I have been a sales guy ( i hesitate to use professional in the context of this story ) for 40 plus years.   Like most of my peers who have been wildly successful, I wasn’t born on third base with an easy path to home plate.  I started with nothing and everything I’ve been able to achieve has been due to my perseverance and the mentoring by those sales leaders who gave me the true insights to understand what it takes to be a successful sales professional.

My first successful selling experience started when I was 9 years old and taught me one of the basic facets that have stayed with me all my life.  Many of you gen x – gen y won’t know what I am talking about but those of my generation absolutely will recognize the story.  Pre-internet as a 9 year old I enjoyed my share of comic books, in the back of those comic books were many opportunities to make money.  One of those caught my eye.  SELL FLOWER SEEDS and make LOTS OF MONEY!!  That caught my eye.  I took the initiative and sent in the form and 2 weeks later I had a box of flower seeds to sell.  It was a straight commission engagement.  I sold the flower seed packets for 50 cents and got to keep 16 cents per package sold.  The company sent me 96 packages of flower seeds to sell.

It wasn’t easy, but I hit every house in my neighborhood as well as surrounding neighborhoods.  I even hit some house’s twice as my supply dwindled.  By the end of 4 weeks I had sold every package.   The first real dilemna of my young sales career hit me then.  I had worked really hard and now had $ 48 in my shoe box.  Unfortunately the agreement with the company was after selling all the packages I was to send them their money back which meant taking $ 32 out of my shoe box and sending it back to the company.  To a 9 year old $ 32 extra dollars in the shoe box seemed like a million bucks.  I sat on the money for a couple of weeks when finally my mom asked me what I was doing with the money.   I told her that I thought I had earned the money that it wasn’t fair to have to give the company $ 32 when I only got to keep $ 16.   That’s when I got my first true mentoring experience and it came from my mom who wasn’t a sales manager, but had a great moral character driving her.  She said “A deal is a deal, you signed up for it, they did what they said they were going to do, it’s up to you to honor your end of the deal”.  I sent the money in that day.  I have never forgotten those words, both on the buying side or the selling side.

Thanks Mom!