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A couple of night's ago I watched the Acadamy nominated movie, "Into the Wild". This amazing and true story about a young man's journey to find himself touched me because I had a similar journey into the unknown as a teenager. When people learn that this well groomed, suit clad, sales mentor has hitch hiked across our lovely country not once, but five times, most shudder in disbelief. What this movie helped me recognize, is how that prepared me for my life in sales.
The first time I stuck out my thumb in an effort to go further than the five miles from my house to downtown Ithaca, NY I was 17. This time, I was on my way from Johnson City, TN to San Diego, CA. With nothing more than a back pack, a strong jacket, and a pair of shoes that fell apart in Arkansas, I hit the I-40 with visions of grandeur. Twelve hours later I was in Knoxville, about 105 miles away. I was cold, it was late, and I was afraid.
I spent the night in a Salvation Army flop house and woke hungry and achy. My spirit was broken and I picked up the receiver of a pay phone to call my parents and ask for help. The parents I had not talked to in over a week and who did not approve of what I was doing; the parents who would surely give me only one option for support. I would have to surrender and come home. Instead, I looked into my frustration and my dejection and summoned perseverance that drove my unwilling feet back out of the city and onto the freeway. Perseverance that shed my shoes as I walked up the on-ramp and ignored the pebbles that jabbed at my bare feet.
Ten minutes later I was in the car with the first of many of the most interesting and generous people. To this day I struggle to come across people as fantastic as those I met on this trip. The lady who picked me up in Knoxville, Sharon, drove me straight into Memphis. When she learned I wanted to go to Graceland, she both bought me some shoes and gave me $20 for admission. When I told her I had it already, she said, nonsense, I would need it for my travels.
There were other great moments, like the gentleman who drove me across the bridge from Memphis to Little Rock and insisted I eat dinner at a restaurant of his choosing. When I finished my meal, the waiter told me the man covered the bill before he left. There were other scary moments, like the guy who tried to run me off the shoulder in his Super Charger, or the ten hours in the rain in Amarillo, Texas. I had to pick myself up several times, but each time I managed to find an even greater moment, like crystal mining in Hot Springs, or seeing the sun set from a plateau in New Mexico, and visiting with my Grandma Goldie in Phoenix.
None of those miraculous moments would have happened if I had turned away from adversity. When I finally made it to my friend Milo's house in San Diego, I felt invincible. This is what I remembered as I watched this movie. I then thought about how I got to where I am today. It is such a natural transition from the hardships of hitchhiking to the challenges of sales. Surprisingly it took over five years from that journey to becoming a sales representative. The joy of the road took me back and forth another four times. Then I had my studies and my day jobs. When I finally entered sales, the fear others experienced in cold calling seemed odd to me. The frustration of constant no's and hang ups drove others from the boiler room. For me, it was a race to my next yes. Rejection was nothing compared to cold nights and howling coyotes not far enough away in the dark. Hang ups could not compare to semi after semi whipping me back with their drifts for hours on end. It was the next sale on the horizon that fueled my fire, it still is. Looking back it was much like that perseverance that took me away from that pay phone and back to the I-40.
For the startup, especially the bootstrapper, the road looks bleak. Much like that long wait between rides; it can be an eternity from one sale to the next. When you are on the leading, cutting, or bleeding, edge there are so many challenges from one prospect to the next; like the different terrains of the many states of our union. Remember, if you get discouraged and turn away from the task at hand, you will never know what may be just a little further down the road. If you think cold calling, prospecting, objection handling, and getting sales is challenging, get up, walk out the door and stick out your thumb.
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