Maggie and I love to read. As a matter of fact, for nearly three years we have read every single day - sure, there may have been one or two days here and there we missed, but they were VERY far and few between.
We didn't always love to read though. Heck, before we really started to focus on it, I'm not sure either of us read a book from cover to cover since our college days, if even then 馃き
Anyhow, the point is, we learned to love to read by cultivating the habit and learning what works best for us. Maybe in another post we'll share with you what that is and how we've "hacked" our way to reading consistently.
So, as I was enjoying a cup of coffee and getting in my morning read, I discovered a new way of looking at how to view competition and wanted to share what my thoughts on it were.
Here it is:
"The roots of the word "compete" are the Latin con petire, which meant "to seek together." What each person seeks is to actualize her potential, and this task is made easier when others force us to do our best. Of course, competition improves experience only as long as attention is focused primarily on the activity itself. If extrinsic goals - such as beating the opponent, wanting to impress an audience, or obtaining a big professional contract - are what one is concerned about, then competition is likely to become a distraction, rather than an incentive to focus consciousness on what is happening." flow pg 73, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
After reading this a huge lightbulb wen't off for me. Admittedly it may have been a result of a bit of confirmation bias on my part, for various reasons, but impactful non-the-less and here's why.
In my early sales days I worked in call centers, boiler-room style sales floors and pretty much every other kind of sales environment you can think of. There were always leader boards, team chants and all that other stuff that I do believe have their place and prove to be valuable to an extent, but massively mis-guided.
For the most part, what I experienced and was taught in those days was that in order to be successful you had to be ultra competitive. You had to ABC "Always Be Closing" "Sale or Be Sold" and every other cliche sales speak you can think of.
And if you weren't willing or able to be a hard-closer/top performer you were made to feel inadequate. I struggled in sales for quite a while because of this. I instinctively knew that that wasn't my style and it didn't feel good to win that way. It took me a pretty long time to learn and recognize that sales does not have to be a zero sum game.
Before I get too long-winded here, because I'm routinely guilty of that, my point in all of this is not to disparage the "traditional" sales methodologies out there. I would be foolish to as many of them have stood the test of time and many of which I still believe in and practice myself.
The point is that I don't think the majority of sales professionals and people in general really understand competitiveness, and that is massively holding them back.
Once I shifted my thinking to one wherein I truly did want to provide value to my customers AND colleagues rather than compete with them, is when I really started to see results. I started to compete with myself instead of my customers and colleagues. I started to use my performance and my performance alone as a measuring stick and barometer for growth.
When I did this, not only did my sales numbers skyrocket, but I actually started to have fun and look forward to the next time I could make a pitch.
Morale of the story. Be competitive. But, do so from the right frame of mind and understanding of what it really means to be competitive. Use your customers, colleagues, and competitors as that added push and motivation to help you improve and beat who you were yesterday.
A rising tide lifts all boats. Be that tide.
What do you think? How have you approached sales and has it served you well?