Chapter Twelve
The Principle of Exploitation
Follow Up and Follow Through
Victory belongs to the most persevering.
—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, GREAT battles have been won and then lost because of the failure of a commanding general to follow through and complete the victory.
The Battle for the Dardanelles
In 1915, the British fleet attempted to send a force into the Dardanelles, invade Turkey, which was allied with Germany, and capture the capital city, which at the time was Constantinople. The British battleships entered the strait and bombarded the Turkish positions on the heights for several days while the Turks fired back with all the artillery at their disposal.
But the Turkish gunners were running out of ammunition. British victory seemed inevitable. Reportedly, the order came down from the Turkish government to the army to break off the attack and surrender to the British at noon, thereby turning the Gallipoli Peninsula over to the British forces.
At the critical moment, eleven a.m., within reach of victory, but unaware that they had almost won the battle, the British called off the bombardment. This failure to follow through just one hour longer cost them the battle.
The Gallipoli Campaign
Having been unsuccessful in their naval assault, the British decided to attack Turkey by land. Along with soldiers from Australia and New Zealand, British troops launched a land invasion to seize the Gallipoli Peninsula at the mouth of the Dardanelles. Their attack was a complete surprise, and the Turkish army was caught unprepared. The British were able to land practically unopposed, unloading thousands of fresh troops onto the beaches within a few hours.
But once again, the British hesitated. The commander was cautious. He decided to wait until the entire army was disembarked and ready for action. The Turks, meanwhile, rushed every available soldier, machine gun, and piece of artillery to the heights above the beaches. By the time the British decided to move to assault the heights, it was too late. The Turks were ready and waiting.
The failure to follow through speedily after landing resulted in the legendary disaster known as the Gallipoli Campaign, which cost the British and their allies one hundred thousand men, and which ultimately failed. The failure to carry through with the naval bombardment, combined with the failure to carry through on the ground, led to one of the greatest military debacles of the twentieth century.
The Principle of Exploitation
Keep the enemy off balance. Never allow your opponent the opportunity to regroup and defend or counterattack. Press your advantage and push through to complete victory. Never relax until your objective has been attained.
There are countless examples in military history and business where the failure to follow up and follow through led to the complete loss of everything already won at such a cost in time and resources.
The Principle of Exploitation Applied to Business
It is amazing how many companies come up with innovations and breakthroughs in products and services and then put them aside or fail to exploit them fully in a competitive market. They are then astonished when rival companies emerge into the market with similar ideas and leapfrog them and the rest of the competition to take a commanding lead in customer service and satisfaction.
In 1960, the Swiss Chronological Institute in Geneva developed the first quartz watch. At that time, there were 62,500 professional Swiss watchmakers, and Swiss watches were the most popular and highly respected watches in the world. When the Swiss Chronological Institute developed the quartz watch, traditional Swiss watchmakers dismissed it as a novelty that had no commercial application. After all, Swiss watchmakers claimed, it lacked the sophisticated internal workings of gears, springs, stems, and other mechanical parts that everyone “knew” had to be included in a watch. Who would be interested in a watch mechanism made of quartz, with virtually no moving parts?
Representatives of a Japanese company visited the Swiss Chronological Institute and were shown the new watch. They saw its potential and offered to purchase the rights. Believing that its invention was worthless, the institute sold it to the Japanese company for a small royalty.
The Japanese company had seen something the Swiss hadn’t: an opportunity to manufacture watches that were highly accurate and inexpensive as well as attractive. Within a few years, they were mass-producing quartz watches and selling them worldwide at a fraction of what the Swiss watchmakers were charging. Within a decade, the Swiss watch industry had been decimated. The number of Swiss watchmakers dropped from 62,500 to 12,500, and Japanese companies took a commanding lead in the production of watches throughout the world. The Swiss Chronological Institute had had the initial advantage because they developed quartz watches, but they gave it up by failing to exploit it fully in the world market.
