A paradox? A contradiction?
As part of the research for my new book, I’ve been going through a book by Sam Taggart. Taggart is the founder of D2D Experts, an online education company for door-to-door salesmen.
Taggart has a long but distinguished career selling door-to-door, everything from knives to solar panels to security alarms. His door-to-door selling career started at age 11, and culminated around age 35, when he finished as the #1 salesman in a company of 3,000 reps.
Anyways, grok this, if you can:
On page 44 of his book, Taggart’s top recommendation for motivating yourself is to look at all the other salesmen around you, to start tracking their results, and to start thinking of them as competition you have to beat.
And then on page 64, Taggart says how the best salesmen only view themselves as real competition.
Huh?
It’s easy to dismiss this as just contradiction or fluff inherent in a lot of sales material.
But I don’t think so.
A while back, meaning 3 years ago, I wrote about 6 characteristics of people who manage to do the seemingly impossible.
These 6 characteristics came out of a study of pro athletes who came back from devastating injury to compete at the highest level again… as well as star Wall Street traders who managed to beat not only all other traders, but the randomness inherent in the market as well.
One of the common characteristics of such people was that they simultaneously had a short-term view of the task to be accomplished, as well as a long-term view.
In other words, these folks looked at their situation from both 3 feet away, and from 3,000 feet up in the air. They did so the same time, or at least switching constantly between the two.
And so I think it is with Taggart’s advice — and so it is in many other situations in life.
We all want the “one thing” to cling to.
But quite often, particularly in the most important things in life, you gotta hold two opposing thoughts in your head, and you gotta live by both of them.
Of course you don’t really gotta. You don’t gotta do anything. But if you are currently worried by competition, whether that’s other businesses who target same audience as you, or other solutions or trends that tend to wipe out what you’re doing, or simply people within your own company who try to outperform you, then it might make sense to:
1. Make a list of all these villains, to keep track of their activity, and to start viewing them as competition to be beaten
2. To ignore them and to focus on doing the best you can
Anyways, I’ll have Taggart’s advice — not this, but something less contradictory — in my new book, full title:
10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters
My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24. The way things are going, I might have to shave half my head, like Demosthenes, to keep myself from leaving the house until the book is finished.
In any case, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.
If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:
Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book