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one.
Do you know how many people strive every day to be accepted by everyone else? With many people, including many in sales, that’s their greatest motivation—and their greatest weakness. But we all want to be liked, don’t we?
Now here’s an interesting thing that happens to every new salesperson regardless of the product or service. When you’re brand new to your company (and maybe you’re also new to the profession of selling) and first go into your new sales job all loaded with enthusiasm, who’s sitting there waiting to accept or reject you?
Is it the achievers or the non-achievers who’re parked there? Is it the Five Percent or the Ninety-Five Percent?
Which group lives in the office? Which group is out running for more business?
The chances are good that someone will say, “Now let me tell you how things really stand around here.” When that happens, you’d think there’s one chance in twenty of that someone being an achiever, but you may not even see the achievers for weeks. They’re busy doing the things that make them great. When you’re finally introduced to one of the Five Percent, they’ll say something like this and not much more: “Glad to have you with us. This is a terrific company, and you’re going to do great here. Nice meeting you. See you later.”
Some people in your company will tell you that this training won’t help you. Without giving these concepts and techniques a fair trial, they’ll say that. After merely skimming these pages looking for something to ridicule or twist, some of them will say that. Without eveji cracking this book open, a few will say that. These people are the losers, and they want you to join them. The last thing they want you to do is join the winners. To show why this is so important to them, let’s get on the case of Jack Bumyears.
Jack’s been in the sales department of your new firm for almost eleven years now—and he hasn’t learned a new sales technique in 120 months. When you start, everyone from the company president on down wants you to succeed—except Jack and his friends. Every time someone new comes whistling in from nowhere and makes good, Jack is faced with a hard question: “This new jerk did it. Why can’t I?”
Bumyears knows the answer to that question as well as anyone does:
Jack is a non-achiever because Jack refuses to be effective. But that’s the one answer Jack can’t accept. To do so would be admitting to himself that his work habits and methods must be drastically changed before he can ceed. Too painful, too frightening, to think about. Far easier to blame the newcomer’s success on favoritism, pure dumb luck, a lack of ethics— anything that will steer the guilt away from Jack’s shoulders.
But, no matter how ingenious Jack’s been about excuses, no matter how much time and effort he puts into keeping those excuses tight, the truth is always in there, gnawing to be free.
After this happens a time or two, Jack automatically develops anxiety whenever a newcomer shows promise. Alert, hardworking, eager-to-learn people have a nasty habit of quickly succeeding, Jack learns, and that always forces him into another agonizing search for an acceptable explanation. The pain reaches down into Jack’s subconscious mind and demands relief. Then Jack begins to act on a sad and false belief: That the best way to cope with other people’s success is not to have any of it around. Soon he’s attained a high level of non-achievement by becoming skilled at stifling ambition among his peers. Every weakness detected in an eager person is deftly exploited. Peer pressure is subtly guided toward containing anyone who shows signs of drive. If these tactics seem to be failing, Bumyears and friends will suddenly turn cold, and reject the budding winner whenever they can. This is where the ambitious sales person who has a strong need to be accepted by his or her peers runs into danger, because the price of peer acceptance is to accept being average. Only the strong can resist this pressure; only the strong can pay this additional price of success.
Our profession of sales is one of the few that people can retire into. Normally, you retire to the pasture. If there’s anyone who attacks the usefulness of this book, find out their income. If they’re not making what you want to make, you’ve found a Jack Bumyears.
Surround yourself with people most like the person you want to become Whether you realize it or not, what happens is that you become more like the people you associate with, and less like the people you don’t associate with, as time passes. You unconsciously pick up little and large ways of achieving—or not achieving—from the people you rub elbows with every day. Unconsciously, you gather attitudes and ideas, and absorb everything from petty details to major concepts that’ 11 spur you on to greater achievement—or sink you deeper into non-achievement.
Don’t hang around with people whose financial and emotional thinking is on a lower level than yours. You need to grow. They don’t. So they won’t help you expand your horizons, and they can’t inspire you. Choosing the right associates calls for hard choices. But we have to drift away from people more messed up than ourselves, or we’ll continue to soak up their influence, advice, and failings. Family responsibilities are one thing; your choice of friends is another. Mix with people who are plusses. It’s hard enough keeping yourself up so you can climb higher. Don’t make it tougher on yourself—possibly too tough—by trying to drag a bunch of losers up with
yoU.
Are you trying to get everyone to like you?
Are you holding back a little on your push for success because you don’t want to anger certain people who’ve let you know they don’t care for hard drivers? Why? You can’t afford to be popular with the losers.
Write down the names of the people you spend most of your time with, Go over that list carefully, and think about whether each person on it is an emotional plus for you. Put everyone who isn’t a positive force in your life on a second list, and then consider finding new people to be around instead of the non-plussers on your second list. If you decide to replace any of your present associates who are negative with enthusiastic new friends, you’ll be pleased at how effortless this process will be if you do it gradually. No open breaks. No frank discussions. Simply make yourself less available to the minus people, and fill the time saved with activities that’ll bring you into contact with positive new people. Some of them will become your friends.

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