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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers LIVE Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales on September 22, 2021. It featured Direct Solar CEO and Chronic Lyme Survivor TJ Nelson.]
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TJ’S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Strategies always change, but principles always remain the same. All the information is out there, all the methods are out there. There’s no excuse for not having the sales books or the tactics. All that is out there. What makes the biggest difference is the people that actually surrender to the principles of success, because if you can actually enforce these principles on you every day so that it becomes a habit and you’re doing all the behavior necessary to hit success, that’s when you’re going to win. Whenever I go and knock doors, I have certain principles. Right when I get to the neighborhood, I jump out, I’m knocking doors right away, no matter what. I’m not taking my time, I’m letting my brain get hit with it and I go full out. Anytime I’m in a deal, I give it my all. Every single day, I’m doing these behaviors and I’m calling enough people. If you find those principles and you surrender to them and you commit to them, you’re going to succeed.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: TJ, you’re the owner of Direct Solar in Las Vegas. Today’s an interesting show that we’re going to do. A lot of people know that chronic Lyme disease is something that has affected someone who’s close to me in my life. We’re trying to figure out some ways to get some messaging out in the marketplace so more people become aware of chronic Lyme and what it is. We’re very excited to talk to you, because you have been very public in the fact that you have contracted Lyme disease, now of course is chronic. February of 2017 you were diagnosed, you probably had it for a year or two before that.
The reason we have you on the show today on the Sales Game Changers Live is because you have found a way to be successful as a business owner and as a sales professional, even with perhaps one of the most insidious diseases on the planet. First of all, thanks to all of our listeners watching, thanks to you for being on today’s show. We’re going to talk about some things that we typically don’t talk about on the Sales Game Changers Live and the Sales Game Changers podcast, but I believe it’s pertinent. The messages we’re going to get across are critical.
First off, it’s great to see you. It was great to have been introduced to you recently and I’m excited to talk. Let’s just get right to it. Chronic Lyme disease, tell us what it is. Not everybody knows how insidious it is and how harmful it can be. Again, I mentioned you first were diagnosed in February of 2017, so give us a little bit of insight on what it is.
TJ Nelson: Chronic Lyme disease is when someone gets Lyme and they don’t catch it in time, and then they have symptoms for the long haul. A lot of people have it, there’s a lot of controversy over it because doctors try and say chronic Lyme disease doesn’t exist in certain circles and that’s a whole topic for another day.
But essentially, if you catch Lyme early, like I just had a friend in Utah, he caught Lyme, he saw the tick bit him, he got the bullseye and he took doxycycline right away, and he killed it. If you catch Lyme within the first two weeks or so, you can completely eradicate it. But once it spirals into your entire body and it takes hold, then you’re going to have some serious long-term issues.
The thing is today, people are not just getting Lyme, they’re getting all sorts of stuff like Bartonella, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Babesia, all these other stuff that comes with it. But Lyme, essentially the main thing that it does is it weakens the immune system, it gets in throughout your whole body and then that causes a host of other issues to where other things can take hold more easily. Then the Lyme causes a lot of damage.
Right now what’s interesting is that my test results show that the Lyme isn’t really that big of a deal anymore, but there’s been so much damage and now I have autoimmune issues and all these other stuff that came with it. Chronic Lyme is when Lyme causes long-term problems for the person.
Fred Diamond: For more information, it’s a tick-borne illness for the most part, although you can get it from spiders and other places as well. It’s an epidemic. We’re doing today’s show in September of 2021 so we’re in the middle, still, of the global pandemic. But what’s happened with Lyme and tick-borne illness has affected so many people and like you said, if you don’t get it right away, it does so many things. It leads to anxiety, depression, pain, fatigue, there are logical implications.
But the reason we’re talking to you today is actually quite interesting. Again, a lot of people who have chronic Lyme, it’s very difficult to work. It’s very difficult to hold a job because of focus and the fatigue and the stress. Tell us a little bit about how you performed as a sales professional before you knew you had Lyme disease and after you started experiencing the symptoms.
TJ Nelson: Before I had Lyme, I was a machine. I had energy all day long, I was already eating healthy and all that and I was just pure obsessed. I’m more type-A kind of guy, hyper-competitive, if someone was ahead of me in sales, I literally couldn’t sleep right until I was ahead of them. I was just going super hard, I had a lot of charisma and I could just go all day long every day, just machine mode.
