Self-confidence is good, being smug is not
Why being too complacent can kill your career
Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Thomas Edison
I love those wise words by Mr Edison that my Mom once wrote in one of her “motivating” notes to me in my lunchbox. I’ve held this particular note quite close to my heart as it has stood me in good stead in various life situations.
Today, I’d be the first to agree that while persistence and perseverance are great qualities, there is sometimes no point doggedly hanging on to something when you know it won’t work out. Yet, I’d also be the first to endorse that one must never give up without a jolly good fight. Regrets are the worst things to live with.
I grew up with the mantra “Don’t give up” and must say I’ve reaped the benefits of following it. I’ve definitely felt like quitting more often than I’d like to admit, but that tiny voice inside would egg me on. Then, I’d be grateful to it because I would have been that close to success.
Hope is that wonderful feeling that keeps us going. So maybe sometimes things don’t work out but at least not for a lack of effort.
But what’s dangerous — for our own mental health — is giving up too soon, especially when the invisible finish line is so close. I say invisible, because sometimes the haze of anxiety we wallow in does not allow us to see it.
What can be worse than slogging over something and when the deciding moment is a hair’s breadth away, giving up on the assumption that things will not work out?
Then, on the flip side, there are those people that assume things will work out, become over-confident and then, watch helplessly as things slip out of their control, out of their reach. This happens with everyone at some stage in life. And becomes a huge learning point.
I believe my first sales job defined me as an individual thanks to the situations I was thrown into, and there’s one incident I will never forget. It did not happen to me, which is probably why it felt scarier. It taught valuable life lessons I probably couldn’t have hoped to learn without making the blunder myself.
Let me tell you what happened.
One of my colleagues was a great guy. Smart. Successful. Cocky in a charming way. He also assumed he was “the best” and stopped doing the little things sales people must do to maintain good relations with a client. Yes, arrogant is the word I was looking for.
There was this long term client on our roster. The standard practice was for our service engineers to visit regularly to ensure the equipment was working well, and the salesperson would intervene only when necessary. Of course, we kept in touch with the purchase department to keep track of new requirements.
Now this colleague had been handling this client for a while. When a little birdie told us that a large requirement was coming up in that organization, he made the cursory visit and came back, saying there was no confirmation about it yet.
The heat is on
The case hotted up after a few weeks and soon, the day came when they were going to negotiate pricing. By now, there were competitors in the fray since it was a large order. This guy was spending a lot of time on the account, and one could see he was fatigued. After the negotiations were done, all that was left was for the client to actually issue the order. There were some internal issues on their side, non-availability of the signing authority and so on…and somehow, the matter dragged. Worst thing ever for a salesman!
My colleague was furious
He was angry that weeks of hard work had gone waste…or so he assumed. All he could think of was that the order was nowhere in sight, and well, salespeople have targets to meet. They can’t focus on just the one client. But this order would have not only helped him achieve his sales quota for the next two months, but would also be a big feather in his cap. He became desperate and started hanging around the client’s office. Days went by. Dejected, he eventually got back to his usual beat.
A letter arrives
Then one day, there was a courier from the client. When my colleague returned from the field in the evening, he picked up the cover and shoved it into his bag, muttering “What’s the point!” He was so mad at them, he didn’t even open it. He stormed out of the office and forgot all about it.
Two days later, the client called to speak with him. He wasn’t in the office. And those days we had no cell phones. When he returned in the evening, he saw his list of phone calls and returned some…and this client’s was not one of them.
Two more days passed. Saturday arrived. We had gathered for our weekly meeting in the office. This guy was cleaning out his bag and found the client’s letter, squashed at the bottom. Exasperated, he opened it. He turned white.
It was the client’s order with an acceptance deadline of twenty-four hours.
Can you imagine how he felt?
He had worked hard for it…and at the crucial moment lost hope — gave up. Being a Saturday, no damage control was possible and I think he spent the worst weekend in his life, waiting for Monday.
Monday morning found him at the client’s office to discov that the order had been issued to the competitor, because he hadn’t bothered to open the envelope when it arrived and had missed the acceptance deadline. Worse still, he had not even returned the client’s call and this had pissed the client off.
I tell you, the guy was in a rotten mood — understandably — and took the rest of the day off. He was a broken man, literally. Of course the matter escalated to the top. Soon after, he quit the organization.
Much later, we heard he was no longer working in sales. In the industry it is pretty hard not to bump into each other — after all, we worked the same market.
So anyway, big lesson, in a sense, to all of us. And quite a wakeup call on assumptions.
I personally learned that it is:
Easy to give up.
Not so easy to hang on.
Easy to take things for granted
Not so easy to accept when things do not go the way we expected
Easy to let ego come in the way
Not so easy to stay focused when that happens
Easy to take the easy way out and quit
Not so easy to look those obstacles straight in the eye, stick a finger on their collective nose and say “I will persist, no matter what”
Question for you:
Have you ever experienced this sort of thing — where you’ve worked hard and then quit on the verge of success?
Were you able to do anything about it?
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