In 1959, Ford Motor Company brought out the Edsel, one of the biggest mistakes in car manufacturing history. Eight years passed from the time it was conceived by the engineers and the marketers to the time it was released. In that time, the market changed completely, and when the car was released, there was almost no demand it. Ford lost more than $250 million and the name Edsel became a synonym for a major marketing mistake.
Some years later, another engineer at Ford developed an idea for a minivan that would replace the station wagon. Many people at Ford, including Lee Iacocca, the president at that time, thought that the minivan had tremendous potential. But far more people at Ford, remembering the disaster with the Edsel, were afraid of making another mistake by committing to a new and untried product. If there was a real demand for a minivan, they figured, car buyers in America would be writing in and telling Ford what they wanted.
Victory in the next war will depend on execution, not plans.
—GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON
However, this scenario is seldom true. It is quite common for customers to have no idea that they want a particular product until the product is available. This is true of most high-tech products, most foods, fashion, and concepts like FedEx and thousands of other market innovations. Often, you have no choice but to press forward in the faith and confidence that your product or service will find a ready market when you bring it out. This is exactly what happened with Steve Jobs and the iPhone.
Lee Iacocca moved on from Ford to assume the presidency of Chrysler Corporation when the company was facing bankruptcy. He quickly turned the company around. He had a clear objective, he took aggressive action, and he concentrated on financial results. He unified the company under his command, acquired accurate market intelligence, got everyone working together proactively, secured his financial flanks, economized operations, surprised his competition, and turned huge losses into profits in less than three years.
Once Chrysler was profitable again, the engineer at Ford who had pioneered the minivan project came to Iacocca and asked if he would be interested in looking at it again. Iacocca jumped on the project immediately, and soon thereafter Chrysler introduced into the market the first American family-style minivan, the Aerostar.
It was a huge success from the very beginning. Soon, Daimler-Chrysler Corporation had almost 50 percent of the American market for minivans and earned billions of dollars of profit from sales. Almost every other company jumped into the market. Then the SUV was born, selling millions and changing the face of car manufacturing forever. But it started with Chrysler. They saw an opportunity, took full advantage of it, and exploited it to the fullest.
The Sales Process
For many years in selling, it was quite common to hear, “The sale begins when the customer says no.” We know today, however, that the sale begins when the customer says yes.
It is when the customer finally agrees to buy your product or service that the real work begins. Now you must redouble your efforts to make sure that this sale comes together and stays together.
Many people take a sale almost all the way to closing and then lose it at the last minute. Why is this? Based on interviews with thousands of customers, we find that many customers experience a motivation dip immediately after agreeing to buy something. This is called buyer’s remorse. After the purchase, the customer begins to think of all the difficulties, problems, and uncertainties involved in using the new product or service.
It is at this point that the customer needs the greatest amount of care and attention by the sales professional. This is the moment when the customer will begin to lose heart and question her decision. This is why, at the moment that your customer decides to proceed, you must redouble your efforts to make sure you follow through with the sale.
The best strategy in selling is to do something immediately to reassure the customer that she has made a good decision. This can be a phone call, a visit, an additional exercise in customer satisfaction or customer delight, or something else. But the more important the sale, the more important it is that you reinforce it immediately after the customer has made the decision to proceed.
Over the course of my career, I often worked very hard to make a sale. But when the customer finally agreed to proceed, I would breathe a great sigh of relief and turn my attention to other customers, or go home for the weekend. Then, when I called the customer back a few days later, he would sometimes have changed his mind completely, and I was never able to resurrect the sale. It was only when I learned about the motivation dip that customers experience that I was able to guard against this happening. It was only when I followed through to the very end of the sale that my income in sales took off. Making the sale is not enough. It is equally as important to follow through to the delivery of the product and the assurance of customer satisfaction.
