Sales Training London: How to Fail Your Way to Success in a New Business

WHAT IS THE ANATOMY OF FAILURE?

Shock is often the first reaction I have when I fail, even if I saw it coming. It hurts, I smart then the disbelief sets in and I start to question, “Why me?”, “Why now?” and then resentment starts to take hold. “It’s not fair”, “It shouldn’t have happened to me”, “I worked so hard”, “I really needed that to work”. Hopefully I begin to accept it as a reality, it’s happened, it’s history and there’s nothing I can do about that. But I can do something about it in the future.

I can choose to act, I can decide and I can take preventative or remedial action. I can set better goals, I can focus on the things I want instead of focusing on the things I don’t want.

There is a theory to which I subscribe around the Law of Attraction. Focus on anything and sure enough that tends to come to you. Focus on your “failure” and the impact that is having on you and sure enough, you fail and fail and fail again. Focus on how stupid you were and you’ll relive that stupidity time and again. Focus on your debts and you get deeper in debt. Focus on not being able to close sales and you will continue letting qualified prospects who have problems that you can fix, and both the will and the ability to make a decision and pay you to help them fix it, within a defined timetable, slip through your fingers.

This paper is intended to help you recognise these symptoms, uncover the secrets of how you can make success come to you through your failures and take meaningful, decisive action towards your success.

WHY IS FAILURE PART OF THE HUMAN CONDITION?

Experience can be defined as the bringing together of your mistakes, bad choices, terrible decisions and stupid actions as lessons learned and applied. Failure is inevitable, it is simply part of the human condition. Accept it and realise that nothing perfect can be created until it already exists. You have to make mistakes to learn your lessons. Don’t let that allow you to waste scarce time getting ready to get ready.

Learning lessons from your failure is a sign of growth. Failure is a sign of strength not weakness. Failure helps you to become stronger, wiser, leaner, more effective but only if you learn and apply your lessons. Failure in small business comes in all shapes and sizes. I failed in the selection of my business partner and in how I managed that relationship. I failed in setting my business up on a strong financial footing and have fought tooth and nail to survive month after month, day after day as a result. I failed to follow my own lessons and became complacent in my success so when contracts were cancelled without notice I had no fall back position. I failed to listen to my instincts on so many things, most notably a key network contact whose activities have left me at fault in my judgement but I’m now 3 years back from where I was as a result.

Nothing I did happened by accident. As I write this I’m heavily overweight and unfit. Never in my life have I accidentally eaten anything! I am responsible for my condition and it is up to me, no one else, to recognise that and do something about this. I could dwell on my “slow metabolism” (also my own fault for acting like a sloth!), my busy lifestyle (my choice), my constant tiredness (my choice to sleep only a few hours, work long hours, struggle, devote hundreds of hours a year to learn and improve, satisfy the needs of my clients, help my network), my lack of family time (again my choice to focus on generating the income we need to put my 3 daughters through a good education and live in a rural setting).

I made these choices, I failed many times along the way, I still fail and I will in the future on my road to success.

WHAT IS TRUE FAILURE?

Repetition of the same mistakes time and again is really failing. It’s a monumental mistake to keep doing the same thing time and again and expect a different result. I think that not trusting your gut, your instincts is a sure fire way to achieve failure. Acceptance of the status quo is a major form of failure too. Nothing great is achieved by settling for the “way things have always been done”. The words “that’s the way things are done around here” without questioning that “truth” and the underlying beliefs behind it simply invite trouble. Maybe not today, but your competition is sitting on there arses, twiddling their thumbs aren’t they. They accept that change is impossible too don’t they?

Read Felix Dennis’s book “How to Get Rich” if you want to learn about the importance of failure, risk taking and trusting your gut. Also recognise that to get rich, you’re going to have to do some things you won’t like doing, you’re going to have to make some tough choices and you’re going to have to sacrifice a lot to get there. You’ll also have to give a damn about what other’s think about you. You have to get tough, get focused and get motivated to do whatever is necessary to succeed in your small business, especially if you want to make it a big business.

Success in business does not equate to happiness in life. It may come, it may not, but you’re going to have to a lot of things that won’t make you happy in the short-term. Long hours, tough negotiation, saying “no” to things that get in your way, firing people, suppliers, partners who are holding you back or damaging your progress are the realities of success.

Failure, true failure is not learning the lessons, especially the toughest lessons that mean you aren’t always lovable. “The fear of failure is understandable, but misguided. If you give a damn what the neighbours think, you’ll never be rich”, says Dennis.

WHY IS FAILURE GOOD IN BUSINESS?

