APPLYING THE ANALOGY OF A SALES JOB TO EVERY DAY LIFE (A SHORT MOTIVATIONAL STORY )
One of the most amazing abstracts about the challenges and puzzles of Life is the fact that sometimes when we read in between the lines and understand that things in Life happen for a reason, Life slowly begins to make more sense and our journey through the bleakest roads become lighter.
One of my first jobs in The UK was for a Sales Company in Elephant and Castles, South London
I had just finished University from Nigeria and my appetite for Life was filled with a Blatant overwhelming sense of adventure.
It was also my first encounter into The Cold World of Sales, back in Nigeria, I helped manage My Mothers business and supplied poultry to many of the restaurants in the Main land (but that was a different kind of Sales).
I remember my first day at work for the Sales Company, The Room was filled with faces from all nations and in a matter of weeks, I had made friends with people from The Caribbean, Italy, Uganda, Brazil and many other places.
Part of the job entailed selling a Paint products and randomly ringing up residential homes to promote a Paint brand that one had ever heard of.
On my first week at work, I became bored of the repetitive bland music of angry voices slamming the phone down my ears over and over again, but the trick was to take a deep breathe, relax for two minutes and pick up the phone again.
This happened very many years ago, but even then something strange happened, the more people slammed down the phone, the more I became driven with a new sense of energy to try even harder- AND SOMETIMES, THAT IS WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT.
The Rules were quite simple, (AT LEAST ON PAPER)
Each day, the target was for each Sales Rep to ring up 130 New Customers and to sell them the Paint Product that no one had ever heard of, but also to find out how often they painted their houses and at the end of each day, everyone Sales rep was meant to have sold Paint products to at least 4 Customers which meant that every week, each Sales rep had to make a minimum of 20 sales.
At the end of each week, if targets were not met, anyone who made 19 Sales or less was asked to back their bags and leave the building and after a few months, we referred to every Friday as “Bloody Friday”
This was the day when groups of people were politely asked to leave the building.
Sometimes I felt heart broken when I saw elders in their 60s and even 70s who had families to feed and rents to pay leave that building.
But London had many faces and this shade was one of the hard faces of London.
It did not just end there, each morning, before all the Sales reps hit the phones, we gathered round in a pretty open field in front of the office building and we did some physical exercise for about 25 minutes.
We were all meant to run round the building three times all together and shout out loud , “I am Born to Win, Failure is not an option”
I could often see the startled faces of commuters stuck in traffic and pedestrians on their way to work, who knows what they were thinking .
I made new friends in the first few months and every Friday night we went out into town to enjoy the lighter shades of London and often ended up in A Salsa Night Club in the outskirts of Brixton which was popular in the 90s.
I also became friends with an elderly woman we all referred to as “Aunty Bukky” and every single Saturday, Aunty Bukky would invite several of the staff members and Supervisors to her house and she would cook loads of West African food ranging from Jollof Rice, Moin Moin,Fried Fish, Cow foot pepper soup and bitter leaf soup.
Her husband was also a lovely man and he would often tell us stories of his childhood for hours and always told us how important it was for us to always work hard in Life and to make use of every minute.
When I look back to my first Sales jobs in the UK, it truly seems like ages ago and its funny how growth is sometimes driven by the power of the sub-conscious feeding the signals of the conscious and to put it simply, I learnt THREE things whilst working in Sales – TRAITS which are still inherent in me today
1.I LEARNT ABOUT THE ART OF PERSEVERANCE AND NEVER EVER TO GIVE UP IN ANYTHING
2.I LEARNT TO QUIETLY MIRROR PEOPLE AND MIRROR SITUATIONS BASED ON WHAT I SENSE AND SEE
3.I LEARNT THAT THE THING PEOPLE CALL HOPE, IS ACTUALLY SOMETHING WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL
But I supposed the greatest thing I learnt is what I truly want to share with you and it is to do with THE ANALOGY OF SALES APPLIED TO EVERYDAY LIFE
Each and everyone of us is on a journey and Each and everyone of us has An Ideal, a Vision, A Role, An Ambition, A Purpose, A Responsibility and An Agenda.
Our Roles, Our Ambitions and Our Visions vary and success means different things to different people.
But the fact is that WE all have one thing in common and that is the Hope, the Need, the urgency and the necessity to make the best of our Lives and so with each day that passes by, we try even harder.
The Analogy of the Sales Environment is the typical and practical story of LIFE in a NUTSHELL.
Each day there is the need to make those 130 phone calls for 4 opportunities to unfold.
The more we try, the Closer we get, Some Roles might take longer than others, some peoples paths are filled with the bleakness of damp dust and tribulations, but each time we FALL DOWN, all we need to do is wipe the damp dust of our breaks, take a deep breathe and make the next phone call.
Good things do not come easy.
BUT HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS
SOMETIMES it just takes ONE PHONE CALL out of 130 for new breakthroughs and blessings to unfold
SOMETIMES it just takes one Smile to start a conversation that leads to the blessings of A NEW FRIENDSHIP
SOMETIMES it just takes ONE APPLICATION out of 130 for The Right Job to come along
SOMETIMES it just takes ONE HANDSHAKE to agree to a Contract that will open new doors
SOMETIMES it just takes ONE KISS for a NEW RELATIONSHIP to unfold
So if it only takes, ONE PHONE CALL, ONE MOMENT, ONE DEEP BREATHE, ONE SMILE, ONE SIGNATURE, ONE HANDSHAKE, ONE KISS, ONE APPLICATION, ONE HOPE …..
Then it does not really matter how many times you FALL ON YOUR BACK,
WHAT MATTER, IS HOW MANY TIMES YOU PICK UP THAT PHONE AND KEEP ON TRYING
YOU WERE BORN TO WIN SO KEEP ON TRYING, YOU ARE NEARLY THERE
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TONY TOKUNBO FERNANDEZ ©2015
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TONY TOKUNBO ETEKA FERNANDEZ 