You get a little too close to the edge and it hits you . . . that gripping sensation in the pit of your stomach . . . the dizzying feeling of trying to imagine a chasm so immense that a strange, unexplainable loss of control sweeps over you. Then you get it . . . you’re actually looking down at a one-mile deep gorge of the Colorado River. This is the real thing!
A photograph of the Grand Canyon on the other hand – even when expertly done – just doesn’t convey the same depth of feeling and sensation. It’s better than nothing, but second-hand emotion is never really an acceptable substitute for the real thing. Because the joy of being alive is a by-product of actual contact with life itself. And the same is true in sales.
Both life and sales are contact sports. It’s impossible to succeed in sales or in life without actually being in contact with, engaged in, and willing to experience either one.
It’s not only extreme activities like river-rafting, mountain climbing or skydiving that provide this contact or experience. The thrill of being alive and the
joy of living are available to you at every moment you’re alive, no matter what you’re doing.
It all comes down to one thing: the willingness to experience.
If you have decided that you hate your job, your town or the people around you, your attention is drawn magnetically to situations and circumstances that reinforce your decision and your unwillingness to experience what is going on around you.
On the other hand, if you have the idea that you are willing to experience what you are already experiencing, then you’ll find that you can survive anything that comes your way. You’re in contact with life, and you’ll find it’s not really all that bad.
Knowledge acquired through the senses, rather than some ivory tower abstraction or professorial reasoning, will give you the deep, instinctual and visceral awareness that life is happening for you right now! The game of life has started and all that is required is for you to decide to play and be willing to experience it.
Discard the self-protective ramparts you’ve constructed and throw yourself into the running stream of life; embrace the essence of friendship and betrayal, beauty and ugliness, success and failure, loss and abundance, hatred and love; they are all part of the game of life.
This is how you experience the true joy of living . . . once you decide you are willing to experience it – everything else is a shabby substitute.
Now, if you’re already thinking that this concept could directly apply to sales, you’re on the right track!
Because personal contact is, in fact, what sales is all about; the most effective sales and marketing tool there is. Sales is a contact sport.
So get in contact with people and then some more people. Keep at it. Be willing to experience whatever comes your way. Persist in spite of everything. Don’t shrink back because of minor failures. You’ll find that it’s not that hard to achieve a high degree of success in your activities.
Sales – like life itself – is a contact sport. And the ones who win are those who are willing to jump in and experience it.
daniel w. jacobs
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