents correctly judged the value you bring to the world as extraordinarily high. So, what happens then from the time we are born to when we becoming working adults? Why do we devalue ourselves as we get older?
The messaging we get in the world constantly reinforces the notion that if one wants to be great and of high value, one must do the things that the world would judge as great and of high value. In other words success at athletics, academics, and/or career means you are a great person of high value but failure at these things means you are something less than great and of low value. If you subscribe to this line of thinking, then you are going to have a hard time making it big in sales. You see, in sales, you are going to fail a lot, and if you believe that you are of less value because you fail, then you will struggle when you go into your next call. Your failures will sabotage your belief system that you can be great and what you believe to be true manifests itself in your life as truth regardless if the belief is actually true or false.
Do you think that a salesperson who has low self-esteem, low self-value, will be able to pick up the phone and call a prospective customer that is CEO of a large company? Do you think this person would consistently execute a prospecting plan that keeps the pipeline full? Will this person knock on doors, go to networking events, ask for referrals and do all the behaviors that must be done in order to succeed in sales? I can tell you from experience, they won’t do the behaviors and if they do, they won’t do them very well. Therefore, I have a rule: You can only perform in your role to the level you perceive yourself conceptually. High self-value, high performance. Low self-value, low performance.
Don’t listen to what the world says about you! The truth is every single person walking on the face of the Earth is of extraordinary value independent of the roles they play. It does not matter if you are a brain surgeon or a janitor that cleans elementary schools at night, the value of each is the same. The wages earned are different and they should be, but the value of the individual is the same. This means that you are of incredible value. Can you believe this about yourself, or do you let what you believe about yourself sabotage your success?
by Karl Schaphorst, President
402-403-4334 | www.karlschaphorst.sandler.com
Sandler Training is a global training organization with over three decades of experience and proven results. Sandler provides sales and management training and consulting services for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as well as corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies. For more information, please contact Karl Schaphorst at (402) 403-4334 or by email at kschaphorst@sandler.com. You can also follow his blog at karlschaphorst.sandler.com