Due credit: Why I'm celebrating Alexander Graham Bell's birthday

"Successful people give other people credit for their victories." 

-- MaryEllen Tribby's infographic.

So I never intended to work in Sales. Account Management, maybe. But not general Sales. Here's how it happened:

2009 was a rough year for the U.S. economy. It was coincidentally the year I graduated with a B.A. in Advertising & Public Relations. There wasn't a lot of opportunity in Poughkeepsie, NY -- especially in the creative field. Nor was there work in "The City" for that matter (how the upstate folk refer to NYC). Hell, Allen Rosenshine wasn't even hiring!

Meanwhile, I was slinging garlic cheese biscuits at Red Lobster.

I finally found a gig selling display ads and directory listings for a regional print magazine's website. This first "real" job required me to make my own call lists and set appointments to explain advertising options. I was provided with a laptop, a price sheet, and a week of training.

My goals were to make 100 cold calls, set 10 appointments, and make at least three sales weekly.

The calling part was hard. First off, small business owners rarely answers their phones. This applies especially to the restaurant owners who I was stupidly targeting because of my familiarity with the business. Little did I know how terrible that decision was.

Secondly, it's awkward to make a sales pitch to someone you've never met. Some people get downright pissed that you're trying to contact them.

Regardless, I made my 100 calls, struggled to get appointments, and eventually just started to visit establishments uninvited. I was 10x more likely to have a conversation that way.

On my best weeks, I sold a single $50 package. Two months after my start date, I was canned.
In retrospect, I probably should have focused on doctors more than restaurant owners -- and asked for a little more direction since I had no clue what I was doing.

Looking on the (questionably) bright side, this horrible experience paid off and helped me land another underpaying short-term gig selling test prep services on college campuses. I collected scholarship sweepstakes forms and called student "leads" to enroll them in on-site classes. Sensing a theme yet?

That company made major cuts just four months after I was hired, and I was the least experienced and thus the first person on the chopping block.

Then I landed something closer to by dream job: sales for a geothermal heating and cooling company. This role paid a living wage, allowed me to work from home promoting energy efficiency, and required lots of project bid research and phone calls to estimation departments.

It continued the tradition of high volume outbound dials, but the calls felt more purposeful -- which made it super easy.

Fast forward to the present -- I've morphed from outside sales to inside sales, and guess what? I'm still making calls. But now it's better; I actually get to make meaningful connections with clients to offer them means of increasing their success. And I do this 100% over the phone.

I've finally made peace with my landline and my calling (pun intended).

I certainly haven't peaked in my career, but I would be a fool to think I'm going to escape a reliance on telecommunications. This coming week, you can bet I'll be giving a toast to our good ol' boy Alexander Graham Bell (March 3 is his birthday, after all).

Thanks for enabling me to pay my bills, A. G.!

Turn fear into bliss.

When my butt isn't confined to a chair positioned in front of a computer, it can often be found on the seat of my 1980-something purple Bianchi single speed. It's my vehicle to work when the weather is decent (which is most of the time in Austin, Texas, save for the rare thunderstorm or even rarer snow flurry), and social cycling is among my primary pastimes on the weekends and almost weekends.

Photo courtesy of Andrea Mabry.

Passions squared: don't get me started on the color purple.

Once upon a time -- all of a few years ago -- I was not a cyclist in the least. My friend Annie Angello showed me the ropes of road biking soon after I moved the the Live Music Capital of the World. I must admit, the first few months of two-wheeled ventures were terrifying.

Learning to ride with traffic is no cake walk. I've discovered how to deal with angry drivers, how to be on guard for every pothole and piece of broken glass that litters the streets, and how to dodge nasty speed bumps that tend to come out of nowhere. Not surprisingly, though, riding a bike is, well, just like riding a bike -- once you get the hang of it, you're golden. 

After regularly joining the Thursday Night Social Ride, biking became a breeze and a passion. It has fueled more endorphin-filled excursions than I can track, and I wouldn't trade this hobby for a Bentley.

The point of sharing my amour de velo is to encourage anyone and everyone to find something they love and make it an integral part of their life -- even if that thing is uncomfortable or scary at first.