Operation Desert Storm
Operation Desert Storm in 1991 was an example of military brilliance, utilizing and employing all of the proven principles of strategic success in warfare. Only one principle was missing; exploitation. The Allies failed to drive through to Baghdad and eliminate the Iraqi government and its capability for making war again in the future.
There were several reasons for the decision not to press the war through to a final conclusion and exploit the victory over the Iraqi forces in Kuwait. But the end result was that Saddam Hussein was left in power and much of the Iraqi military capability left intact. The cost to return and finish the job after 9/11 was vastly more than if the Allied forces had followed through and taken advantage of their victory in 1991. Today, the aftermath of the Iraq War, the loss of thousands of American and Allied lives, the retreat from Iraq, and the rise of ISIS still cast a pall over American politics and its reputation in the world.
Develop Your Customers in Depth
If you don’t develop customers while making the sale, trying to develop them later will cost more in time and money, and you will be less likely to succeed. A referral is worth ten or twenty times a cold call. The very best time to get a referral from a customer is immediately after the customer has bought.
When customers make a buying decision, they have already gone through the process of analyzing and comparing to assure themselves that this is the correct purchase for them at this time. When you ask for a reference or referral at that moment, customers will often introduce or recommend you to someone else they know. When you call on a new prospect with a referral from someone he knows, you are already most of the way toward making the sale.
From now on, when you make a sale, follow through and develop the customer in depth. Look beyond the first sale to the second, third, and even the fourth sale. Once the customer has signed on the dotted line, you should begin to think immediately about how you can sell even more products and services to this customer, the customer’s company, and the customer’s family or friends. Seize the advantage.
A woman who participated in one of my sales seminars used this referral process very skillfully. She made one sale to a customer who was quite pleased with her and her product. She immediately asked him for more referrals, which she followed up on, asking for two more referrals from each new prospect. Over the next twelve months, she tracked seventy-two additional sales from that one customer, primarily as a result of giving excellent service.
Capitalize on a Market Niche
Similar customers have similar motivations and similar needs. If you can identify a particular customer in a particular industry, position, occupation, or situation and then sell your product or service to that customer, you will have learned something vital and important. You will have learned a lot about how to sell to other people who are similar to the customer with whom you have just closed the deal.
Let’s say you make a sale to a person who works in a particular industry. To make that sale, you will have had to learn a great deal about that industry and how it functions. Now you have a knowledge base. Now you can take that same skill and knowledge and turn to another individual in the same industry and capitalize on what you have learned. You can take advantage of your ability to sell in that type of market.
Your knowledge of the way your customer does business is valuable. It can be your stock in trade as a salesperson. The more you know about the functioning of your customer’s industry or field, the easier it is for you to sell to that particular type of customer. You are much more capable of identifying and solving problems or satisfying needs with what you sell. Today, with the Internet, it is possible for you to quickly familiarize yourself with the industry in general, and the prospect company in particular. You can never know too much.
Specialize in a Particular Industry
A friend of mine began selling insurance some years ago. He concluded very quickly that people who had more money were better prospects than people who had less money. He also saw, of course, that doctors and other medical professionals had a high, consistent, and predictable level of income. Therefore, if he could sell to medical professionals, he could create quite a business for himself. It turned out that every other life insurance salesperson had come to the same conclusion, so the competition was fierce for the business of these highly paid professionals.
So instead of going out and calling on doctors and dentists immediately, he began a detailed research project that ultimately took two years to complete. He learned everything he could about the way medical professionals structure their finances. He read books and attended medical conventions. He interviewed countless medical professionals and talked to other people who had medical professionals as clients.
Eventually, he was asked to write articles for their magazines and speak on financial planning to groups of doctors. Soon he came to be recognized as a financial planning and insurance expert for people who were earning their living in one of the medical professions.