After the Lyme, I couldn’t even work for a year and a half. I couldn’t do anything and everything fell apart, couldn’t work a real job or business and didn’t really know if I was going to make it for eight months, if I was going to die. Once I started working again selling Solar, it was really weird because first I started working for this company where they provided me appointments in Arizona because I was so sick, I was running out of money so I had to do that again.
But it was so rough, I had to use all my willpower to get up and I had to sell people purely based on mechanics and strategy. Because I felt so bad, I had zero charisma and it was weird because I’d have the strategy and I would sign people up using the tactics and the techniques, but they would never talk to me again like they didn’t like me. It was weird. I went from being able to sell with charisma and energy to having no energy or charisma, so I had to learn how to sell purely based on mechanics and strategy. I’d sign people up, they’d never talk to me again, they’d still get installed and everything but I just had to go purely based off raw sales methods.
It was really hard because before I’d show up so tired, I’d just tell myself, I just have to have one and a half hours, just go through it and it was so bad. I had a friend, Carlos, and I’d wake up and I’d remember so vividly, I wear his fingerprint around my neck. I’d be in Arizona, I’d wake up and it’d feel like a truck ran you over while you’re asleep and I had to run to an appointment. I would just grab this necklace of his fingerprint, I’d just hold it and be like, “I just got to make it through today.”
I would go to an appointment, come back home, lay in bed, get up, go to another appointment, come home, lay back in bed. It was a nightmare. Basically, before I was able to sell with energy and charisma and all that stuff, and then afterwards it was just pure survival sales mechanics. That’s how I’d have to sell deals.
Fred Diamond: One of the problems with Lyme, like you said, if you know you got bit and you see the bullseye mark there, then you mentioned Doxy which of course, is an antibiotic and you may have to take it for three-four weeks. Usually, if you catch it quick enough, you’ll be okay but for most people that’s not the case. They were bit, they don’t know. More and more doctors are beginning to understand that Lyme may be something, but most aren’t. There is a classification of doctor called LLMD, Lyme Literate Medical Doctor, and you may go to a doctor who doesn’t know what it is and can’t understand, maybe they think it’s something else.
I’m curious, before you were diagnosed with Lyme when the actual final doctor said, “TJ Nelson, you have what’s called Lyme disease” what was going through your head a year, a year and a half before that? You said you were a type-A, even now we get your energy coming across, but what was going through your mind for that year, year and a half when you didn’t have the energy, you had the fatigue and you began to notice that things were going different?
TJ Nelson: I’d just hit top levels in the country and everything for the largest solar company at the time. Not long after that is when I started losing everything and I thought maybe I’d just gone too hard and maybe I was stressed, but all of a sudden, I started losing all my energy. I didn’t know what was going on and I went down to Austin, I was over there super confused, no idea. I was having a lot of brain fog and confusion and I just had no clue what was happening.
Then I started getting these weird marks on my skin, I could show you in photos, it was super weird. I’d wake up and it looked like an alien scratched me and I was like, “Okay, that’s a little odd.” Then I moved to San Diego because I had some friends over there and someone was like, “Go to this doctor, he can probably figure stuff out.” I went over there and showed him the picture of the marks and right there, he just ran a huge panel and everything came back positive.
But before, I didn’t even know what Lyme was. Funny enough, a doctor in Texas tested me for Lyme but it was one of the crappy tests that didn’t show up as positive because a lot of Lyme testing is not accurate. They thought it was West Nile virus, this or that. One guy in Austin thought I just had Epstein-Barr virus so I thought that’s all it was for a while. But I went down pretty fast, it wasn’t a slow decline. I went down really quick and it was so much confusion.
I was in a lot of denial too, because in door-to-door sales it’s all mindset. I was overpowered so I was still in that mode, so I was still trying to just push through it all which hurt me more. It was really hard for me to learn how to surrender to that and flow with it versus just try to overcome it like I was used to being able to do before getting an illness.
Fred Diamond: I want to make a follow-up on what you just said. One of the big challenges with people who have Lyme is that it’s commonly misdiagnosed, and many of the tests, like you just alluded to, there’s no perfect test for it. Like you said, one of the problems is it can do so many things to your body once it gets in there that just taking care of the Lyme, there are so many other, what they call co-infections, that may be continuing as well.
Let’s talk a little bit about some of the things that you’ve had to do mind-wise. We do a show every Thursday called the Optimal Sales Mindset and we talk about things like pushing through, we talk about things like overcoming the obstacles, the mindset to make another 5 phone calls. When the customer says no to you 30 times, that you keep going the 31st time. We talk a lot about sometimes, a customer will not take your call till the tenth call but a lot of people give up on the third one, we talk about how you get that mindset going. Talk a little more about that, about how you had to shift not just your mindset but your mind to have a career.
