This Guiding Principal is my personal favorite. Someone told me once that Sales is the ‘transfer of enthusiasm’ which I loved and totally agree with. Sales is one of the hardest professions in the world but when you genuinely believe in what you do it is a hell of a lot easier. I believe you have to have passion for what you do in order to be truly successful in sales, business and in life. Think about your favorite athletes, artists, writers, etc. I guarantee you they are all truly passionate about what they do.

Notice I don’t say “follow your passion.” I think this is a very dangerous thought process and one that we have apparently and unfortunately instilled in our youth (keep in mind, I’m 38 right now) and done them a disservice. As a kid I was never told to follow my passion, I was more told to earn everything I wanted. But now we tell kids to follow their passion which has misguided them into a sense of entitlement. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t really find out what I was truly passionate about until I was well into my 30s. Yeah, ok, when I was a teenager and in my 20s I was passionate about drinking, partying, art, girls, and basketball. Following any of those “passions” would have done nothing but keep me in my parent’s basement for the rest of my life.

Before you can follow your passion you need to find it. It took me a while to figure this out but I realized it when I was fired from Staples and had to figure out my next career move. I had been an IT Sales guy for 7+ years and never picked my head up to see what else was out there. When I was fired I had somewhat of a panic attack wondering what to do next. Was I an IT Sales guy? Was that my career path? I didn’t even really like technology. I could care less what a server, router or firewall did. But why was I so successful in selling IT services? So I reflected on my career and thought about all my previous positions and why I excelled at each of them. My first job out of college was with DeWalt Power tools. Why was I successful selling DeWalt? Because DeWalt Power tools are badass. My next job was with Xerox. Why was I successful there? Because at the time I genuinely believed that Xerox was the best copier on the market. My next role was the start-up IT services company Thrive that my friends from high school and I started with no funding. Why was I able to help Thrive become the fastest growing company in MA and ultimately sell of to Staples? Not because I cared about the technology, it was because I believed in the people delivering the service. All this got me to realize that it didn’t matter what I was selling, all that mattered was that I truly believed in what I was selling. I now have the chance to sell sales training that I use and deliver myself so effectively I’m selling myself every day. I can tell you the passion isn’t hard to find when doing what I do now.

My recommendation to anyone in Sales is to find a product/service/solution/company that you can believe in and for the right reasons. Sales is one of the most difficult professions in the world. When you don’t believe in what you do it is 10x harder. When you do believe in what you do then it’s all about the transfer of enthusiasm. Talk to your customers, talk to the founders of your company, find out what a difference your solutions make and what the vision is. Buy into it, believe it. If you can’t then go find something else to do.