I got rejected 5 times when I was in college.
No, I’m not talking about my dating life (although I got rejected many times in that too), but my attempts to join Strictly Funk, a college dance group I loved. Every semester, I auditioned, danced my heart out, only to get a heartbreaking rejection. This happened over and over again for two years.
The worst part? I didn’t understand WHY I was rejected. Was it my technique? My energy? Did they just not like me? 😭
In my senior year, I switched tactics and asked a dancer friend to coach me. Most people think dance is something you either “get” or don’t, but there are actually many factors that contribute to a good performance—musicality, control, timing, technique, expressions, etc. In a marathon 3-hour practice session, my friend and I systematically worked through them.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but that experience taught me a lot about how to get better at sales.
Most Sellers Focus On The Wrong Thing
If you work in sales, this might sound familiar: Your sales are falling short of targets, and the pressure is mounting. Your VP demands an explanation. So, you spend hours analysing the numbers: Which markets are declining? Which customers have cut back? Which products are underperforming? You assure your VP that you’ll keep an eye on the data to reverse the trend.
Of course, it’s important to know your revenue, but what you REALLY care about is what you can do about it. In other words, you’re better off focusing more on your input metrics than your output metrics.
Let’s say that I wanted to lose some belly fat. My output metric would be my body fat percentage, and my input metrics would be my daily calorie intake, minutes
