In this article I’ll discuss secret number 5 from my business partner Steve Siebold’s book, 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class. It’s one of the most overlooked secrets in the book, and in my experience, one of the most profitable.
Mental Toughness Secret Number 5: The Great Ones Separate Truth from Fact
“Fact is reality. Truth is our perception of reality, and perceptions are subjective.” — Steve Siebold
In the banking equipment business, everyone knew summer was dead. And there were good reasons for it. Most of my sales were to the COO or the CEO, and those people had usually built up a lot of vacation time. On top of that, banking had a rule that upper-level management had to take at least two consecutive weeks away from the bank each year. The thinking was that if someone was up to something, like money laundering, it would show up within two weeks. So they all took their two weeks in the summer. And because the top two people couldn’t be out at the same time, that meant a minimum of four weeks without either the COO or the CEO in the building.
It got worse. My contracts typically ran anywhere from $50,000 to over a million dollars, so several other people were usually involved in the buying decision, and they were taking vacations too. The standard line I heard every June was, “Have a good summer. Talk to me mid-September.”
Even my dad, who had been in the business for over 30 years and was the number one sales rep in the company, told me, “It’s okay to call on people in the summer and build the relationships but you can back off a bit and don’t expect to sell much in those three months.”
Then one year, the company announced a summer sales contest. The company had three regions with roughly 1,000 sales reps each, and the top two reps in each region would win a trip to Las Vegas. Suddenly, I had a reason to question what everyone knew.
Instead of ‘knowing’ I couldn’t sell much in the summer, I started asking how. I got to my clients early, before summer started, to let them know what I was doing. I put together summer specials and discounts. I offered special payment terms. With some of my best clients, I was simply honest: I told them I was trying to win the trip and asked for their help. I even took some orders in May and asked those clients if I could enter them on June 1. I came up with every idea I could think of.
In a typical summer, I sold about $500,000. That summer, I sold over $2,000,000, roughly four times my usual number. I was one of the two reps from the East who went to Vegas. My dad was amazed by how much I sold. Frankly, so was I.
I never hit those exact summer numbers again. But I never again believed you couldn’t sell in the summer, either. The vacations were real. The two-week rule was real. Those were facts. But “you can’t sell in the summer” was never a fact. It was a truth: a belief the entire industry had agreed on, including the best salesperson I knew. Once I saw it for what it was, I knew that with enough motivation, I could always find a way.
That’s exactly what Steve’s fifth secret is about. As he puts it, “In the minds of individuals, perception equals truth.” Most salespeople never stop to separate the two. In Steve’s words, “The masses tend to operate from truth, which is often a distorted version of facts. Champions make decisions based on facts, not feelings.”
Years later, I watched Steve prove the same thing with an entire sales team. He was working with a regional team at a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, and one lever stood out above everything else: daily sales calls. The reps were averaging six a day, and the growth the company needed required eight. Two more calls a day is a 33% increase in activity, roughly 450 more calls per rep per year.
The reps were convinced eight was impossible because of the mapping software they had to use and the traffic in their city. Their managers agreed. So Steve asked questions. “So, what you’re saying is it’s absolutely impossible to make eight calls a day?” Everyone agreed. He persisted: “So, what you’re telling me is that no one on planet Earth could walk into your territory and, in any way, shape, or form, make eight calls a day?” They started to back off, just slightly.
Then Steve laid out the reality: the board of directors was looking for a $200 million increase in sales, it was going to take eight calls a day, and the board was going to get their number, with this team or with a new one. Finally, in frustration, the team said, “Okay, I guess someone could make eight calls a day. But how?”
Just like my summer, that one word, how, changed everything. They put their heads together, figured out a way to make eight calls a day, and executed. Sales increased by more than $200 million, with the jump from six calls to eight accounting for roughly 80% of that increase. The traffic and the software were facts. “Six is the max” was a truth.
The great ones use this distinction to their advantage. Steve explains that champions “program their subconscious minds to believe their visions, dreams and ideas as truths.” Once the subconscious accepts a new truth, it starts creating behaviors to match it. Once “eight calls is possible” replaced “six is the max,” and once “summer sales are possible” replaced “summer is dead,” the behavior followed, and so did the results.
How many “truths” are you selling by right now? “Nobody buys in December.” “My territory is tougher than everyone else’s.” “Our price is too high to compete.” “That account will never switch.” Some of them may be facts. Many of them aren’t. And every one you accept as fact puts a ceiling on your results.
If you lead a sales team, pay special attention to this one. On that pharmaceutical team, the limiting truth didn’t stop with the reps; the managers believed it too. In my case, the best rep in the company believed it. When leaders and top performers accept a limiting truth, it becomes the whole team’s ceiling. The next time you hear “that’s impossible” or “that’s just how it is,” don’t argue. Do what Steve did and ask questions: “Is that a fact, or is that what we believe? Is there anyone, anywhere, who could do it?” The moment your team moves from whether to how, they’ll start finding answers.
Here’s the action step Steve provides in his book: “Write down ten things you know are fact, and rethink each by asking, ‘Is this really a fact, or a truth I’ve created from my own or others’ perceptions?’” For salespeople, I’d start with your beliefs about your territory, your prospects, your price, your slow seasons, and your own limits. You may find that your biggest obstacle was never a fact at all.
Steve Siebold and I are partners who, cumulatively, have 69 years in the profession of sales growth and excellence. We have mastered pragmatic techniques to create dramatic growth in sales teams, from the under-performers to the all-stars. This work has increased sales by more than $3.2 billion for companies like Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Merrill Lynch, Coca-Cola, and Toyota, among many others. If you’d like to discuss instilling this, and other mental toughness principles, in your team, go to www.completeselling.com or email me at johnchapin@completeselling.com.
John Chapin is a sales speaker, trainer, and coach with over 39 years of sales and sales management experience, a #1 sales rep in three industries, and author of the 2010 Sales Book of the Year, Sales Encyclopedia (Axiom Book Awards). You may reprint this article provided the contact information stays in place.