As his reputation for expertise in this area spread, business began to flow to him. Doctors called him and referred him to other doctors. Within five years, he was one of the highest-paid people in his industry. He was successful because he had used the twin ideas of first seeking out an opportunity area, and second, exploiting it to the fullest by becoming an expert in that area. He didn’t stop when he identified a market. He followed through to find the best way to reach that market. And then he went on to duplicate this strategy in other niche industries, as well.
People always want to buy from the experts. Customers always want to deal with the individuals and organizations they feel are the best in the industry. When you focus on becoming an expert in a particular field, more and more people in that field will want to do business with you.
Higher Quality Leads to More Sales
As shown in Chapter 5, according to the PIMS studies at Harvard University, companies that are recognized as the highest-quality providers in their markets are also the companies that sell the most and sell the most easily. They can charge more than their competitors, and they earn the highest profit margins.
The highest-rated companies in terms of quality also grow the most rapidly, attract and keep the best people, and pay the best salaries. The “quality ranking” of a company is the most important single determining factor in the success of a company, and in the success of the individuals who sell and work for that company. It is estimated that fully 90 percent of your success in business will be determined by the quality of your product in the first place, as your customer defines it.
Thousands of consumers have been interviewed over the years and asked for their definitions of “quality.” Their responses show that the quality of a company in their minds is measured and determined by two factors. The first factor is the quality of the product itself. The second is the manner in which the product was sold and serviced.
It is not only the product or service that the company offers, but the temperament, mood, and personality of the people who deliver and service the product or service that, in combination, give a company its quality ranking in a given industry. The company needs a great product or service, but more important, it needs to follow through with good marketing, service, and delivery.
Here is a good question for you: What is your quality ranking in your marketplace? Imagine that your company is one of ten major companies offering the same product or service in your marketplace. Intuitively, what do you think your quality ranking would be if customers were surveyed and asked to rank your company on a scale of one to ten against your competitors? This ranking largely determines your levels of sales and profitability.
Determine How Your Customers Define Quality
Before you can exploit an advantage you have over the competition, you need to first determine whether your customers value that particular advantage. Ask your customers how they define the word “quality.” What words do they use? How do they determine that one product or service is of higher or lower quality than another? The greater clarity you have about how your customers define quality as it relates to your offerings, the more capable you will become of improving in those areas that your customers consider important.
According to Philip Crosby in his book Quality Is Free, the general meaning of quality is that “your product or service does what you say it will do and continues to do it.” The percentage of the time that your product or service delivers on the promises that you make to sell it is your quality rating. “Zero defects” means that your product or service fulfills its promises 100 percent of the time. This is what every customer is looking for.
Once you know how your customers define quality and you have decided to improve your quality ranking, you then develop a strategy and make a plan to improve in those areas that are most important to your customers. You continually seek ways to improve your customer’s perception of your organization and of the products and services you sell.
For example, do customers consider speed of delivery a factor in quality? If they do, commit yourself to delivering your products faster than they are being delivered today, as Amazon does. Do your customers consider convenience of use a quality factor? This explains the success of Uber. What about speed of responsiveness or politeness on the telephone? Do your customers value the importance of accurate billing and quick replies to questions with regard to cost and price? Do your customers value follow-up service and support? Focus on improving in those areas that are most likely to make your customers happier than anything else.
Remember the 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of the things you do will account for 80 percent of the reasons your customers buy from you. Twenty percent of your features and benefits will determine whether they continue to buy from you and recommend you to their friends. You must know for sure what items are in the top 20 percent.
There is a danger here, though. You could make the mistake of concentrating on becoming extremely good and efficient in an area related to your product or service that your customers don’t care about at all. You could be draining vital time and resources away from improving in the one or two areas that could make an enormous difference in the perception of your customers.
Once you find out what your customers want and need and are willing to pay for, you should exploit this to the fullest. You should take every opportunity not only to improve in those critical areas but also to advertise, promote, and sell to other customers by emphasizing how good you really are in those areas that mean so much to them.
Why Do They Buy from You?
