Rocky Balboa – Sylvester Stallone
One of the most necessary attributes for a salesperson is resilience and the ability to take rejection and keep carrying on. I have found personally that you may do everything correctly with a potential customer, and yet they still don’t buy, or worse still they sign an agreement and then cancel a few days later. You may try everything within your power to resurrect this sale, but the customers stubbornly refuse to purchase from you. If we can’t take this kind of disappointment, and what may feel like personal rejection, then we are not cut out for the hard knocks world of sales. I would suggest that this mental toughness and ability to dust yourself off, learn from your disappointments and to even gain strength, is one of the biggest delineators of champions in any field of endeavor.
I love this scene from the larger-than-life character of Rocky written and played so poignantly by Sylvester Stallone, from his 2006 classic remake Rocky Balboa. It is so touching and motivating, to see this old, craggy-faced, ex-champion as he addresses his son, who is vehemently making excuses and blaming his dad for every failure in his life. From a writing perspective, Stallone does something brilliant and unexpected as he unleashes a sensitive “pattern interrupt” or he backs up before moving forward as my friend Quint Lears would say. He begins by sharing how he remembers holding his son in one of his giant hands as a baby, and how he believed his son was so special and destined for greatness. This completely disarms his son and resets his emotions back to neutral. Rocky then launches into a passionate tirade, that we all know that life ain’t fair, and it ain’t how hard you can hit, but how hard can you get hit, and can keep moving forward! He has his son on the ropes emotionally and then instead of hugging him, he brushes by him and reminds him to visit his mom, who spoiler alert is deceased, reinforcing his son’s responsibilities and throwing a spiritual knockout punch.
I grew up in England and remember watching the first Rocky movie at the ripe old age of 14. I felt so motivated coming out of the Watford Odeon (movie theater), that I sprinted up five stories of the local parking garage, and did the Rocky jig at the very top, as I air-boxed frantically in the cold, British fog. This was a little hard to explain to my dear old mom, as she was waiting to give me a ride home. At the time I was a crazy rugby player, (think American football without pads or helmets), and remember relishing the physical challenges of contact sports, embracing adversity, such as playing in the snow, ice, rain, and mud; using it all as fuel to learn and improve.
If you struggle with rejection, we can learn from some great authors and educators. For example, Don Ruiz in his short spiritual classic book, The Four Agreements, teaches us:
# 1 - Be Impeccable With Your Word
# 2 - Don’t Take Anything Personally
# 3 - Don’t Make Assumptions
# 4 - Always do your best.
When I managed my sales teams and we didn’t make a sale with a hot prospect, we would discuss agreements #2 and #4. We would ask ourselves, did we do our best? If the answer was yes, then we would move on, because if you have tried your hardest, then you have nothing more that you can give. However, if we identified that we hadn’t tried everything, then we would strategize, and the salesperson would go back and try again. My favorite Real Estate Sales trainer Tom Hopkins, in How to Master the Art of Selling, takes it further with the following:
Never see failure (or non-Success) as failure, but only instead as:
1. A Learning experience
2. a) Negative feedback we need to change course in our direction.
b) Instructions for reaching our goals.
c) Find course-correcting data.
3. Opportunity to develop our sense of humor.
4. Opportunity to practice our techniques and perfect our performance.
5. Only as the game we must play to win.
Hopefully, you are getting the message that failure is an unavoidable by-product of ambitiously sticking your neck out, trying to develop your skills, and reaching a higher level of success. We need to be grateful for our wins and our losses, and most importantly we should learn, grow, improve, and eventually laugh at some of our failures. Once we can laugh at ourselves, we can heal and start accomplishing our manifest destiny.
I have attended sales seminars and been told that if you follow certain processes or say specific sentences, that you will magically make a sale every time. Say what! How the heck can that work? We aren’t dealing in manipulation or black magic, but with fellow human beings who act emotionally and can act irrationally at times. Life isn’t always fair, perfecting your process may not result in sales every time, but it will increase your sales over time. This will also guarantee your long term success, and that you easily outsell your competitors. Rinse, repeat, and learn from every single interaction and sales presentation that you make.
I know that Rocky is only a movie character, however, Sylvester Stallone’s own story is inspiring in itself. He was so down and out after he finished the Rocky Screenplay, that he had to sell his dog just to survive. Incredibly he turned down a whopping $200,000 for the screenplay, insisting that he had to star in the movie, even though he was an unknown broke actor, with his only credit being the Lords of Flatbush. The studio wanted proven stars of that era, such as Burt Reynolds, James Caan or Ryan O’Neal. But Sly was Rocky Resilient and held out, eventually starring in his own Screenplay, winning an Oscar for Best Picture 1977, and yes buying his dog back for a lot more money than he sold him for!
Maybe it’s one of my guilty pleasures, but there is something about this Rocky character that resonates with me. Rocky isn’t slick, he doesn’t win every time, but he can sure as hell take a punch and is freaking resilient. He never makes excuses, and he just gets on with his life. In the 2006 movie, he now owns an Italian restaurant and takes great delight in greeting every customer personally and giving them a great experience. He wastes no time or energy looking back or whining about former glories. He is very much living in the unglamorous present, before he decides to accept a challenge from the current champion who is 30 years his junior. This story might have seemed ridiculous, until the recent Jake Paul, Mike Tyson so-called Boxing match on Netflix.
The worst thing you can do in both life and business is to make excuses and start pointing fingers at your bosses, colleagues, or customers. Stop blaming your own upbringing or others for your demise and start looking at the person staring back at you in the mirror. I hope I am not sounding uncaring, as we get older we have all been through so much, and I fully understand life can be very tough. However, please take a cold hard look at yourself and take responsibility for everything in your life. With a customer, if you don’t succeed, then figure out how to do it better next time. Once you overcome your fears, embrace rejection, and become Rocky Resilient you will become unstoppable.
Roland Nairnsey
Founder, New Home Sales Plus
561-236-2400