10 Steps to Become the Greatest Salesperson in the World – Part 8

“Today I will multiply my value a hundredfold.” - from The Scroll Marked VIII, The Greatest Salesman In the World by Og Mandino

What do you do when you’ve accomplished a goal? Hopefully, you take some time to bask in the warm glow of accomplishment…but not for too long. Hopefully, you also set your sights on something higher and start working on it immediately. Resting on your laurels and past acheivments will never get you where you want to go.

Success is like a muscle; stretch it and work it and eventually it rises to the occassion. If your goal is to be able to lift 200 pounds 10 times in a row, you can get there even if you start off lifting less than 100. When you hit your goal though, a funny thing happens: you plateau. The muscle stops growing because it’s no longer challenged. Step your goal up to 300, and you kick the growth cycle off again.

It’s the same with your personal growth. Once you reach a goal, you run the risk of stagnation if you stop there. Human beings have an amazing potential for growth that sometimes gets hampered because we’re unwilling to push ourselves to grow. Why? Growth is painful. It’s uncomfortable and scary. We set up all kinds of elaborate, unconscious schemes to avoid the pain of growth, and we seriously limit the results we can acheive in the process.

What if instead we were willing to shake off the self-imposed limitations of our pre-conceived ideas and hand-me-down beliefs? What if we were able to get beyond the fear and set impossible goals, continually stretching beyond our prior capacity? What then? Michaelangelo advised that “the greater danger is not that our goals are too lofty and we fail to achieve them, but that they are too small and we do.” Do you really want to look back on your life and wish you’d only tried a little harder? Neither do I.

The Scroll Marked VIII says that we’re like a grain of wheat; a single grain of wheat has the potential, when properly cared for, to grow into a stalk of wheat with a head full of grains. Each of those grains, in turn, has the potential to be planted and produce many more. Given the proper conditions, a single grain of wheat can produce millions of tons of wheat. And you are like that grain of wheat: you contain unlimited potential.

The Scroll points out one difference between you and the grain of wheat, though: whereas the wheat has no say in whether it’s planted and propogated, you get to decide whether your potential is realized or wasted. It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? It means you get to take full responsibility for your success or failure in life. You don’t get to point to your circumstances or your parents or your government…only you have the power to decide your fate.

And how will you do it? How will “multiply your value a hundredfold”? The Scroll advises:

“First I will set goals for the day, the week, the month, the year, and my life. Just as the rain must fall before the wheat will crack its shield and sprout, so must I have objectives before my life will crystallize. In setting my goals I will consider my best performance of the past and multiply it a hundredfold. This will be the standard by which I will live in the future. Never will I be of concern that my goals are too high for is it not better to aim my spear at the moon and strike only an eagle than to aim my spear at the eagle and strike only a rock?”

The message is clear: continue to aim high, to stretch yourself, to strive to exceed your past performance. If you do, you’ll never stop growing, your value will increase every day, and you’ll be considered by those who know you to be the greatest salesperson in the world!

“And when it is done I will do it again, and again, and there will be astonishment and wonder at my greatness as the words of these scrolls are fulfilled in me.”