To take full advantage of your position in the market, determine what makes you special. You must be continually asking your customers why it is that they buy from you. What is it that they like the most about what you do for them? Why is it that customers prefer to deal with you rather than your competitors? The answers to these questions represent your greatest opportunities for exploitation and development in your marketplace.
A Rolex watch can cost many thousands of dollars. But Rolex is not sold as a timepiece. Rolex is sold as a status symbol. Rolex has managed to position itself as the watch you wear to tell other people that you have “arrived.” Wearing a Rolex watch makes a statement to the people around you that you are successful and prosperous. And people are willing to pay many thousands of dollars to make this statement. Status and prestige are major motivators.
Why is it, exactly, that people buy your product or service? How can you exploit and develop that market advantage to leapfrog ahead of your competitors?
Operation Barbarossa
Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in June 1941 with three million crack German troops supported by tanks and motorized infantry. Three German army groups (North, Center, and South), perhaps the best fighting forces in the world at that time, rolled across Russia, overwhelming the Russian forces opposing them. They were virtually unstoppable.
The overall objective of the campaign was to take Moscow, which was the central hub of the entire country for communications, railroads, and highways. If the Germans could occupy Moscow, Russia would be defeated and knocked out of the war.
The German armies, having achieved almost complete surprise, pushed across Russia, destroying and scattering all resistance in their way. In the first three months of the campaign, they took more than 1.5 million prisoners. In Moscow, Stalin and his government were preparing to evacuate and flee the capital. The end was in sight.
As the Germans advanced, they saw a great opportunity to encircle and destroy the sixty-nine divisions and one million men of Marshal Budyonny’s southwest front and to take Kiev. Hitler immediately ordered the three army groups to work in concert to cut off, surround, and eliminate these Russian troops as a fighting force in what is known as the Kiev Encirclement. (This strategy of surrounding enemy forces is called the Cannae principle, which was used by Hannibal to encircle and destroy the Roman army at Cannae in Italy in 216 BC.)
To turn their full attention to this encircling movement, the German armies halted their advance on Moscow and focused on Kiev. The encircled Russians fought bitterly but unsuccessfully to break through the German infantry. Because of their fierce resistance, the battle lasted from late August until early October. Kiev fell to the Germans at the end of September, and they took an additional six hundred thousand Russian prisoners by October. The Germans achieved victory, but at a great cost.
The Germans then resumed their advance on Moscow. But it was now too late. Even though German advance forces penetrated to within ten miles of the outskirts of the city, their supply lines had been stretched too far, and the Russian winter, for which they were ill-prepared, was coming on. The Russians counterattacked, and the Germans were forced to withdraw into defensible positions for the winter.
By the spring, the Russians had rearmed and reequipped new armies recruited from east of the Ural Mountains. Their factories produced hundreds of tanks and fighter aircraft. As a result, the Germans were never able to take Moscow and conquer the Soviet Union. Their attempts to take Leningrad in the north and Stalingrad in the south also met with failure. By 1943, it was clear that Germany could not win the war in Russia. Time now turned against them. The failure to follow through in 1941 cost them the war.
Hitler saw an opportunity to attack Kiev and quickly took it. Fortunately for the Russians, this opportunity was actually a distraction from his main, and more important, objective of taking Moscow.
Move Quickly on Opportunities, but Stay on Track
Opportunities are like windows. They open and close, sometimes quite quickly. When you have an idea for something you can do to be more successful, take action immediately, but make sure the opportunity supports your objectives. Hitler moved quickly on an opportunity, but he didn’t understand that the distraction would prevent him from reaching his primary objective.
In your sales and business activities, when you get a recommendation or a referral, call that person immediately. When you read about a new idea or concept, try it out as fast as you can. When a window of opportunity opens for you, dive through it quickly, because it will close again just as fast as it opened in the first place.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft Corporation in Bellevue, Washington. In the early years they struggled, as all entrepreneurs do. One day, Gates was invited by IBM to submit a proposal for an operating system for the new personal computer that IBM was developing. Microsoft did not yet have an operating system, nor did it have time to develop the type of system that IBM wanted. But Bill Gates said, “Sure, right away!” He then began looking around for someone, anyone, who had already done the complicated work of developing a computer operating system.
