Break Your Own Records––Not Theirs

“To be what we are, to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

A favorite author of mine, O. S. Marden said, “Adversity sometimes strips a person only to discover the person.”

There was a period of time that I had a real chance to learn more about myself as well as the sales team I managed.

It had been a tumultuous seven months since I was appointed to manage the #1 office of 36 offices. In three months we were 36^th because I was trying to get them to sell like I did. It’s a common managerial mistake. My boss said, “I’m looking for your replacement.”

I went into “high gear” looking for good leadership techniques and putting them into practice. In four months we were back to #1. Over the next few months we stayed at #1 but at the same level of productivity.

We were back at our comfort levels in other words we had stopped at our individual self-imposed barriers of the past.

The system I created that worked like a charm was to bring each of my team members in for a “closed door” session with me. In this private conference I said, “I don’t want you to break anyone else’s sales record. I only want you to break your own in five different categories. What is your highest producing day, week, month, quarter and year?

If they didn’t know what their record was in each category I helped them figure it our. I also explained they didn’t have to break them in order. They might have their best week before their best day, for example.

Launching this technique worked extremely well. We broke office records, company records and industry records.

Once they saw that breaking their own personal records was a great motivation their morale went even higher.

It also got them away from that old, inefficient saying, “I’m going to go break ‘so and so’s’ record”. They were more focused on their own records.

Immediate Action: Figure out what was your best productive day. Your best productive week, etc.

The No Limits Story of Mary Lawrence

Mary Lawrence was no stranger to tragedy. For five years after her husband’s death she wandered through life with no real direction. Then late one night, a driver ran a stop sign and what had been two cars was a mass of twisted rubble.

When one of the paramedics found her broken body, he said, “Get the others. This one’s gone.” But she wasn’t and her spirit was uninjured. On the way back to town, an amazed medic had discovered she had a pulse! At the hospital the doctor said she wouldn’t live through the night. She did.

She spent the next year in the hospital. Her teeth and facial bones wired together. Later they performed fifteen root canals. They explained they had to do two facial reconstruction surgeries where no anesthesia could be used. Her response! “Let’s get started.”

A year later, she was released. Her doctor told her to go home and “take it easy.” You don’t say that to “No Limits” people unless you get out of the way first!

When she went shopping, her face still swollen, she would see people she knew were friends. She couldn’t remember their names because of the permanent brain damage. They didn’t recognize her and turned their heads rather than look at her. She said that really hurt.

Her memory was so bad she concentrated on each word of a sentence so she wouldn’t forget what she had said at the beginning. She discovered that getting a California real estate license was very difficult because of the memory work. Typically, she said that’s what she’d do.

She would read each page of that thick real estate manual fifty to sixty times until it was engrained. She passed the full day test the first time!

Mary went to work for one broker who terminated her after a month because she was slow in memorizing the inventory. At the second company, it was the same scenario.

An hour after the second termination my phone rang. This very determined voice said, “I’m Mary Lawrence and I want to work for you.”

She was in our three-week training program a few days later. After she graduated I placed her in one of my offices. WOW! Her sales were incredible.

A year later at our annual banquet I announced from the stage her name as one of our ten Outstanding First Year Salespeople. She came up on the stage. As I handed her the plaque, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Save me a place. I’ll be back up here next year.” As I watched her walk away, I thought, she means that.

The very next morning Mary bought a long pink dress to wear one year later. She hung it up in the very center of her closet to remind herself daily of her goal.

The next year I stood on that Grand Ballroom stage of the Disneyland Hotel. I told this story that she had finally told me only a month before. At the end of this triumphant story I announced that she was #1 out of our 700 salespeople in listings taken, listings sold, sales and gross commission. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mary Lawrence.”

The band played “The Impossible Dream” as that no limits champion floated across the dance floor in that long pink dress. A standing ovation!!! Not a dry eye in the audience. As I handed her that big #1 trophy she again leaned over and whispered to me, “I told you I’d be back.”

Adversity sometimes strips a person only to discover the person.
And that person is a no limits person.

There are no Limits! The best is yet to be!

Danny