In his book, The Third Door, Alex Banayan writes that success is like a nightclub.
“There’s the First Door: the main entrance, where 99 percent of people wait in line, hoping to get in. The Second Door: the VIP entrance, where the billionaires and celebrities slip through. But what no one tells you is that there is always a …the Third Door. It’s the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred times, crack open the window, sneak through the kitchen – there’s always a way.”
Finding or creating many workable paths to a given outcome is key.
Although Alex was writing about success, I couldn’t help but think how super relevant this is to the sales profession.
If you think about it, the more open and flexible you are, the more willing you’ll be to try multiple approaches to getting where you want to go or how you want to approach a client.
If you are rigid and repeatedly try the same unsuccessful approaches, you won’t get very far.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”
– Albert Einstein
A fundamental aspect of flexibility is what psychologists call “pathways thinking.” This is finding or creating multiple approaches to a problem or situation.
Research shows that “pathway thinking” like this is a core aspect of hope. And high-hope people take “failures” and use them to adapt and find alternative pathways to their goals.
I can’t think of a better way to approach our selling activities than having an open mind with the idea that there is certainly more than one way to help identify problems clients didn’t realize they had and convey the right solution match to help solve them.
No matter what profession or industry we are in – directly or indirectly, and to varying degrees, every job is a sales job – even yours.