Learning is the greatest reward of failure. To learn you have to recognise the causes of your failures. Are they your fault, are they a result of your timing, your circumstances, the economy, your pricing, your communication style, your approach to selling, to marketing, your behaviour, your attitudes, your hiring decisions, your neediness in front of customers, your inability to say no, your poor cash-flow management, your poor qualification of opportunities or the amount of free consulting you give with no return for your efforts? This list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding the causes of your failures. Make your own, record what happens, document how and when you were rejected, identify what possible reasons there may have been for that rejection. Put yourself in your client or prospect’s shoes and ask “If I were them and someone had done, said or reacted in that way to me, knowing what I know about them, would I have kicked me into touch too?”

Instinct is one of your most powerful tools to achieve success. Never discount your gut. If your guts are telling you something is wrong, listen carefully to what you’re hearing and uncover why you feel that way. But above all, seek to gain something form all of your failures.

In a selling context failure is not, not getting a deal, it’s not getting a lesson, its not getting a referral. You can’t hope to sell to everyone, not everyone will like you, not everyone needs what you have to offer and not everyone is willing to receive your help. Accept that. But don’t accept that there is nothing to be gained from your failures.

Scar tissue and plenty of it is what separates the men from the boys. Felix Dennis started out small and grew to become one of the richest men in the UK. He built his empire by throwing money, time and resources at risky ventures. Today he still encourages his managers to spend money and make mistakes. “If the worst happens and they spend a few million and only get half of it back, it’s not the end of the world – at least they’ll have learned a few lessons”.

Who do you know who’s achieved anything big or meaningful without lots of scar tissue, sleepless nights and pressure. If your back is against the wall that is when you can really prove your mettle. I make mistake after mistake, generally now they’re different mistakes to those I’ve made previously (I am learning, slowly but I’m learning), but I welcome them as opportunities to learn.

Learn from the scar tissue of others too. Speak to people like you who face the same problems you face, people who’ve overcome them, people who are stuck in a rut (a rut is a coffin with both ends kicked out!) and see what they’re doing to self harm, replicate their bad luck and learn how not to do that in your business.

HOW CAN YOU AVOID REPEATED FAILURE?

Record your mistakes. Have a plentiful supply of 3x5 inch index cards, and write down what happens. On the reverse write down what you could have done or said differently. Write down the questions you could have asked back to a customer who had an objection to get better information, to understand their concern better, to get them to handle their own objection for themselves.

Journal, every day. Write down your goals for the day relating to your behaviours and your attitudes. Write down what you did and record where you were successful and what lessons you learned form your failures. Make yourself accountable to yourself and to others. Take on a mentor or a coach, be that in a formal arrangement or form a “think tank” or support group. In small business you have to do everything until you can afford to hire. When you hire, can you delegate or do you feel the need to keep a firm grip on everything? Then question your purpose for hiring or your hiring decisions. A journal is one of the most powerful ways you have to keep on track and prevents you from hiding from yourself, from lying to yourself and from having no point of reference to fall back on when you see the early signs of failure looming.

Review your journal regularly to see where change began to happen in your business, to learn and reinforce your hard earned lessons. Review your position regularly to see where you’ve come from and where you’re headed. Is who you’re becoming the person, entrepreneur or leader the one you want to become? Does your behaviour serve you or hurt you? Reviewing your journal regularly helps you to move towards your success.

Journal the lessons you learned. Put a value on each lesson. I left £28 million behind in lost sales over 17 years by not controlling the sale from the off. That equates to £8.4 million in lost commissions. My lesson on selecting partners has cost me over £260,000 so far and counting. My lesson about keeping the pipeline filled cost me over £1.9 million. My lesson about ruthless qualification cost me about 300 hours a year for 17 years and £12 million. How much do your lessons cost you?

WHY YOU SHOULD FAIL BIG AND OFTEN?

Apathy is the death knell of success in business. In you, in your employees, in your partners, the biggest single reason customers and personnel leave you is they don’t feel you love them any more i.e. perceived indifference. 10 years in recruitment taught me the biggest reason salespeople left their jobs was because they didn’t feel valued at their current company. How many customers have you lost because you didn’t appear to care for them? How many of you even know why you lose customers? Do you ever ask?

Failing in this way can be immensely rewarding. Ask why you failed, always ask why. Get past symptom and identify the cause. You can only fix things when you know their cause, putting sticking plaster on a cancer won’t fix anything long term.

Being poor is a condition, being broke is a state of mind. You may not be earning what you want now, but risk often and risk big and you will hit pay dirt. It comes back to the Law of Attraction. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT ALL THE TIME and by strange coincidence you start to attract the people and circumstances to help you succeed. Don’t just “try it”, do it. Do it now. Write down what you want even if you risk failing, ridicule, rejection, not being liked.

Commit to doing whatever is necessary to achieve your desired result, success.

WHAT IS SACRIFICE?

