IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL YOU WIN

I was listening to Les Brown speak a few weeks ago and he said, “It’s not over until you win”. I LOVED IT!

I have heard the sayings like, “It’s not over until the fat lady sings”, “It’s not over until we say it is” (one of my favorites from Animal House), and, “It ain’t over until it’s over” but all of these leave out the element that Les Brown adds, WINNING.

Every other statement about “IT being over” is basically talking about quitting, or giving up at some point. I will give all these other statements some credit, they all have the message to keep trying and push through adversity. However they then end with the idea of FAILURE, IT’S OVER.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who has an idea for a business. As we were talking she said something to the effect of, “how will I know when to give up”? Now I need you all to understand, she hasn’t started the business yet and she was looking for advice about quitting. I immediately said, you need to go into this with ideas of how to WIN not when to quit.

I know that you should have an exit strategy, every business school and MBA program tells you that you need one. This woman was opening a business where her start-up costs were literally nothing! I am talking pocket change! If she was investing hundreds or thousands of dollars I wouldn’t have reacted like I did, but investing $10 to start a business that has some real potential, WHEN IS IT OVER shouldn’t be the first thing you think about.

There are a lot of stories about people focusing on the wrong message. One of my favorites (I don’t remember any of the specifics so I will paraphrase) is about a major league pitcher who was in the final playoff game. If his team won this game they would go to the World Series. It was the bottom of the 9^th inning and his team was leading by 2 runs. There were men on first and second, the winning run was at bat. The count on the batter was 1 ball 2 strikes. His catcher came out to the mound, the catcher told him, “Keep calm this batter loves high and outside pitches, give him ANYTHING else and we can strike him out but whatever you do DON’T throw a high and outside pitch”! The conversation was about a minute long, but the pitcher only heard, “DON’T THROW A HIGH AND OUTSIDE PITCH”! So what do you think the pitcher was focusing on? HIGH AND OUTSIDE! As you can guess, he threw a perfect HIGH AND OUTSIDE pitch and the batter sent it for a ride and scored the winning run.

You can’t focus on a negative and expect positive results. How many of you start a sales call with negative expectations? While riding with rep I hear it all the time, “They won’t need anything”, “This guy is always too busy to see me”, one of my favorites before making a cold call is, “This place doesn’t LOOK like they need anything”. With this kind of thinking before you even walk into the customer or prospect what are your expectations? You expect to be turned down! I would offer a guess that every time I am with a rep that starts out with a statement like this, 90% of the time they get EXACTLY what they are expecting.

If you expect anything short of WINNING, if you are looking for your way out before you find your way in, your chance of succeeding is negligible. Just like I told my friend who wanted to start the business (remember her?) Don’t think about when to quit, think about how to WIN!

Lorin