CHAPTER TWO
VICTIM, SURVIVOR, OR CONQUEROR?
You might hear some complicated theories about different mindsets, but to me there are only three basic ones: victim, survivor, and conqueror. The one you choose will give you very different ways of reacting and responding to adversity.
I've seen the victim mindset in a surprising number of people who go into sales. They always deny it, due to their lack of self-awareness. But the dead giveaway is that people with a victim mindset always self-justify when something goes wrong. They never take responsibility for any problems.
When I managed reps who thought like victims, they'd say, "I can't hit my sales targets because..." and the reason was always something external. Maybe they didn't have enough training. Or the product was bad, or too expensive. Or the neighborhood sucked, or the list of leads they were given had no potential. Or the sales script wasn't effective. No matter what the excuse, there was never even a dim awareness that maybe they needed to study more, practice more, work harder, and take responsibility for their own performance.
I'd reply that other reps (myself included) were doing far better with the exact same training, products, neighborhoods, leads, and scripts. In fact, some of us were killing it. If all those factors were really the problem, the company would be going out of business instead of thriving. So I'd say, "Maybe, just maybe, this might be a you problem rather than a company problem." Sometimes I'd knock doors with them for a few hours in the same neighborhood, just to show what was possible if they'd stop thinking like victims and work on their self-development.
The survivor mindset is one step up from the victim, because survivors do take personal responsibility. As a result they get better outcomes than victims. But the big problem for survivors is that they set the bar too low. They focus on the bare minimum required to meet their basic needs, and if they hit that number, they're happy. Survivors struggle with ambition and can't seem to imagine a bigger vision of what's possible.
A typical survivor sales rep will first look at his basic needs, which I call a nut. Let's say he's young and single, and every month he spends $1,000 on rent, $500 on a car payment, $500 on groceries and utilities, and $1,000 for everything else, including fun. That's a $3,000 nut, which adds up to $36,000 a year after taxes. If this survivor can make $45,000 after taxes, he can cover his nut and save a little for the future, and he'll feel good about it. If he breaks $50,000, he'll feel like a rock star. In other words he's not dreaming big, or even dreaming medium.
Now imagine that this survivor gets on a hot streak one quarter and nets $25,000—double his usual commissions. It's the best quarter of his life, and he's thrilled. But instead of seeing this as a floor for what's possible in the future, he sees it as a ceiling. He starts to get complacent, because he's already covered $25K of his $36K annual nut, so he feels like he can take things easy for a while. Maybe he'll put in fewer hours, or sell with less intensity. He'll try to coast on that burst of success without downgrading his lifestyle.
This kind of complacency will do almost as much damage as a victim mentality. If you're just doing enough to survive, you won't come anywhere close to approaching the true limits of your potential.
The third mindset type, the conqueror, neither blames the world for failures nor defines success as merely getting by. He's looking to compete and excel. He thinks, If that guy is making X, I bet I can do even better. If the company record for monthly sales is $300,000, the conqueror is gunning to break it. He's always looking for the next hill to climb. It's not even mostly about the money—it's about the excitement of setting a big goal and then nailing it. After that, the conqueror will set another big goal, because that adrenaline rush is addictive.
But there's a downside of the conqueror mentality that I call a success void. After every hill you climb, you start back at the bottom of another hill, maybe a bigger hill. And you might have a moment of thinking, Oh crap! Now what? If your greatest happiness comes from conquering, you might start to think you suck if you ever stop conquering.
What will happen if you eventually slow down, make less money, maybe get out of shape and lose your youthful good looks? Will everyone in your life abandon you? A conqueror needs to make time for family and friends and other sources of joy, not just setting new personal bests.
I used to be the number-one sales rep at one of the largest direct-to-consumer companies in the country, Vivint. One year the company gave me a huge trophy at the annual awards meeting—it must have weighed fifty pounds. But as I walked up for the presentation, I looked at the crowd and I could tell that nobody really gave a crap. I got some congratulations and some polite applause, but then it was on to the next people getting other awards. I had to wrestle with the truth that being number one is great, but it's not everything.
I still think the conqueror mindset is by far the best. You should definitely be looking for mountains to climb. You should maximize every ounce of your potential. But that mindset can fill in only part of the puzzle of success and happiness. You also have to learn to love yourself and other people, and make time for everything else that's also super important. We'll return to that theme later in the book.
