“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you are not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out,” said Steve Jobs.
But what is “Passion”? It is an over-used, often mis-understood term. What does it really mean? According to Kevin Hall in “Aspire” passion traditionally meant, and still should mean, “a willingness to suffer for what you love.”
Putting those two ideas together and you have a powerful unstoppable force: if you are full of a deep desire to the point that you are willing to suffer for it, to keep going with total commitment, regardless of personal discomfort, you will overcome mental fears and physical obstructions. As Dave Mattson says in the Sandler course “Leadership for Organisational Excellence” “Passion is not an event, but a contagious state of mind that embraces continuous improvement.”
If you are lacking a required physical or mental ability then realistically you will not be able to attain your goal, despite your high level of passion and desire to improve. However, there are many examples of men and women achieving apparently impossible things given their lack of resources, simply because they were determined to do it. There are many recorded feats by those who apparently should not have been able to achieve them.
For example, 1994 Nobel Prize winner John Nash, made well-known through the film “A Beautiful Mind” suffered acutely from paranoid schizophrenia. Stephen Hawking was one of the most famous scientists of recent times and yet could only communicate through slight movements of his head and eyes. Climbing Mount Everest is one of the most difficult physical challenges on Earth and you would expect you could only do so with all your limbs and a fit body; the top has been reached by amputees, sufferers of Multiple Sclerosis and even a blind person.
If these people can achieve such challenging goals, then surely as a businessperson you can achieve your goals if you have enough passion. But take a moment to recognise the pain and discomfort these brave people went through. As a businessperson you will have to be prepared to go through a lot of discomfort. You might have to suffer some frightening ordeals.
For many people, active person to person prospecting counts as a frightening, painful activity. That activity must be done regularly and consistently, and it remains painful. The only way you are going to get through that ordeal is to have sufficient willingness to suffer for the purpose of achieving what you want. It might seem extraordinary to equate the feats of brave people overcoming physical hardship with picking up a phone to speak to a stranger, but for many people the latter is hard. An ex-submarine commander I know found it scarier to do cold calls than deal with the danger of enemy attack whilst sitting underwater in a cramped metal bubble of oxygen.
You need to find and feed your passion. It might seem strange to say you need to have a passion for selling the product or service you are being employed to sell. Perhaps you can’t be expected to have passion for selling oil drums, packaging, stationery or whatever it is that your organisation offers. When you were growing up you never once thought it would be a wonderful thing to sell electrical components or advertising space. Particularly if it is not your own company, how can you be motivated to the point of “passion” to sell what could be seen as niche, or low-importance or fundamentally boring products or services?
When you talk to successful salespeople about what they sell, they communicate passion. They do not necessarily talk about what they sell. Their passion is much more likely to be about the problems they have helped solve and how they have made a difference to other people.
For many it is the selling process itself that is the source of their passion. They want to win. The pieces they are asked to use in the game (their products or services) is immaterial, it is the winning that counts. The best kind of winning, the type of win that inspires most passion, is when everybody wins; you, your clients and your organisation. That is why the Sandler system fires up so many salespeople; it is a qualification system designed to help all sides win. The best salespeople are prepared to get uncomfortable, to suffer inconveniences, for the sole purpose of doing the best for their clients, their organisation and for their families. That is Passion.
It is easier to deal with the inevitable challenging times if you have an even bigger game plan. Whatever kind of businessperson you are, you should see yourself as leading your own business. That might mean you have only one client, the organisation that pays your salary, but you are offering your expertise, time and effort which you are being paid for, just like any other supplier. Sandler has a tool for leaders that can be used by any businessperson to help you identify what is your Passion. The tool suggests that you should know what wisdom you are building up, what surplus you are adding to, what fortune you are aiming for and what legacy you mean to leave behind. When you know these things, business becomes your vehicle to reach your own goals and passion therefore feeds your business life.
If you have Passion, it suggests you are probably what Eric Byrne termed one of life’s Winners. Winners expect to win, regardless of setbacks. They have been trained by life and by their own experiences to assume that winning is inevitable, given the right techniques and effort. Famous examples of Winners include Richard Branson who managed to lose a fortune on the way to being one of the world’s most acclaimed entrepreneurs.
In contrast Eric Byrne also identified “Losers” and “At Leasters”. Losers will manage to take what they are given and make sure life reflects their worldview in way that they will lose, regardless of technique and effort. “At Leasters” will bounce between good times and bad, trying to take control of their lives, but not quite managing it, telling themselves that “at least they did their best”. What Professor Byrne was explaining is that we all operate in our own “comfort zone”. Typically, we can’t operate outside where we find comfortable for any sustained length of time. That makes sense. If you are sure life will treat you badly and suddenly life deals you a fantastic opportunity, you would naturally put that down to luck and not expect it to last long. Unfortunately, whatever you think about where you are in the natural order of things, you are right. You have to be, or you would either change your perception or change the circumstance after a while. This psychological theory led David Sandler to suggest that you can only perform in a way consistent with how you perceive yourself. If that is true, and experience would suggest it is, then the most important key to superior performance is your Attitude. Passion and Attitude are linked: if you have Passion, then working on having a good Attitude makes sense. If you lack Passion, you are unlikely to be able to sustain a good Attitude.
Passion plays a key role in Personal Presence. If you have Passion everybody around you can tell. Dave Arch in “Transforming Leaders” suggests that sharing your passion means you are being vulnerable as you are prepared to go out on a limb regardless of others’ perceptions. Passion doesn’t mean shouting your beliefs or constantly mentioning them, but passion does mean having the courage to do and say what needs to be said and done. It is a rare quality that needs careful tending.
If you'd like some exercises in finding and taking good care of your Passion, contact me and I'll send you my e-book.