Again, you’re the owner of Direct Solar, you’re in Vegas, very successful business, you have close to 30 people in your organization. I follow you on Facebook, it looks like people are happy working there and you’re doing great stuff for your customers. Talk about your mind as someone who has chronic Lyme disease versus maybe what a typical mindset might look like before that, and how you’ve had to adjust. What do you recommend for people to adjust to be successful that way?
TJ Nelson: Before, there weren’t the limitations. With the Lyme, it’s a combination. There’s still the push-through, very high pain tolerance and get-stuff-done-no-matter-what and using tools to be able to do that. But at the same time, I also have to accept my new limitation.
One of the best analogies is, let’s say you have a Lamborghini and maybe before you get sick, you can drive at 120 miles an hour. Then you get sick and you can only go 35 now. It can be frustrating and you might try and drive faster than that, and then you’re going to hurt yourself. But you can still get to the destination, you just might have to do it a little differently. You might not be able to take the freeway. It can be frustrating not being able to drive 120 miles an hour, but you still have to just drive.
I’d say one of the biggest things that highlight what I have to do, last Monday, just a few days ago – I don’t feel very good right now, but I was feeling good for a while. Monday, we launched a new calendar for all the sales reps to follow. We had a rally, then we were going to knock doors and then end the day and I knew I had to do that. I woke up and I was not feeling good. There’s this thing called Toradol, it’s an extremely strong aspirin, athletes will take it if they need to keep playing in a football game or something. I woke up and said, “Look, this is one day I have to perform, I have to get out there to make this work, I can’t not do this.”
I woke up, injected the Toradol into my shoulder while driving to the sales meeting. I text the Vitamin IV lady to come and give me a vitamin IV after the meeting with a bunch of vitamins, vitamin C and more Toradol. I went, ran the sales meeting because the Toradol reduces pain, then right after, got the vitamin IV with more Toradol and then went out and knocked all these doors and set six appointments, almost closed a deal in the same day. Then I went home, laid down and was like, “Wow, I’m feeling rough now.” But I knew I had to perform that day so I just did whatever it took to make it happen.
Now it’s like, okay, I still got some appointments but I got to schedule in, I’m doing a massage on Friday, I got to let my body recover. It’s a weird balance. I’m limited and I still have to drive certain miles per hour in the Lamborghini, but at the same time there’s still a lot of like I have to show up and I have to perform no matter what. It’s a weird grinding it out still, but at the same time I got to make sure I take care of the vehicle.
Fred Diamond: When we’re talking sales, we talk about obstacles that you must overcome and we talk about how you get through to a customer. How do you get through to the C-suite? The key in a lot of sales is getting an engagement with the customer, some type of conversation, some type of meeting. Then, of course, you want to have the next one and you want to have the next one. We talk in sales meetings all the time about, what’s stopping us from getting a meeting with this customer? Chronic Lyme disease, that’s a pretty big obstacle.
Talk a little bit, if you don’t mind, about what it’s like to go through the day with Lyme disease and talk about some of the obstacles that you must overcome. You talked a little bit before that you went to this event with your team and then you over-exerted yourself physically. A lot of times on the Sales Game Changers we talk about morning routines, getting up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning and meditating, reading, visualizing. I did my LinkedIn post today about visualizing at 5:00 o’clock in the morning. What do you need to do? For some people, it’s a struggle just to get out of bed if you have Lyme disease. Give us a little bit of insight, what are some of the obstacles you must overcome on a daily basis?
TJ Nelson: Obstacles with the Lyme and sales-wise I have to overcome, and ways that I keep my state up to overcome them?
Fred Diamond: Yes. During the day, there’s obstacles where we can’t get through to the customer or the person who guards the door for the VP of IT, you have to get through that person, the gatekeeper. These are basic sales challenges that we all try to overcome. Give us some of the obstacles that you face every single day with Lyme disease, just stuff that you have to face to begin with before you can even think about, “How do I get past the gatekeeper?”
TJ Nelson: Some days are worse than others. I go to bed at 11:15 p.m. every night, I meditate every single day, I don’t sleep with my phones in my room, I don’t watch TV. There’s a TV back there, I don’t know why I bought it because I never turn it on. Then every morning, I wake up, I don’t check my phone right away. I do my health routine, I drink my smoothie, I go for a walk in the sun and then I check my phone. I have a cook and she cooks all of my meals so I don’t eat anything but those meals. I have to live a very strict life. It’s meditation, bed at 11:15, morning routine every day, eating only healthy food every single day, taking the supplements and everything to keep that state alive.