Value is the starting point of understanding sacrifice. If you lose your life trying to save your own child is that a sacrifice? If you lose your life saving a stranger who is drowning is that a sacrifice? You probably place a higher value on the life of your child than you do on your own, so that isn’t a sacrifice, where as you probably place a higher value on your life than that of a total stranger, so that is a sacrifice; does that make sense?

Sacrifice is giving something of a higher value for something of a lesser value. If you decide to risk something of a lower value for something of a greater value in your business that makes good sense to me. Risk your current level of comfort for growth, greater market share, bigger customers and you have my support. If you have customers who are a pain in the arse, who make your life hell, who cost you too much and you replace them with customers who are decisive, pay for what they ask and don’t expect more than they have agreed, who pay on time, who pay well, is that a sacrifice? I don’t think so. But it is a risk. Leaving behind safe income (even if it is unprofitable you feel good that you’re earning something) is a scary proposition precisely because it’s a risk …. but it isn’t a sacrifice.

WHY RISK?

Danger is always present whenever you risk. You could lose something, or everything. It’s interesting that in the States many venture capitalists won’t invest in any entrepreneur (you notice I don’t say their business but I point to the individual) unless they‘ve been bankrupted at least 3 times. These are people who have a lot of money and generally don’t squander it unless they think they can get a return. So why do they invest in repeated failures?

Pressure in business is immense. It is a dog eat dog world and there are no prizes for trying, for having the better idea but coming second, the bank doesn’t give you extra credit for being original. Winning is what matters most. That’s predicated by knowing how to lose …. and learn from it.

You’re in business for many reasons but unless making a profit is the one that you have at the forefront of your mind, you won’t be in business for long. But a life without risk is a life without growth.

Direction is important in your risk strategy. Know where you’re headed (it comes back to those pesky goals again) and know where you are in relation to where you want to be. Focus on what you want, focus on what you want.

WHY IS BEING AN "AT-LEASTER" IS THE GREATEST FORM OF FAILURE?

Settle for your lot in life and you’ve all you deserve. This isn’t a popular view but to me this is a cardinal sin against God and Man. “At least I didn’t get creamed”, “at least I didn’t lose everything”, “at least I made my mortgage payment this month” – these are the words of an at-leaster. The worst kind of businessperson. Not an entrepreneur. If all you want is a lifestyle business then you’re welcome to it, but you’re probably OK that taxes are going up all the time, that there’s more red tape, that the Chinese can manufacture cheaper than us, that the Indians can undercut us on price for outsourced services.

Do you think for a moment that your Chinese or Indian counterpart is saying “I need more balance in my life” or is he saying “Thank you Volkswagon employees for engineering the EU working time directive, so I can be even more competitive and take even more market share from my European rivals”? Did you know that there is a new Chinese $dollar millionaire made every 28 seconds? Feeling good about your business now?

Give up giving up. Never, never, never settle, never stop striving and never settle for settling for the status quo – unless you don’t mind being turned into minced meat. If your competition creeps up on you and you’ve settled you have only yourself to blame and no one should offer you a shred of sympathy. The world is tough. On a social level your wife or husband may be preyed on by a randy suitor (competitor). At work your job is only safe as long as you make it so and even that is up to the whim of others. In business as in life the ability to keep striving through the continuous failures separates those who crash on the rocks below and those who eventually triumph.

WHY YOU'RE A PRODUCT OF YOUR FAILURES AND DECISIONS Acceptance that failure is an essential part of the human condition is a fine lesson in itself. The realisation that all those blunders, those knock-backs, rejections, kicks in the teeth and every other part of your anatomy were leading you to this point in your life. Every choice you ever made, every decision (or indecision) led you to this moment. You made those choices.

Defeat is a condition; resignation is a state of mind. Victory is far from assured even if you learn from your mistakes. Your path through failure is a journey not an event and is never certain in either its outcome or path. But if you’re resigned to being a victim it’s certain you will always be a failure. Make the effort; take the risks; blame no one else for your situation and learn.

“Success is never permanent. Failure is never fatal. The only thing that really counts is to never, never, never give up.” Winston Churchill.

Have you ever done something you wanted to go back in time and change? Tough luck, you can’t. But you learn the lesson. The last word on this falls to Horace, “failure has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.” You are where you are today, because of your choices, your mistakes, your failures. What new failures await you? Each one offered you the promise of a lesson. Cherish them. They drive your success.

*** End ***

If you want to discuss the lessons you’re missing from your failures or what your current behaviours might be costing you in your life or business call Marcus Cauchi on +44 (0)845 458 1237 or +44 (0)7876 616983. For details on the Sandler Sales Institute sales and sales management training programmes I offer, or for permission to reproduce this article please eMail MCauchi@SALTeurope.com.

© Marcus Cauchi and Sandler Systems Inc 2006

Sales Training London: How to Fail Your Way to Success in a New Business - To learn more about this author, visit Marcus Cauchi's Website.

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