The Stretch & The Pull
When you start off in any sales role, as long as you’re following a regimented process & speaking to a lot of customers, it’s hard not to find a little success. These small nuggets of hope encourage you to push through getting your first few deals done. High-fives are had, gongs are hit, life is good. Then, once you feel like you’ve finally gotten the hang of it, you hit a wall and the high of those first couple of deals is met with an equally painful trough. You ask yourself - where did all my magic go?
This barrier is not unique to selling. It’s something everyone confronts when changing habits or adding new skills - you’re initial success begets new challenges. You stretch to something you didn’t know you could do, and experience a near-immediate pull bringing you back down to earth. This is normal, even predictable, and arises from the subtleties of follow-on challenges that you could never predict because your understanding is still limited.
So what happens? Oftentimes you will get discouraged, lose focus, and chalk up the first couple of wins to luck. You create this false narrative, but what has actually occurred is your initial success bought you a ticket to face new challenges. If you can keep moving through this barrier, without giving it too much voice in your daily ups & downs, it’s where the most learning will generally happen. Rapid habituation to all possible scenarios is how we become great, and knowing this barrier is temporary & part of the process is the only thing necessary to come through the other side.
If you’re in the first 5 months of any sales role, you will experience this stretch & pull constantly. It’s the most normal thing in the sales universe - just stay with it.
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