Let me begin, well at the beginning. When do you know or perhaps better accept your natural skill or ability? For some, take American Idol, or perhaps even X Factor where that little 12 year old girl stood up and out sang everyone except the final contestant in 2012 season. That was a person who knew, as she claimed with great seriousness “I wanted to be a singer – all my life!”
Well I was not that lucky or apparently smart enough. And yet at every turn, the door kept hitting me in the backside, I simply had a hard time getting the message. In looking back, my first sales success, was my first business at 12 years old, also. I started with a leaf rake in the fall, and by thirteen had progressed to a lawn mower and with those earnings a tractor. All of a sudden, I had 10 weekly clients and I was busy full time making money and packing away dollars, $8 – $15 at a time. As a side note, gas was like 30 cents a gallon then. But it was a business and I built income, and eventually at 17 bought my first car, well really a truck, a Land Rover 109long in fact.
I acquired customers by knocking on doors, referencing current customers satisfaction with my service, and by quoting price points that were fair and reasonable. I committed to delivery and maintained every customer’s yard with the desire to build the business. To be fair, I did not recognize these thoughts at 14 – 17 years old, but none the same in looking back the similarities to today, the bridge of time in commitment to quality has not changed. That was sales then and in fact is sales today. Took a while for me to recognize that this was my personal ability.