When you mention sometimes a lot of it is getting to certain people, higher ups or pushing through resistance, sometimes it just comes down to how good you feel that day, how confident you are in your state. With me, my state’s not always there. There’ll be times I show up to an appointment, a lot of times we’re met with resistance from the homeowners, skepticism, so you have to push through that. I’m sure everyone on here has heard about anchoring, but whenever I feel confident, I have a whole combination, I have essential oil I smell, I say an affirmation, “I’m the best.” I use a hand gesture and I play music. Since I’ve done that so much, it’s anchored that feeling of confidence when I do that all.
Let’s say that I’m driving to a house. If I don’t feel good, I’ll allow myself to feel however crappy I want to feel. Once I’m about 8, 10 minutes away, put on the music, it starts to get me in that zone, I start deep breathing putting me in the present moment, I smell that essential oil, I say, “I’m the best” with emotion and the hand gesture. It triggers that confidence and then I get out of the car and as I’m walking to the door before I knock on it, I say to myself, “I care about these people, these are the most interesting people, they have the answers.” That puts me in the right state of mind because I’m all about the customer, and if I’m focusing on the customer, I’m not worrying about myself anymore. It doesn’t matter so much what’s going on in my world, because it’s not about me anyways.
I’ve used that, so now I’m confident, I’m focused on them which is the right focus and I’m taken out of the equation so it doesn’t matter, even when I run the sales meetings. If I’m not feeling that good or I’m nervous, I say, “Look, it’s not about me anyways, it’s about them.” All I have to do is provide value and give as much as I can to them and that’s what I’m here for. That helps take the focus off of yourself if you’re not feeling good.
Fred Diamond: We have a question here from Jessie, “Thank you so much, TJ, for this great inspiring information. How conscious is TJ that he has chronic Lyme disease?” Obviously, you know you have Lyme disease but throughout the day as you’re leading your team and you’re running your company, Direct Solar based in Vegas, how often – there’s an expression. When you have your health, you can think of a million things and when you don’t have your health, you can only think of one thing. How conscious are you of, “I’m sitting here working on a proposal for a customer, I have Lyme disease, I’m going to work on this proposal. Next, I have a team meeting, I have chronic Lyme disease.” Talk a little bit about how much of your minute-by-minute processing is that.
TJ Nelson: I am 100% conscious of every symptom that I feel. If I wake up and I’m feeling good, it’s like, let’s say you have a video game on hard mode and going on easy mode. I’m like, “Yeah, let’s go, baby. I don’t have any pain, I’m ready to go.” When I feel healthy, I go crazy. That’s actually one of my problems, I go too hard when I’m healthy. Any symptom I’m feeling, even today while I’m on this podcast, I’m cognoscente of I don’t feel as good. While I’ve been doing this, I’ve been doing some breathing, focus on the camera and I’ve been telling myself, “I’m just here to give a message to help people.” Because even today, I don’t feel that good.
Every single day I track every little symptom and I have doctor notes. Every day I’m tracking how much I sleep, any symptoms I feel, if my feet are burning, my stomach’s weird, my throat feels off or my neck hurts, or my neck’s tight. I’m tracking that every single day so whenever I talk to my doctors, I’m sending them that list so it’s easier for them to identify patterns. Doctors love me, I make it easy on them. Every day, I’m 100% aware of any symptom of Lyme that I’m feeling, all the time.
Fred Diamond: What you just described is not atypical. It’s such an insidious disease that you just can’t take care of a thing. We like to say if you break an ankle, every orthopedic surgeon in the planet is going to put you in a cast, then in six weeks they’re going to have you on crutches and then most likely, you’ll be healed. With Lyme, nobody has the same symptoms once it gets to the chronic stage and it depends on your resistance to heavy metals, genetics as well, environment, stress level, so much of your makeup. It’s a thing you have to constantly be checking.
We have a question here that comes in from Roberta, “How does TJ feel about salespeople who complain?” Here you are with what I believe is one of the most insidious diseases on the planet, chronic Lyme disease, tick-borne illness. You’ve given us such a great idea of what that looks like, and you manage a whole team of people. It’s like, “Bill, how come you didn’t close the Johnson family down on Maple Avenue?” “Well… I got there late, I was in traffic.” Talk about that, talk about your tolerance for excuses compared to the crap you go through on a daily basis.