There was a small company in Seattle that had developed an operating system and had even tried to sell it to IBM, but without success. After some negotiating, Bill Gates bought it from them for $50,000. This company had invested an enormous amount of time and energy in developing the system but could not develop the market. Gates did not have the system, but he had the potential market.
This was a match that worked out perfectly for both Microsoft and IBM. The system became the Microsoft Disc Operating System, commonly known as MS-DOS. It evolved into Windows and is now built into 90 percent of the world’s personal computers. By seizing an opportunity and running with it—and figuring out how to make it work as he went along—Bill Gates laid the groundwork for becoming the richest man in the world.
The Principle of Exploitation in Personal Success
There has never been a better time, and there have never been more opportunities than right now, for you to achieve your goals and objectives—faster and easier than ever before. You are surrounded by opportunities and possibilities that have never existed until now. You can make breakthroughs today that will enable you to accomplish more in the next few years than most people accomplish in a lifetime.
But opportunities usually come disguised in work clothes, i.e., as hard work. They may be all around you, but to maximize them, you have to follow up and follow through with each one. You have to exploit them to the fullest. Advertising executive Bruce Barton once wrote, “Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand.”
It is such a tragedy to see how many people who work very hard and get 95 percent of their goal achieved only to back off, slow down, and relax. Then, for reasons completely outside their control, the goal slips out of their grasp and they find themselves losing everything they’ve put into it.
George Cecil said it well: “On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting—died.”
Acres of Diamonds
Perhaps the most widely disseminated story ever told regarding opportunities and possibilities, and the need to exploit them quickly, is Russell Conwell’s famous talk “Acres of Diamonds.” In this talk, which he gave more than five thousand times during his lifetime, Conwell emphasized that you do not have to go somewhere else to find your great opportunity. It frequently lies close at hand.
The story he told was that of an African farmer who sold his farm and went off into Africa looking for diamonds. He never found any. After years of frustration and failure, he finally threw himself into the ocean and drowned.
Meanwhile, the new farmer back on the same land found that his farm was actually covered with acres of diamonds. But the diamonds looked like rough pieces of rock before they were cut and shaped and polished. The old farmer had been sitting on acres of diamonds, but he had not recognized them.
The moral of this story is that your acres of diamonds probably lie under your own feet as well. But they are disguised as your special talents and abilities, your education and experience, your friends and contacts. Your greatest possibilities probably lie close at hand: in your current job, your present business or industry, and in your existing market. Your job is to identify them and then to exploit them. Take advantage of every opportunity you can find.
“Start where you are,” Robert Collier said. “Distant fields always look greener, but opportunity lies right where you are.”
Turning Defeat into Victory
To view the Gallipoli Campaign from the Turkish point of view, though the Turks were taken by surprise and were at first unprepared to defend themselves, they were able to turn their defeat into victory by taking advantage of the opportunity of time. Think and Grow Rich coauthor Napoleon Hill also found that successful men and women are masters at turning defeat into victory. He summed up his views with these words: “Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune or temporary defeat.” And he added an observation and an exhortation: “Within every setback or disappointment lies the seed of an equal or greater advantage or benefit. Your job is to find it.”
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
—FRANCIS BACON
To find your opportunities for exploitation and development, look around you. Look within yourself. What are your unique talents and abilities? What is it that the world needs that you are uniquely suited to give it? What is it that you do better than anyone else?
Look within yourself for your own “personal” acres of diamonds. Ask: “What has been most responsible for your success in life to date? What do you most enjoy doing? What do you do easily and well that is often difficult for others?”
