I was talking with a friend of mine recently and we were talking about an old saying that goes like this: "Every cart has 2 wheels." We were actually discussing God’s work and how it has 2 wheels - prayer and work. You can pray all you want but if you don’t do the work the prayers will go unanswered.

I started thinking about that in terms of balance. Did you ever see a pick-up truck pulling a two-wheeled trailer down the road that’s bouncing like crazy? There’s a couple of things going on here. First, there’s probably not enough weight in the trailer to keep it on the road in relation to the speed the pick-up is traveling. Second, whatever is in there is not balanced.

How can we relate this to sales? Well, in relation to the amount of weight vs. the speed, we can think about the knowledge that we have in our field vs. the pace at which we want to succeed. If we expect to zoom to success without having the know how to accomplish that, we’re headed for disaster just like the pick-up pulling the trailer too fast down the highway. Eventually the trailer is going to fly up and hit the truck or flip over and drag the truck off the side of the road. We have to have the knowledge in order to go fast or we have to settle for slowing down.

In terms of the weight not being balanced, we can relate that to having too much knowledge in one area and not enough in another. For example, you can have all the sales knowledge you need on how to present and how to close, but if you know nothing about the person or company you’re going to see, you’re cart is unbalanced. Or you can have all the product knowledge (like an underwriter who decides to become a sales person) but not know the first thing about how to present or how to close a sale. Again, your cart is unbalanced.

The thing to remember is that you have to have the right knowledge in the right areas. How do you do that? You study. You study the customer; study their problems and issues and how you can solve them by talking to someone on the inside or someone close to the situation; do a quick refresher on your sales techniques (if you brush up just on listening you’ll do fine); and you listen to your self talk.

When you do these things consistently, you’ll always go out with a balanced cart. I believe in you!