TJ Nelson: We’re hitting an emotional part [laughs]. I actually had an honest conversation with one of my people last week. For example, I generate online leads as well and I give them to certain people, YouTube and Facebook, and I charge hardly anything for those leads. Then they still complain about it, so I actually just started closing the leads myself. Then they got mad but it was like, “You guys weren’t really working them and you’re complaining about them. Don’t complain about it.”
In a way, I’ve had to get better at not giving too much to my salespeople, make them work a little bit for it. Once I have kids, I’ve got to be careful not to spoil them because I help too much, but also, if they don’t make it to the meeting or they don’t make it on time, I will literally say straight to them, “Look, making it to the meeting on time is one of the most basic things. If you can’t do that…” How you do anything is how you do everything. If you can’t show up on time there, where else are you not showing up on time? You’re probably not showing up to the customer’s house engaged and ready to go. I literally say, “If I’m sick and I have to inject Toradol into my arm to make it to the meeting and run the meeting, you can show up and just sit there.”
It’s a weird balance. You have to be loving and caring, but John Maxwell talks about it, candor and caring at the same time. Sometimes, if you’re too caring then you actually hurt the person because then they feel like it’s okay and they buy into their own excuses and their own complaining. You have to be like, “Yeah, I get where you’re coming from” but at the end of the day, you have to challenge people. In today’s world, I could be totally wrong but I feel like there’s a lot more people that see too much of the Instagram, too much of the quick, and results don’t come overnight, they come over time. If people just have the work ethic and they make it through.
But it is hard for me when I hear people complaining, especially in the solar industry. When I used to sell 5 years ago it was way harder and the pay was way less. So when someone’s complaining, there are so many people in this world that would do anything to be in your position. But in a salesperson’s mind it’s easy to get trapped into that because there’s so many things that go wrong. It’s almost like one of your jobs as a sales professional is to learn how to generate positive emotions and belief. That’s part of your job. There’s always going to be something happening that’s chaotic, wrong, your customer cancels, there’s always that. You have to become that person that it just rolls off you. Especially if you’re knocking doors.
The other day I was knocking on Monday, I was joking with the person watching me like, “Man, I need someone to tell me to F off, where is it? I need it.” It’s almost like I’m making it a funny thing so when I get the negative, I turn it into propelling me forward. As a sales professional, their job is to generate those positive emotions and belief because once you start getting trapped in complaining, then you’re going that downward spiral and it’s game over for you.
Fred Diamond: TJ, we have one more question here before we get to your final action or recommendation. This question comes in from Junior, “Are TJ’s salespeople performing better because they see TJ’s limitations?” That’s a great question, let’s talk about that. First of all, does everybody know that you have chronic Lyme disease? Are the people on your team educated? Most people really don’t know, it’s one of those diseases that maybe somebody’s heard of, maybe they know someone who has a wife who has Lyme disease and she’s struggling with fatigue, pain and can’t work, those types of things. Maybe they saw it on a news report or maybe someone’s kid that their children are going to school with, but very few people understand chronic Lyme disease and how it can cause so many challenges. Do your people know about the fact that you have it? Have you educated them? Secondly, have they gotten better because they see the boss, he’s got this thing that’s just insidious, and our company’s doing great and he’s performing at the highest level?
TJ Nelson: Two things on that. Yes, they do know because I literally have vitamin IV people come in and I talk about it. There’ll be some meetings where I talk honestly about it and share, “This is what I’m going through.” I do have to be careful, though, because I don’t want people to view it like, “There’s so much pain you got to go through” and all that, which sometimes it is. You’ve got to have some pain tolerance, but they definitely know I have it. As far as educating them on it, when I got COVID, when I first started getting the symptoms, it was very similar to Lyme. Anyone that’s had COVID or if they’ve ever had the flu, that’s how it feels. It’s really easy to say, “Yeah, that’s what it’s like and it’s all the time.” I don’t really have to educate them on it, you just say, “Have you ever had the flu or COVID? That’s what it feels like.”
Have they gotten better because of it? It’s hard to say but I do know several of them have texted me and said stuff. I’m still selling a lot of deals, I still sell a lot and they say, “I see you at the top and you’re running the whole thing and you have Lyme. When I wake up and I don’t feel good, I literally think of you and say, I got to get up and do something today because TJ’s doing something.” It’s hard to say quantitatively if sales numbers went up by 20% or so because they know that. But I do know some of them, when they’re having a hard time, they think of all the stuff that I have to go through to make it happen and then they still perform because they’re like, “Well, I don’t have an excuse.” They’ve told me that.