The podium called Dog.

I keep another graphic pinned up in my cube that looks like this:

This was one of my first graphic design pieces created outside of class assignments. I remember its inspiration very vividly.

It was a spring day in early 2007 within a small, musty classroom in a place called Morgan Hall (this is at The University of Alabama if you need an absolute point of reference). My English Lit teacher, who I'll refer to as Mr. K, put on an extremely clever show to demonstrate the power of interpretation and our own literal constructs.

Mr. K began by pointing to his podium asking each person in our class what it was. Each student answered with his or her own term, to which he kept replying, "No, this is a DOG!"

"You," said Mr. K looking directly at a classmate in front of me. "What is this?"

"A book stand?"

"NO, IT'S A DOG," Mr. K replied while slamming the podium up to imitate frustration.

And to Mr. K's point, that object he was handling was indeed a dog. To him, at least.

Everyone perceives words, images, situations, and the general world around them in very different ways. Communication is critical to overcoming perceptual differences, as I've found that pre-defining terms can lead to quicker understanding and mutual decision-making. Furthermore, distancing oneself from one's own interpretation and forcing a two-sided view can promote agreement. And then there's that whole notion about making sure you are on the same page as someone else...

I don't remember much else about Mr. K's lesson, but, man --- that part sure did stick and is more applicable to my everyday life than most things I learned in college. His point has helped me both personally and professionally.

Whenever I find myself giving a sales presentation filled with ambiguous acronyms and contextual expressions, I make it a point to ask if I'm making sense and re-phrase as necessary. Sometimes this means paraphrasing myself multiple times, but I find this increases engagement -- as well as interest.

My goal this week is to make a podium bark.

Breaking bad habits with productive hobbies.

Reviving my inspiration from The Success Indicator comes with intentions of shaking up my daily routine, which has worsened considerably since Justin Sparkles has been out of town.

I usually wake up, play with my cat, run, bike, work, bike, make dinner, watch terrible television shows, pet my cat, and go to bed on repeat at least 4 days out of the week (this is interrupted by the Thursday Night Social Ride). Downtime is filled with mindless Internet browsing, which I have justified as a means of turning off my brain around bedtime.

Granted, my marathon training schedule and personal transportation preferences eat a significant chunk of time out of my day, but less productive things -- like my attachment to Netflix -- could be scaled back or dismissed altogether.

In lieu of ineffective media consumption, I'd like to focus on alternative hobbies that are more productive in nature:

Writing
Check

Industry Reading

Finish The New Rules of Marketing & PR and find additional (non-redundant) sales and marketing literature.

Yoga
I've been running 50+ miles and biking 100+ miles on a weekly basis with minimal to no stretching involved. The meditation factor of yoga is also attractive for mental well-being.

Strength Training
I'll be taking aerial arts classes at SkyCandy starting next Monday in hopes of increasing my flexibility and core strength, two physical improvements that could potentially lead to a PR at the Boston Marathon.

Art
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a professional creative. Thankfully, my spiral into a Sales career has preserved my passion for art as an enjoyable outlet for self-expression -- it's about time to pick up a paint brush again.


What are your most productive hobbies?

A Delayed Reaction to The Success Indicator

I have kept an infographic thumbtacked above my computer monitor since I started my current job just over a year ago. It illustrates MaryEllen Tribby's thoughts on the differences between successful and unsuccessful people:

Now, I don't know who MaryEllen Tribby is outside of the creation of this image, but her obvious-but-not-obvious points sure do make me want to be a better person. 

I'd like to think that one particular bullet point ("Keep a journal") inspired this blog, but that wouldn't be 100% accurate. Credit is definitely due to the inspiration of an incredibly talented former college classmate of mine, Tanya Sylvan, and her publication, All in Stride.

***

To go beyond Google's definition of "success" as "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose", my "aim" is to always be improving and my "purpose" is to make the world a better place. I hope that the writings I assemble here will help me fulfill both of these components.

My goal with SUCCESSDICATED is to write about things that either have made or will make me a better, more successful person.