Why do some people find success at an early age in their lives - perhaps 35 or younger, and some others only begin to find their success at 50s? And some never?
Some people believe that success is tied to age (and by extension experience).
Once I ran a training for a big bank in Singapore - and the feedback was great. Considering they were employed salespeople who weren't motivated to come for a training, to get an overall score between Good and Excellent was great achievement.
But last I heard, they didn't want to hire me again because I looked too young.
I know. When I heard it, I thought it was incredulous... If it's bad, then say it's bad. And if it's bad, I can change. I can be better. But I can't add 20 years to my life!
Now I don't want to question the politics or the intentions of the decision makers, but it is what it was. Sometimes age helps you, sometimes it plays against you.
I've had people come up to me I say they bought my program because I look young and they want to learn from someone they can relate to.
That's all well and good.
But question is: Is success really tied to age?
While people tend to think so, tying youth to inexperience and incompetence, truth is that success in business and sales has a crucial, unspoken factor.
That is: Guided learning and evaluated experiences.
In other words, we need a coach to guide us, and give us feedback.
Think about it - when we are struggling in school, what do we get? A tuition teacher. (It's almost a necessity nowadays for kiasu parents) When we want to learn the piano, we get a piano teacher. When we want to swim, we get a swimming coach.
Why? These people teach us the right way to do it, and give us feedback if we are doing things wrongly.
That accelerates the learning curve.
Rather than struggling ourselves, trying to figure things out - we can get someone who has been there, done that to point out our issues.
If we do that for all these things in our lives, why don't we do that for a high income skill like selling?
Strange isn't it? To me, it's just a mindset that needs reframing.
Once we see selling as a key skill to learn, and us having that same mindset about selling as we do when think about picking up golfing, swimming, piano, etc, we're on our way to see that success come earlier, faster and more time in our lives to enjoy its fruits.