Fred Diamond: We’ve got one follow-up quick question, “Have you ever sold to somebody who has Lyme, and has that helped you?” One thing we talk about in sales is you want to find some commonality with the customer. In the old days, in the 80s and 90s you’d go to the office and, “Bill, I see that you have a boat. I also like…” That whole shtick which doesn’t really work as much anymore. There aren’t too many people who are successful with Lyme doing what you’re doing. Kudos to you. Curiously, has Lyme helped get you business?
TJ Nelson: I used to never talk about it when I felt really bad. I’d say in about 10% to 20% of appointments I go in, I mention it. I haven’t sold anyone directly that has Lyme, but they’ve known someone that has Lyme. But it’s more if they’ve had any health issue or know anyone with a health issue. I just sold someone recently, he has MS. As soon as I was in his house, I see all these pills and all this stuff everywhere and I’m like, “What’s going on?” “I’ve got MS, I’ve got to take this and this.” I go, “Yeah, I got Lyme, I feel you” and we instantly connect.
I’m not necessarily going for that all the time, but if I see the homeowner has pills and we start talking, then I’ll bring it up too. We really connect. I’d say that’s probably only about 10%, maybe 15% of the time that Lyme creates that connection in there. But anyone with cancer or any health issue, we’re instant friends.
Fred Diamond: TJ, first of all, congratulations to you. For people who don’t know, chronic Lyme is a disease that deteriorates so many parts of your life and it can also take you out of the work force. There are people who have Lyme who are bed ridden who have neurological challenges on a day-to-day basis. One reason why we got you on the show is if you go to a Facebook group about Lyme, every day or two you’ll see a post, “What do you people do for a living?” and you don’t see a whole lot of stuff. Maybe it’s, “I do customer service 10 hours a week” or, “I do some freelance writing.” It’s very rare to see somebody who’s out there pounding the pavement running a successful business getting through all the stuff that you do, so I just want to acknowledge you.
I know you work on a book and you’re out there talking about this on Facebook, but I just want to acknowledge you for setting an example here. Not just for people with a debilitating disease, but for salespeople in general who have lame excuses about why they’re not being successful. I want to acknowledge you for that and I want to thank you for being a great model. Hopefully, we’ll have a lot of people listening to the show. We usually have a couple thousand people downloading it, hopefully we’ll get some people not just with Lyme but with other debilitating illnesses that might be stopping them from reaching their true potential. I want to acknowledge you for that.
As we like to end every Sales Game Changers podcast, give us a final action step. You’ve given us some great ideas, some great mindfulness ideas, meditating and how to push through. Also, how to understand your body so that you can be successful for the long-term. That comes up a lot, we talk about self-care more and more because of the pandemic that has been dragging on for a whole bunch of different reasons. Give us one final action step, something specific that our listeners can implement to take their sales career to the next level.
TJ Nelson: Just one thing or can I give a big idea?
Fred Diamond: You can give a big idea.
TJ Nelson: The one thing is strategies always change, principles always remain the same. All the information is out there, all the methods are out there. There’s no excuse for not having the sales books or the tactics and the thing is, all you have to do is you can just take the person that’s doing the best and just model what they’re doing. All that is out there. I don’t think the problem is ever sales training anymore, someone doesn’t know what to do or they don’t have access to figuring that out. What I think makes the biggest difference is the people that actually surrender to the principles of success, because if you can actually enforce these principles on you every day so that it becomes a habit and you’re doing all the behavior necessary to hit success, that’s when you’re going to win.
Whenever I go and knock doors, I have certain principles. Right when I get to the neighborhood, I jump out, I’m knocking doors right away, no matter what. I’m not taking my time, I’m letting my brain get hit with it and I go full out. Anytime I’m in a deal, I give it my all. Every single day, I’m doing these behaviors and I’m calling enough people. If you find those principles and you surrender to them and you commit to them, you’re going to succeed.
I feel like people in general are too distracted and they’re not fully committed. You’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t fully go in, you just never will know. If you fully go all in and you fully commit and you surrender to these principles, again, results don’t come overnight, they come over time. You just stick to it day in, day out, do it no matter what, then you will succeed. It’s almost guaranteed, you will succeed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in two months or six months. If you just commit to the principles and you surrender to them and you do it every day, no matter what, then you’re going to win.
Fred Diamond: TJ Nelson, thank you once again for your bravery and for being a great example for how people can succeed in life when obstacles are thrown their way. To all our listeners, thank you all so much.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo