A salesman reflects on taking full responsibility for every interaction. He describes how controlling your words, tone, and questions shapes how clients respond, and details daily practices like listening to podcasts and managing his impatience that have compounded into real change over eleven years.
Chapters
You know, so I've tried to be really careful about my expectations and really only put them on myself and not other people. And even if something is wrong with the leads, or even something is wrong with the carrier, or the underwriting, or me, or Arturo, I'm going like, what role did I play? Could I have worded something different? Could I have thought of something different? Could I have been more calm? Could I have had a different tone? Could I have said something? Could I have taken a step back? Like, what did I do wrong in this? And I try to look at every situation that I'm in, even personally at home. This is just who I am today. And it gives me a really good perspective, 'cause I can look at it and go, "All right, that person may have done something incorrect, but how could I have done something different to control that?" You know, and it's really easy to apply if we do sales. If you're any good at sales, you can control how a client responds based on how you speak and ask questions and act in that situation. You can literally control the dynamic of a conversation in a sales environment, and that's about true in every situation in life that I've encountered, you know. And I, again, I've learned it doesn't do me any good to blame the other person. I'm human too, and I have a short fuse and I'm impatient, so I have to work on this every effing day. I work on me every day. I listen to podcasts. I have to remind myself to be positive. I have to remind myself to not be an asshole some days and to speak to people the right way. Like, I'm super imperfect, but I work on it so hard every day that just, again, with time, I've just pulled away from people because I don't stop. And that little bit of extra added up every day over the course of 11 years. It looks like I'm better than I am. I've just worked on it a lot more.