I’ve always felt and believed that the energy you put into something eventually comes back to you. I’m pretty sure this feeling comes from spending most of my life skateboarding, because in skateboarding, you can spend hours trying the same trick and still not land it. You could also watch your best friend who started skateboarding 3 months after you land that trick in half the time.
This taught me that effort doesn’t guarantee an equal result… at least not right away. But I do believe that when you add effort + intention, it adds up, and it comes back to you.
As I write this, I’m in Gilbert, Arizona, visiting my family and thinking about how this ties back to sales.
I’m active in a few sales subreddits, and right now everyone still seems to be looking for the next hack. Should they send a thousand emails? Should they send fewer and personalize each one? Some say personalize 40% of the email, others say 60%, others say 10% is enough.
I think this is funny because in my previous role, I saw people send mass emails and get incredible reply rates. AND I also saw people spend an enormous amount of time personalizing and get nothing back. So who’s right? Honestly, I don’t know. I can only speak from my own experience and what’s working for me.
What I’ve started doing is paying attention to the energy and intention that I’m putting into my work. You can give me 800 accounts to manage, but that doesn’t mean I have the capacity to genuinely care about 800 accounts. Of course, I could put them into a sequence, send them emails, track activities, and say that I’m “working them.” But how much attention am I actually giving to each of them?
Well, you can do the math.
100% of my attention ÷ 800 accounts = 0.125% per account.
So instead of trying to put my energy and effort into 800 accounts, I’ve been doing the opposite. I keep a list of my priority accounts in the notes on my phone. That way, anytime I have a thought about an account, notice something about their business or industry, or just have an idea when I’m not at my computer, I can jot it down.
What I’ve noticed is that over time, those companies do start to mean something to me. The more I know about them, the more I develop real opinions about what they’re doing, along with my own perspective on it. I think that ultimately, this changes the way I show up every day.
Newton’s Third Law says:
For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
Sales obviously doesn’t work like physics. You can put all your energy into a company and still get rejected. Skateboarding taught me that long before sales did.
But I like the idea that what we put into the world does create some kind of response or reaction…even if it’s not the one we expected. Sometimes the response is landing a trick or starting a new conversation with someone. Other times it’s just about learning. Learning what you’re doing wrong. Learning that something you’re doing isn’t working.
A quick disclaimer: I’m not a sales guru. Just a seller who really likes sales.
See you back in New York ✌️