WHAT IS THE SECRET OF SUCCESS?

What is the secret of success? * setting goals * achieving targets * qualities of an entrepreneur * business skills * positive thinking * self belief * taking risks

I know many successful businessmen and women; I taught most of them how to sell, how to close a deal and how to prospect for business. However, I am not responsible for their success because there were certain things that I nor anybody else could teach them. I have been asked what the secret of success was many times and the answer was always the same. "The secret to your success can only be discovered within the individual."

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I cut my teeth selling life assurance door to door; eventually becoming the most successful recruitment manager the industry ever had. When asked what my secret of success was, I always replied "Other people." It wasn't because I was a great sales trainer or fantastic motivator; it was simply my ability to recruit the right type of person for the job.

WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SUCCESSFUL

Selling life assurance door to door on a commission only basis is about as hard a sales job as you could find. Thirty years ago, when I started it was a great way to earn an extremely high income and many of us made a lot of money. However, for every salesman who succeeded, there were another thousand who failed. And when they failed, they discovered how destructive a commission only sales career could be.

Self-employed sales positions are often the first foray that anyone setting out on the entrepreneurial road encounter. Commission only sales positions always offer people the opportunity to earn far more than a normal sales job but it does not suit everyone.

It was always a bone of contention between me and some of the directors of the company; who couldn't have done the sales job, even if their lives depended on it; as to who and how we should recruit and train salesmen.

The company policy was to recruit potential sales people and stick them in a classroom and teach them how to sell, prospect for business and everything about the products. Full training, they believed was all anyone needed to succeed. This would appear to make sense to anyone who hadn't done the job but it was fundamentally flawed.

WHAT MAKES SOMEONE A SUCCESS?

Over several decades, tens of thousands of sales recruits were taken out of their steady jobs with the promise of high incomes and fortunes spent on product training and teaching selling skills only for these hopeful, hapless individuals, who only wanted a better life for their families to either fail or be mentally destroyed.

My approach was far simpler, cheaper and less scientific.

Rather than take someone out of an existing job where they may have been unhappy but at least had a regular income, I would ask them to come out knocking on doors for a few evenings or pass some time cold calling on the telephone. I gave them just a couple of hours training before throwing them into the deep end and going out to face the public.

Some trainees couldn't bring themselves to knock on a door or make a cold telephone call, some folded at the first f*** off, some threw in the towel within a couple of nights. Occasionally, someone would take to it like a duck to water and these were the people who got offered the positions. Those who didn't hadn't lost anything as they were able to go to work at their same old job the next day. I hadn't wasted weeks of my time training them and the company hadn't wasted money either.

I still use this method to this day when trying to ascertain if someone is suitable for one of our sales careers. Anyone, if they are of a high enough calibre and have the balls for the job will have the ability to go out and generate business if pointed in the right direction. Those type of people can't wait to get cracking and will not want to be contained in a training room when they could be outside making money.

THE QUALITIES NEEDED TO SUCCEED

All the sales training in the world wouldn't have given the people who threw in the towel the balls for the job. All the product training and knowledge wouldn't have given them the courage to go and knock on a door and nothing I could have taught them would have helped them acquire the qualities needed to do the job.

I wasn't prepared to take someone out of a secure environment in the hope of them making a success in sales and I wasn't prepared to spend weeks training them only to discover they had no backbone. There was nothing clever about what I did, I had no other way of discovering if they had the balls and enough desire to go out and knock on doors and the only way of them finding out if they had the courage was to make them confront their fears.

Those who did make it through, even with the little knowledge or training I initially gave them, were the people most likely to succeed, once they were given the knowledge and provided with the necessary sales skills. In fact, these people, in the main became real flyers and have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs in their own right.

That is what I meant by "other people" when someone asks me the secret of success. I have built my career by surrounding myself with high calibre people.

So how do you know if you have the qualities needed to achieve success?