THE LAW OF SOWING AND REAPING
 
Whatever you sow, whatever you put into your life and work, you will get out, no more and no less

You are reaping today the results of what you have sown in the past. When you look around you at every aspect of your life -- your health, your relationships, your income, your level of sales, and your relative happiness and security in your career -- what you see is the result of what you have sown, what you have put in, in the past.

If, for any reason, you are not happy with what you are REAPING, it is up to you to begin immediately to change what you are SOWING.

If you want to get something different OUT of your life, you have to put something different INTO it. Just as a farmer has to plant different seeds to get different crops, you have to plant different thoughts and activities if you want to reap different results.

Especially in ad sales.

Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard University conducted several years of research into "success". He was looking for the reasons some people moved up, while others did not.

He finally concluded that success is largely an attitude - an attitude towards TIME.

Banfield called this "time perspective." He found that people who became successful invariably had a LONG TIME PERSPECTIVE. They took the long term into consideration when they planned their daily, weekly, and monthly activities. They thought five, ten, and twenty years into the future.

They allocated their resources and made their decisions based on how their choices would affect where they wanted to be several years from now.

Banfield also found that UNSUCCESSFUL people invariably had SHORT TIME PERSPECTIVES. They gave little thought to the long term.

They were more concerned with immediate gratification than with long-term success and accomplishment. They were more concerned with having fun in the short term than enjoying financial security and success in the long term. Because of this attitude, they made SHORT-TERM CHOICES THAT LED TO LONG-TERM HARDSHIPS.

Both groups reaped what they had sown.

What has this to do with ad sales? Everything. Especially in Lead Generation.

You must be willing to pay the price, over and over, for weeks and even months on a Lead Generation SYSTEM before you achieve really worthwhile goals.

You must develop long-term perspective. To be successful in this field you do things (like seminars, newsletters, fax campaigns) which WON'T bring much of a result next week .... but WILL pay you handsomely over the coming months -- if you're still there.

And there's the catch. You need to make some sales TODAY. Which in ad sales usually means some form of cold calling.

But if you ONLY cold call, you will NEVER build up a bank of potential clients who know you and trust you and will advertise with you -- WHEN THEY ARE READY TO. They work to their timescale, not yours.

And if you ONLY work on the long term -- you'll be gone before the long term happens. You must sell today, to still be around in six months time.

You need to strike a balance between the work which you do today so that you can make a sale tomorrow, and the work which you do today which will bear fruit in a couple of MONTHS time.

Simple, but not easy. The drive in most sales rooms is to make a sale today. And another. And another. TODAY.

"Let the future look after itself. Worry about the present." is the cry from first line sales managers.

Which is why there is such a HUGE turnover in staff. Many, if not most, ad sales recruits NEVER escape from the cold calling trap. They never plant seeds for their long term future -- they don't have the time ....

The seeds you plant include learning sales techniques, making tough calls, EXPERIENCING the ups and downs of business life, and LEARNING from each experience, so that you begin to recognise which situations will be good for you, and which to avoid.

It also MUST include doing things -- planting seeds -- which will bring you sales a couple of months down the line, not just tomorrow.