Motivation

Those of you who read my personal blog will now that this year has not been one of my finest, so far.

One of the effects of what has happened is that I have found motivation a problem.  How is it possible to maintain motivation in the face of ongoing adversity?

I knew an insurance salesman once who had a ’sunshine’ tape.  It was a collection of songs that always lifted his spirits.  Make no mistake, Malcolm was very successful.  He was a member of the MDRT (Million Dollar Round Table) and all that.  Also as this was in the 70s that is saying something.

The best tip I had about motivation from Malcolm and one that kept him going was to treat sales and business as a process.

He converted 1 in 4 prospects he had a meeting with.  He needed 5 referrals from existing clients to new prospects to get one interview.  That meant he needed 20 referrals for one sale.  19 rejections.  His take on this was, as his figures were more or less constant each ‘rejection’ was just moving him closer to that sales because it was part of the process, it was natural.  It was as is he had a black box with one knob on it, turn the knob 19 times and on the 20th turn he would get £1,000.

If you had that box how many times would you turn the knob each week?

Make that philosophy work for you.