Football this past weekend had some rip-down-the-goalposts firsts, we’ll get to those in a moment.
Recently, our company celebrated another first: 100 new clients added in one year’s time. This feat is something I view with a great sense of accomplishment from the big-picture viewpoint. While some of the new clients invited us to make a presentation, others were referrals, many were just solid prospecting by our team. My hope is nobody overlooks all the Mondays through Fridays, week in and week out over the 20-plus years it took for our team to have this opportunity become a reality. Did I believe it would happen? Never a doubt!
The successful people who I have learned from, and been fortunate to work with, always displayed determination. No matter what came along, they faced it head-on. The key takeaway, as I saw it, was they learned from day-to-day experiences, and filed away all that had occurred so they would seldom be surprised down the road. Everything was a lesson – big or small was not a qualifying consideration. Looking back, my automotive advertising career began in Direct Mail, not necessarily the ‘glam’ department. But it was this learning experience that would become key to my company’s survival some 20 years later. Never underestimate the why of your life!
My years traveling on the road took me to places that were a far cry from metro destination points, but the knowledge I gained from the dealership owners, managers, salespeople, and even the media people in those smaller markets, was priceless. It was understanding how to effectively make every dollar count. We never stopped working to create the most value for the client, and each process we discovered to create value was learned first-hand and kept in personal journals. The number of times I have adapted this knowledge to big-city dealers is countless.
I opened by pointing out that this past weekend for football fans was historical in regards to ‘big’ defeats. In fairness for the underdog schools that pulled the upset, a true tip of the hat, you never doubted. For the teams and coaches now feeling the hot seat, the lessons of our 100-new-clients-acquired need to be applied. You cannot allow all the good that you have built to be defined or derailed in a single moment. This is one of the times sports really is like the business world. The longer you play, the more chances there will be a setback, and what you learn from a loss is often more important than a win. Success is not granted or given