Caller Id was one of the greatest inventions of this era. To be able to screen your calls without the caller knowing that they have been filtered is brilliant. Telemarketers and Mother in laws take heed – you have been blocked!Not that I ever answer the phone, but my wife does. But like everything else, every now and then, an unwelcomed call does slip through. See, telemarketers have gotten smart. They know what they are up against, so they disguise their numbers to fool us.
You get so used to seeing 1-800 numbers, so that when a local number appears, you often let your guard down and then you’re trapped. You don’t want to hang up on them, appear rude or impatient. The person on the other end is after all, just doing their job – it’s not their fault.
So, you to try to be polite and say no thanks. But most times they will use a “door-in-the-face technique” until they manage to persuade you to say yes to one of their offers. Your only option to say no in most cases is to hang up.
Why am I telling you this?
Well, one got through. Several weeks ago, a telemarketer infiltrated our phone line again. My wife Sarah fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
“Win a free trip to the Bahamas ”
All that was required was a two minute survey.
“Could it really hurt? What do we have to loose?” Sarah says to me.
I remained skeptical. But I thought at the very least I could learn something about their marketing process.
So, she did the two minute survey. which was painless and fast. Now all that remained to claim our “once-in-a-lifetime prize” was to simply enter a code on their website.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, the code was invalid. Fine. We tried. It didn’t work. Let’s move on. But we couldn’t move on. Every day for the past three weeks, our voice mail box has been victimized by a booming voice instructing us to claim our free trip to the Bahamas. Every single day.
At first it really annoyed me. But after the 15th consecutive message, I realized that I had to give this telemarketing company some credit. They were very persistent. In fact they were relentless.
First adjusting their plan of attack by disguising the number each time they called and then continually leaving us instructions day after day on our voice mail on how to claim our free trip.
This made me consider why business leaders, elite athletes or anyone for that matter were successful at what they do. Sure some may have a little skill, some luck, or know ‘somebody’ who helped them out. But the majority of all successful people have two important things in common – they know what they want and they are relentless in their pursuit. No matter how many times they get rejected they seem to keep on keeping on.
A great example of this is how the film Rocky came to be. Watch this video as Tony Robbins tells the story about how Sylvester Stallone relentlessly pursued his dreams to write and star in the Academy Award winning film.
So what can we take away from this video?
Write down at least 5 things that you learned from Sylvester’s relentless pursuit and revisit them daily to see how you can use them in your life. Then take action.
Feel free to share in the comments below and I will follow up this post with Part II and include the 11 things I took away from this great inspirational story.
(Photo by: uncle buck)
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Category: Leadership, The Ultimate Life
