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Always Respect What You Have To Offer

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: Leaders, sales people, consultants - anyone who makes their living by influencing and encouraging others - these folks know it's key to respect what you have to offer. You are a good deal. A GREAT deal. As a starting point, give yourself permission to realize that about yourself. And make sure you work hard to back up such a bold claim! That's what true entrepreneurs do... they figure out what people really need, and they create the solutions that fulfill those needs....

Always Respect What You Have To Offer

Be Confident - Not Arrogant - And Back Up Your Claims It's Valentine's Day week, and love is still in the air! Maybe that's what recently recalled to my memory a cautionary tale of romance from my own distant past, and the story might be a good metaphor for leaders and salespeople who need to maintain an attitude of confidence in what they have to offer.

I've pretty-much been married my entire adult life, and I have no regrets about that. By the time I was a young paratrooper, I already had a steady girl back home, and never really had to play the dating game. Whew! But for one brief period, between the time my girlfriend dumped me and the occasion of my first marriage, I did actually pluck up the courage to ask for - and get - a date.

The date was with a girl I'll call Ann, who was not the most gorgeous and wonderful girl on Earth but certainly was the most gorgeous and wonderful (and only) girl in our barracks. She got to have her own room on the ground floor, of course, being the only female in our unit. The rest of the troops had accomodations upstairs, and every other soldier in the barracks had roommates.

I was one of the lucky kids who had permission to live in a house off-post, and at the time of the Big Date I had just moved out of the barracks. I don't know why Ann agreed to go out with me - as you can imagine, she was in hot demand - but agree she did. That evening, I put on my best clothes (the clean ones), jumped into my ugly car and drove to Fort Bragg to pick her up.

Now, I've always been one of those hopeless romantics you hear about. It was just suipposed to be a casual date, but I was quite sweaty about the whole thing. And that's why it was really stressing me out that I was running late (I hadn't yet mastered the commute from my new home). This was back in the days before cell phones, and barracks-dwelling soldiers didn't have phones in their rooms... so there was no way I could call Ann and tell her I was delayed. I just had to get there and apologize.

I was a full twenty minutes late when I pulled up to the barracks, dashed inside, and banged on Ann's door. No answer. After a few more attempts, the CQ ("Charge of Quarters" - the guy who had to stay up all night and act as the barracks' "hall monitor") told me she had already gone out.

"She looked mad, too," the CQ said. "I guess you're too late."

My one chance at a big date with the one-and-only girl in the unit, and I had blown it. I turned red, and then had nothing better to do but to slink out to my car and get out of there.

It's funny what you remember about a thing like that - in this case, it's just a little thing, but I remember all these years later exactly how I felt and what I said to myself. "She wouldn't wait twenty minutes for me," I remember thinking. "But there's some girl out there who would wait twenty years for me, and be glad to have me whenever she could."

As I write about it now, I worry that it sounds arrogant. But that's not how it felt back then. Remember, I was truly a hopeless romantic, and as it turns out I truly was married for the next several decades. Faithfully. Even by then, I had absolutely committed myself to becoming the kind of life partner any wonderful girl would be happy to wait for... and, of course, that would mean being the kind of gentlemen who would work hard to make sure his beloved didn't have to wait for him... or for anything else, if he could help it!

I've tried to live up to that commitment, and while I haven't taken a poll lately, I'd hazard a guess that all of my many wives (OK, both of them) would tell you I've been a pretty decent husband. I've bought fields full of flowers, done a lifetime's worth of ugly chores, been a decent provider, showed countless unexpected kindnesses, and stayed completely faithful. That's not a bad list of accomplishments in any committed relationship. And it makes me a pretty good deal.

Your loss, Ann. Who knows what twenty minutes of patience might've earned you that night?

I'm kidding about that, of course. I'm sure Ann landed on her feet, and survived the lost opportunity of the Big Date that never was! But there is a lesson in there, I think.

Leaders, sales people, consultants - anyone who makes their living by influencing and encouraging others - these folks know it's key to respect what you have to offer. You are a good deal. A GREAT deal. As a starting point, give yourself permission to realize that about yourself. And make sure you work hard to back up such a bold claim! That's what true entrepreneurs do... they figure out what people really need, and they create the solutions that fulfill those needs.

So don't be desperate. It diminishes your offering. If your customer or client doesn't ultimately see the immense value in your proposal, take it away from her. There is some other client out there who's been waiting years for just the sort of opportunity you have to offer.

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Article Tags: beginning sales tips, health wealth and happiness, inspirational leadership, personal responsibility



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