The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Sales Success

Preface

I made my first sale when I was 12 years old. At the time I thought I was just trying to get some cash together by mowing lawns in my neighborhood. It turns out my first sale earned me a steady, if small, weekly salary.

I look back now on that summer in 1973, and on how many doors I knocked on, modifying my approach with each new rejection, until one homeowner said “yes” to my offer, and then surprised me by expecting me back every week.

Wow! After all those discouraging “No’s” I had one very profitable “Yes!” Years later in one of the copious sales training courses I learned the expression “Sales is a series of ‘No’s’ punctuated by profitable ‘Yeses’”

About the same time I started hitch-hiking. Just for fun. I’d get passed by lots of cars over fairly long periods of time. Then someone would stop and I’d get a free ride, often for quite a distance. Lots of “no’s” punctuated by the occasional, rewarding “yes.”

I didn’t realize it then, but my hitch-hiking provided many of the lessons in successful selling that would subsequently be provided me in the course of nearly 30 years as a professional sales-person.