In sales, massive action is the one single thing that will guarantee you increased success more than any other! If you want to guarantee X, take massive amounts of action that will achieve X in abundance. Your problem will no longer be how to achieve an abundance of X; rather, it will be how to manage the abundance of X.
Massive Action = New Problems. It’s at this point that you know you’re doing enough.
Throw a pebble in a pond and it creates ever-widening ripples. Pound the pond with mortar round after mortar round and then follow up with more mortar rounds, and you’ll create a massive lake. Everyone around will come to see what you’re doing.
By taking enough massive action, something will be changed, something will be created, and results will be attained. In the sales arena, massive action is like the stairway to heaven, where the sales gods will praise you with trophies, trips, rewards, and the guarantee of new levels of income! Your fellow salespeople, however, may praise you only with criticism, tell you that you’re working too hard, and give you free advice like “Slow down—smell the roses.” Disregard them and consider their suppressive comments to be a sign that you are on the right track. Just continue to add wood to your fire. All fire requires constant fuel, and success in sales requires more action.
Anyone who tells you that you’re working too hard is not working hard enough. Unfortunately, such people have given up their hope of having an extraordinary life. Such people are mediocre at best and have forgotten about the dreams they used to have. Take massive action until you get new problems, at which point you will get new levels of sales results. Don’t quit until you get new problems—problems like taxes, cars, homes, and where to go on vacation.
THE 10X RULE
If you want one thing, take massive action equal to at least ten times what you think it will take to ensure that you attain that one thing. If you do that, you won’t have to hope, wish, cross your fingers, or pray for what you want. What you want—and far more—will come to you when the right amount of action is created!
A salesperson once told me about the bad luck he’d been experiencing. His appointment canceled, a buyer backed out, another customer had to change his order, and so on. I told him that his problem wasn’t bad luck or misfortune; it was that he didn’t have enough in his pipeline. I suggested that if he took ten times more action than he had been doing, he would have no time to dwell on these so-called misfortunes and would have actually welcomed someone canceling out, as it would have been a relief rather than a misfortune.
If you take enough action and are getting results, then it’s no big deal when an appointment cancels or a buyer backs out. In fact, you’ll welcome the occasional cancellation since it’ll increase your ability to get to everyone on your lineup. But if you’re taking only small amounts of action, every time you lose a deal, all of your attention is diverted to the so-called misfortune and the loss because you don’t have anything to replace it with. You’ve put too much attention on too little. Put your attention on massive to ensure that you don’t become passive.
ACT LIKE A MADMAN
An associate of mine watched me call a client fifteen times in three days without the client ever returning my call. Was that too much? I don’t think so. When I want to get something done, I keep taking action until I get what I want. Never be reasonable when it comes to taking action. Just take more action. Be almost insane with how much action you take to get the job done.
A farmer should plant far more than he can possibly eat so that if a drought or famine occurs he can still take care of his family and his neighbors. A realtor who wants listings should call hundreds of people to get just one and will probably end up with many. If you want appointments, call every friend you have and every past client. Stop people on the streets if that’s what it takes. Be mad in how much action you take until it becomes a habit, a way of life, and normal for you. Once you are greatly successful, people will talk about how successful they always knew you would be, rather than how crazy you were. In no time, you’ll be overflowing with appointments, sales, and success.
Act like a madman when it comes to action and get completely unreasonable about what you think it will take to get the job done. Be without sanity or logic or reason when it comes to taking massive amounts of action and you’ll reach heights that others never dreamed possible. Massive action first equals new problems, but then will equal massive sales.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN QUESTIONS
What is the one thing the author states that most people incorrectly estimate in order to get the results they want?