The Mental Edge in Selling. Tom Hopkins

been fortunate enough to train people who are tired of being average, people who are ready and willing to join the elite, people who want to reach out for more, people who are ready to make the investment in personal change and effort. I hope you’ve decided that it’s time to quit messing around being average, time to stop wallowing in the quagmire of mediocrity, time to reach out for the greatness that’s inherent in all human beings.

      The fourth motivator is recognition. This is an interesting motivator—one I often think is the most important to our breed of sales folks. People will do more for recognition than for anything else. Everyone needs recognition: husbands, wives, children—even your boss. We all do. When you were young, why did you do cartwheels out in the backyard? What did you want to get?

      Recognition. “Hey, Mommy and Daddy, look at me. I’m doing great!”

      In our search for recognition as adults, we play far more complex games. The cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the restaurants we dine in, the places we travel to, and a host of other things along those lines are all devices that we use to seek recognition.

      We can argue that most of these things are necessities. Perhaps. We can claim to enjoy these things for themselves. Certainly. But without the need for recognition, would we be so obsessed with style and personalization?

      We all crave and require recognition. That’s why this motivator has such awesome power when it’s used at full throttle. Many sales managers boost their sales force’s performance more with recognition than with any other motivator. Even more managers get scant benefit from it because they give too little too late and too carelessly. To be effective on a sales force, recognition must be real. It must be prompt. It must be given with sincerity and without favoritism. Its quality or value must be in line with what was achieved.

      Acceptance by others is motivator number five, and this is a dangerous one.

      Do you know how many people strive every day to be accepted by everyone else? With many people, including many in sales, that’s their greatest motivation—and their greatest weakness. But we all want to be liked, don’t we?

      Now, here’s an interesting thing that happens to every new salesperson regardless of the product or service. When you’re brand new to your company (and maybe you’re also new to the profession of selling) and first go into your new sales job all loaded with enthusiasm, who’s sitting there waiting to accept or reject you?

      Is it the achievers or the non-achievers who’re parked there? Is it the Five Percent or the Ninety-Five Percent?

      Which group lives in the office? Which group is out running for more business?

      The chances are good that someone will say, “Now, let me tell you how things really stand around here.” When that happens, you’d think there’s one chance in twenty of that someone being an achiever, but in fact you may not even see the achievers for weeks. They’re busy doing the things that make them great. When you’re finally introduced to one of the Five Percent, they’ll say something like this and not much more: “Glad to have you with us. This is a terrific company, and you’re going to do great here. Nice meeting you. See you later.”

      Some people in your company will tell you that my training won’t help you. Without giving these concepts and techniques a fair trial, they’ll say that. After merely skimming these pages looking for something to ridicule, some of them will say that. Without even cracking this book open, a few will say that. These people are the losers, and they want you to join them. The last thing they want you to do is join the winners. To show why this is so important to them, let’s get on the case of Jack Bumyears.

      Jack’s been in the sales department of your new firm for almost eleven years now—and he hasn’t learned a new sales technique in 120 months. When you start, everyone from the company president on down wants you to succeed—except Jack and his friends. Every time someone new comes whistling in from nowhere and makes good, Jack is faced with a hard question: “This new jerk did it. Why can’t I?”

      Bumyears knows the answer to that question as well as anyone does: Jack is a non-achiever because Jack refuses to be effective. But that’s the one answer Jack can’t accept. To do so would be admitting to himself that his work habits and methods must be drastically changed before he can succeed. Too painful, too frightening to think about. Far easier to blame the newcomer’s success on favoritism, pure dumb luck, a lack of ethics—anything that will steer the guilt away from Jack’s shoulders.

      But no matter how ingenious Jack’s been about excuses, no matter how much time and effort he puts into keeping those excuses tight, the truth is always in there, gnawing to be free.

      After this happens a time or two, Jack automatically develops anxiety whenever a newcomer shows promise. Alert, hardworking, eager-to-learn people have a nasty habit of succeeding quickly, Jack learns, and that always forces him into another agonizing search for an acceptable explanation. The pain reaches down into Jack’s subconscious mind and demands relief. Then Jack begins to act on a sad and false belief: That the best way to cope with other people’s success is not to have any of it around. Soon he’s attained a high level of non-achievement by becoming skilled at stifling ambition among his peers. When a new person says, “Well, I’d better get going. I have a bunch of calls to make,” old Jack will reply with, “At this time of day? You’ll never find anyone in.”

      Every weakness detected in an eager person is deftly exploited. “You having a problem with your paperwork? The company has made it too hard to get it right. You’ll always have problems with it.”