HOW TO BECOME THE SUCCESS YOU WERE DESTINED TO BE

I honestly can’t believe the number of articles I have written about sales and sales leadership.  Recently, while looking at some of the statistics on more than 1,200 of my articles, I discovered something that amazed me.

While identifying the most popular article of all time I learned that this article has been read by more than twice the number of people that have read the second most popular article.  But I couldn’t understand why…

The most popular article is not an article on how to sell more effectively or how to manage salespeople with greater success.  It’s not an article on how to nail sales recruiting or an article with great insights.  Honestly, I didn’t think it was a very good article!  But there it is, sitting at number one, looking proud and causing me to write this article as an attempt to reconcile why it is so popular.

The article was called, “What’s the Difference Between Sales Commitment and Motivation?” and I wrote it in September of 2011.  It’s one of the shortest articles I ever wrote (that should tell me something!), it’s not very entertaining, it doesn’t have a metaphor, and it doesn’t present a strategy or tactic.  So why is it so popular?

I have a simple theory and I’ll present it here today.

I believe that most salespeople, sales leaders and executives had never considered the definitions or relationship between sales commitment and sales motivation before reading the article.  I also believe that it caused them to do a double-take and share the article with their teams.

I believe that salespeople who have both strong commitment and motivation will find a way to succeed, despite their Sales DNA and skill gaps, while salespeople with similar skill gaps and challenges fail because they lack strong commitment and motivation.

Certainly, there are many more salespeople that are motivated but lacking commitment than there are committed salespeople that are lacking motivation.  But the second group does exist.

Objective Management Group’s (OMG) statistics show that at least 20% of the sales population is lacking commitment and around 15% don’t have the necessary motivation.  A smaller group, around 10% are deficient in both.  You may think that you can recognize motivated people from unmotivated people but it’s a lot more difficult than you think.  Sure, you know that the 20-year-old college drop-out who hasn’t figured out what to do with his life could have issues with both motivation and commitment.  In that case, it’s nearly impossible to commit to something that doesn’t yet exist…

But if you looked at a team of 25 salespeople I’ll bet that by looking at them you wouldn’t be able to guess who lacked commitment and/or motivation.  I’m certain that by talking with them you wouldn’t be able to figure it out either.  I’ll bet my reputation that even they don’t know they lack motivation and/or commitment!

I will tell you this.  If you have strong, unconditional commitment and you are truly motivated, then that should be enough to overcome whatever limitations and challenges you have created for yourself.  So use it!  Use that motivation and commitment to take the final step, clear the hurdles and be the success that you were destined to be!