Episode Details

I’m not sure if you noticed this, but there is a massive gap between what salespeople and leaders know and what they actually do.

I’ve written 18 books and trained hundreds of thousands of salespeople. I can’t tell you how many times someone comes up to me and says, “Jeb, I read Fanatical Prospecting. Great book. But that stuff doesn’t work for me.” Or they’ll say, “I tried that objection handling technique you taught, but it didn’t work, so I went back to what I was doing before.”

Here’s what they don’t understand: The problem isn’t the technique. The problem is that they gave up too soon. The brutal truth is that most people fail to implement what they learn. 

The Skate Park Lesson

A couple of weeks ago, I was traveling for business, working with one of my clients’ sales teams. One afternoon, I decided I needed some exercise, so I went for a walk. Along the way, I came across a skate park where kids were riding their skateboards and doing tricks.

There was a bench nearby, so I sat down to watch for a while.

Close to me was a group of young guys, probably 13 or 14 years old. They were huddled around a phone watching a YouTube video of someone doing a particular trick on their skateboard. They watched it, talked about it, and then one of them threw his skateboard down and attempted the trick.

He immediately fell off and failed.

The next kid tried, and he failed.

Then the next one and the next one. All of them failed to do the trick. 

So what did they do? They went back and watched the YouTube video again. Then they threw down their boards and crashed and burned, but this time, slightly less dramatically than the first time.

They repeated this process over and over. Watch the video. Try the trick. Fail. Watch again. Try again. Fail a little less badly. Until finally, one of them nailed it.

When he landed the trick, they all erupted. Clapping, fist pumping, and cheering. And once one kid got it, the rest of them started getting it too. They practiced until they had the trick nailed down, then went back to YouTube to find another trick to learn.

At that point, I got up and headed back to my hotel. But as I was walking, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d just witnessed.

Too Often, We Give Up too Soon

How often do we do the exact opposite in business and sales? We read a book, watch a video, listen to a podcast. We hear about a technique or concept that sounds really good. And we think, “Yeah, I’m going to try that.”

So we give it one shot. Maybe two if we’re feeling ambitious. And when it doesn’t work perfectly the first time, we say, “Well, this doesn’t work for me,” and we give up and never try it again.

Or worse, we read the book, feel really good about the concept, then put the book down and never even attempt it at all because we’ve already convinced ourselves it wo