Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Make a Cool Million

I want you to think about this long and hard. What are you making right now? Eighty grand? Ninety grand? One hundred and fifty grand? It’s a pretty good living.

You go out and do battle in the sales wars every day, trying to make it all work so you can make a little more this year to stay ahead of ever-growing living expenses. You make your calls, set up your appointments, plan your meetings and get your RFQs. Every so often, you pick up a new customer and if you’re lucky your company will pay you a bonus for that.

It’s all part of the selling game. Routine as hell, but you manage. After all, you have to put food on the table right? It’s your job, okay then, your career. You’re doing the best you can.

Sure, sometimes your boss gets on your case. He wants you to make more sales calls or close more business. But for the most part he leaves you alone. And so it goes year after year, always doing the same thing and getting the same results. It’s not a bad life; nothing much changes and you can handle it. You do enough to handle it.

So, now we get to the part I want you to think about. What if things changed? What if you got a new boss? What if someone new bought your company and wanted to raise the stakes, to make sure that your company went into a steep increase in sales growth? Stick with me, because this is going to get interesting. What if this new boss offered you $1 million if you could triple your sales in 12 months? That’s right. What if your boss told you that on top of your normal salary and commissions, you could earn a cool million dollars to increase your sales three-fold, with an officially notarized contract that guaranteed payment?

Are you processing this? Now, think about what you would do differently tomorrow, and the next day, to earn that million. Would you go to work the way you always did? Would you prospect the way you always have? Would you work your 40 hours a week like you’ve always done?

Or would you catch fire and start coming up with ways to change your strategies, tactics and efforts in a way that would get you that cool million?

Here is what I hope you would do:

First of all, you would change everything. You would intensify the good things you do and get rid of the time-wasting things you do.

You would sit down and figure out the best way to get new customers. How would you do that? You would get new databases. You would develop snail mail and e-mail programs. You would develop your own territory marketing plan and not just rely on your company’s national plan. You would plan your day so that you squeeze the most out of every hour. You would kiss your family and friends good-bye and tell them that you would be spending the next 12 months doing everything you could to triple your sales.

And then you would really go to work. You would intensify your prospecting, cold-calling like your life depended on it. You would develop a sales pitch that would be so provocative that no one could possibly say no. In fact, you would refuse to ever take no for an answer.

And you would never let up. You would work day and night to achieve your goal. You would use every technique you have ever learned and then more. You would read and study everything about sales and marketing that you could get your hands on to help make you a better salesperson. You would go to any webinar, seminar, lecture and class that would help you to achieve your goal.

You would become focused to the point of obsession on tripling your numbers and earning that cool million bucks. Isn’t that what you would do? You would become passionate about your job, looking at it as a means to life-changing success.

And in the end, if you did all of these things and if you were motivated and passionate and driven, you would make your goal. You would triple your business in 12 months and you would collect your million dollars.

So, here is what I really want you to think about. If you are sure that you would do all those things, and you know in your heart of hearts that you could earn that million dollars because you have it in you to succeed, then why don’t you do it now? Why don’t you manage your career as if there were a million-dollar pot at the end of the rainbow?

If you apply yourself the way you know you can, you will win. You will succeed and you will make more than a million dollars. It's only common sense.