Hope And The Importance Of The Small Things

 

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When I joined my second company in my financial services career, I didn’t realise that it would be nearly the death of me and conversely, such a positive life changing experience. Sales seemed to be non-existent, month after month struggling to survive, and it wasn’t just me, the rest of the sales team were languishing also, and you know that old expression ‘Misery loves company!’ well this was so true here. It got so bad, I wasn’t sleeping very well and I got to the stage where I didn’t think I could take any more, as in verging on the suicidal.

If there is a GOD, he didn’t seem to be listening. My friend referred me to one of his business acquaintances who was looking for a part time salesman to sell motivational tapes (yep, no such thing as CDs in those days). We met up and I received the tapes to sell, of course I had to listen to them first. They were by Brian Tracy, an American.  The one that resonated with me was his Phoenix Seminar and he spoke about positive affirmations. I was already aware of a lot of what he said, I had just forgotten in my misery. I resolved there and then to change my mindset and began with intense concentration, (you cannot let yourself of the hook), to replace each negative thought before it got the chance to get a grip, with a positive one. It was very hard work.

I never sold any of the tapes, but I did try. I persisted though, relentlessly with my positive affirmation regime.

One of the guys in the team was going to try a telephone canvasser and I thought I would try it too. Whilst I was struggling financially, I felt I had to try something different. The girl started working a couple of nights a week for me and we refined her script as we went along. She was brilliant, dealing with rejections but she also got a steady supply of interested people and I then phoned them and made an appointment.  This is what I was good at, and I knew they were already interested. I kept the policies very small, affordable for them and they always had the option to change it for something better if their circumstances changed. It was like magic, all of a sudden, I was so busy, long days and nights but it was working. I just focussed on the very small policies, it got to the stage where my manager had to get the admin staff to help me with my admin, and he also asked to speak at a branch meeting to share what I was doing, for everyone else was still doing poorly, and I did with honesty, telling them what was working for me. I won the Christmas hamper being the top salesman for the Northern region. Here though is the interesting thing, by focussing on the small policies I started to get much bigger policies too, they kind of just fell into my lap. So, the moral of this true tale, never forget the importance of the small things, they are what keep out feet on the ground and then anything after that is a bonus. Negative thoughts lead towards a downward spiral and by changing them we can reach for the stars.