Life Lessons Learned From Making 100 Failed Sales Calls
I made only one sale, but the payoff was way bigger than the money
I get off Zoom and feel drained. Another failed sales call. The biggest loser in sales messes up again.
“Thanks, Jonathan; I’ll get back to you.”
“I need to think about it.”
“It’s too expansive.”
I’ve heard these lines many times (spoiler: they never get back to you).
“What does it matter,” I lay on my back and think. “If I can’t close, I can’t grow a business. It doesn’t matter if my service is great.”
That narrative played in my head for three years like a broken record.
Little did I know, it would all make sense in the long run.
1. You only have so much willpower
I thought I could do this forever. Take as much failure as needed until I reach my goals.
And for three years, that’s exactly what I did. But then I stopped and realized, “Hey, I put so much energy into this, I don’t have a life, and results are weak. I barely wanna do it.”
You can’t push until the end of time. No matter how tough you are. Pushing requires tons of energy. I know the mainstream advice is to “Keep going! no matter what!” but it’s productive until a point.
These days, I’m PULLED into what I do. I love to write and read, and that’s how I spend most of my free time.
I don’t have to motivate myself constantly. Even if my side writing venture doesn’t work, it doesn’t bother me much because I love my hobbies.
2. Inner resistance creates external struggle
Last week I listened to my old sales call recordings. What a disaster. I sound so tired, unmotivated, and confused.
No wonder I didn’t close a sale. In the back of my mind, I always had this little voice telling me, “Forget it, Jonathan, move on”. But I ignored it and kept going. I thought, “Just a little bit more. I’m almost there”.
All it did was create more resistance in me. That resistance translated into being exhausted, which meant more failure. It’s a vicious loop.
Things go wrong when you’re not aligned with your heart’s desires or chase goals inspired by your ego. You struggle because it’s like pushing against a wall.
The funny thing is, you created that wall.
3. Your goal might manifest through a different path
Eventually, I stopped working on my agency side hustle. I didn’t want to do it anymore. But then, a new opportunity presented itself. A local agency needed someone who could help them grow.
Bingo. I got a manager role and got to work. Improved their delivery, hired new people, and re-positioned the company.
Heck, I even made some sales. That was a year ago. Since then, the company has grown 36% in revenue.
My original goal was to build a $10k/month business in revenue. My income isn’t there yet, but I’m getting close. I’m getting where I wanted to go, but not how I thought.
4. To improve something, you must track it
My sales skills improved when I started recording them. Once a week, I played them back and looked for things I could improve. Lines I should say better. Questions I should have asked but missed.
I also used Sheets to track my numbers. No-show rates, total booked calls, everything. I even tracked my non-existent close rate.
Whether you try to lose weight or grow a business, you must track your efforts. Otherwise, you don’t know where you’re going and have no idea why things don’t work. It’ll be hard to pinpoint problems.
Even when you sit with a therapist, you dive deep into all the little mechanics of your life. Your thoughts, beliefs, past experiences, environment, and even diet.
You follow every clue to find the core issue. Then you take care of it.
5. You get better as long as you practice
I sucked as a salesperson. It’s not “in my blood”. Yet I got better at it with time. I realized I don’t have to be the greatest sales guy on earth. I just have to be great at selling marketing services.
So I practiced and then practiced some more. No matter how much you suck, you can be better at anything. Sales, soccer, talking to women, anything.
That doesn’t mean you should set unrealistic goals, like a career in the NBA at thirty years old (it’s a bit late for that, I’m afraid).
6. Learn from industry experts
I bought a couple of sales and marketing courses. The most helpful guidance came from mentors in the agency space, not some “sales gurus” with a general course.
These experts had their own marketing agency, so they knew the business inside out. They could tell what my problem was in a matter of minutes and helped me solve it quickly. That’s priceless.
Pay to learn from experts, not generalists. And certainly don’t try to figure out everything yourself. It takes too long.
Conclusion
Failure can teach you many things. But you have to be willing to learn. It’s a mixture of not giving up yet staying open to new solutions and possibilities. If I kept walking my original path, my failure would have been just that- a failure.
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