When I first started with Sandler, I had a deal that looked like it was going to become my first sale. We had done the work. The conversations were good. The opportunity was real. I could almost see the finish line.
And then the war escalated.
I got the message from my prospect: “Upper management has given us a red light.”
That was it.
Nothing I did wrong. Nothing I could overcome with a better sales technique. The circumstances changed, and the deal died.
At least, that’s what I thought.
A couple of months later, I made a decision that scared the hell out of me. After more than 20 years building a career in the film industry, I decided I was going all-in on Sandler. No safety net. No guaranteed paycheck. I had a family, bills, responsibilities, and I hadn’t made a single sale.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do.
I worked.
I called. I prospected. I networked. I trained. I got rejected. I woke up the next morning and did it again.
Week one. Week two. Week three.
Nothing.
By the time I was heading into week seven, I had been grinding every day and had made essentially no money from the decision I had just bet on.
That’s where Mamba Mentality gets misunderstood.
It’s easy to talk about being relentless when you’re winning. It’s a hell of a lot harder when you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do and there’s still no scoreboard telling you it’s working.
Then came one of my hardest prospecting days yet. I had spent the day making calls, hearing no, getting nowhere and questioning whether any of this was actually going to pay off.
At the end of the day, I checked my email.
There it was, the same prospect, and essentially the same words I’d heard months earlier—with one enormous difference:
“Upper management has given us the green light. Let’s meet.”
That became my first sale and I’ve thought about that email a lot since, because I couldn’t control when that green light came.
I couldn’t control the war. I couldn’t control upper management. I couldn’t control whether somebody answered my phone call.
But I could control what Dylan did while the light was red.
That’s the lesson.
Sometimes you’re doing all the right things and the scoreboard still says zero. That’s when most people start changing the plan, doubting themselves, slowing down, or quitting. But the behaviors you’re putting in today might not pay you today.
You have to keep doing the work while the light is red—so you’re ready when it finally turns green.
Keep Building the Behaviors That Build Your Pipeline
You can’t control when every prospect will be ready to buy, but you can control the behaviors that keep creating opportunities. Sandler’s free guide, How to Overcome Prospecting Mistakes and Increase Your Sales Pipeline, looks at the commitment, conviction and consistency required to keep prospecting when the results aren’t immediate.