Look back over your life. What activities and accomplishments have given you the greatest amount of satisfaction and happiness? The answers to these questions will often indicate where you can develop and exploit your opportunities to the fullest in the future.
The fact is that you may be surrounded by opportunities that only need to be developed and exploited. You must recognize them, seize them, and take advantage of them. Once you get an opportunity, you must run with it and follow it on to completion. You must exploit it fully. And you must do it quickly and well.
Do All You Can
When a farmer has sown the seeds and cultivated the crop, and then fall comes and the crop is ready, how much does the farmer harvest? The answer is, “All he can!”
How much do you sell? All you can! How long do you persist? As long as it takes! How much do you develop and exploit every opportunity that comes to you? As much as it takes to make it successful!
Luck is always a matter of probabilities. The more different things you try, the more likely it is that you will triumph. Luck comes from intelligently trying as many different things as possible. It comes from learning as many different subjects as possible. It comes from accepting feedback and self-correcting as quickly as possible, and persisting with indomitable willpower until you finally break through. And the harder you work, the luckier you get.
The good news is that your chances of great success are extremely high if you know what you want, put your whole heart into it, and then persist until you succeed. Once you get your opportunity or breakthrough, that is the time to redouble your efforts and increase the pressure, rather than sitting back and relaxing, which most people do.
Something Always Happens
In wartime England, 1941, during the darkest days of World War II, Winston Churchill was urged to seek an accommodation with the Germans—to make peace. This he refused to do. When he was confronted with the fact that the Germans had overwhelming military superiority in Europe and the Americans had made it clear that they would not get involved again in a land war in Europe, why was it that Churchill refused to seek some kind of peace agreement to end the war?
Churchill said, “Something will happen to bring America into the war, and that will turn the tide.”
When he was asked why he was so confident that something like that would happen, he said, “Because I have studied history and history shows that if you persist long enough, something always happens.”
Sometimes luck comes as the result of your persisting with what you are doing until the tables finally turn and you get your chance. It also seems that a streak of bad luck is often followed by a streak of good luck. A sales slump is often followed by a sales boom. It is, therefore, essential that, at the time of greatest discouragement, you redouble your efforts and recommit yourself to persist with your whole heart.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. The more you take advantage of opportunities, the more opportunities open up for you. As you move toward your goal, you begin to see possibilities that were invisible before you began moving forward.
Look for Opportunities Everywhere
Look around you at all the possible opportunities in your world today that can help you to achieve victory. Of all the different things that you could possibly be doing, what is the 20 percent of your activities that could potentially represent 80 percent of your success? What are the major customer, product, service, or promotional breakthroughs that you could achieve that could have the biggest impact on your business or your sales activities?
High sales in your business begin with differentiating yourself in a meaningful way from your competitors. More business is the result of becoming very, very good at what you do. Market success is based on your achieving a competitive advantage, an area of excellence where you are superior to your competition.
The questions are always the same: “What is it that you do, or can do, in an excellent fashion? Where can you gain and keep market superiority? What is the one thing that you can do right now that can make the greatest single difference to your success in the future?”
The Military Principle of Exploitation Revisited
Your ability to follow up and follow through on your ideas and opportunities will determine how high you climb and how far you go. Once you have a breakthrough or an advantage, you must exploit it to the fullest.
In business, you must identify your greatest strengths and focus all your marketing and sales on selling more and more where those product strengths are most appreciated. You must identify your best opportunities for the future and commit your resources to exploiting them in every way possible. You must be persistent and unrelenting in getting the very most out of every benefit you have or can develop.
In your personal life, you must fully develop and exploit your special talents and abilities. You must become absolutely excellent at doing those things that can make the greatest contribution to the achievement of your most important goals.
When doors open for you, as they will, you must be prepared to plunge through them. You must be willing to take intelligent risks to realize the potential of each advantageous situation, and to realize your full potential as a person. By continually following up and following through, you will eventually become unstoppable.