Don’t Leave Success to Chance

You win new clients and new opportunities one of two ways: intention or accident. Intentionally won deals are how you grow your sales; accidental deals are how you fail to do so.

A Series of Happy Accidents

With a little luck, you can win a new client through a happy accident. Your dream client may find your company online and raise their hand and ask for help at just the right time. One of your existing clients may refer one of their contacts to you after discovering they have a problem you can solve for them. Marketing can churn up a lead that happens to be ripe for your offer, and everything can fall easily into place.

But you can’t count on being found by the people you hope to serve. You can’t count on your existing clients bringing up your name to one of their contacts in a conversation about business. Even though marketing has an important role to play, your success belongs to you, and you alone.

You cannot build success by hoping for happy accidents. All these happy accidents do is allow some salespeople to hold out hope for more.

Intentionally Chasing Down Success

If you really want certain results, you can’t leave those results to chance. You have to chase them down. You build success by intentionally taking action on your goals and the outcomes that you need. Success is keeping score, and it knows when you have paid in advance for what you want.

If you want to win your dream client’s business, you need to develop a pursuit plan, nurture relationships, and chase down those clients. Applying enough effort and energy against any obstacle long enough, and the obstacle yields. Applying enough hope against any obstacle doesn’t have the same effect.

Luck can be a wonderful accident, but it is as fickle as all get out, and not to be trusted with your future. If you want success, in sales or anything else, you are going to have to achieve it intentionally, through massive, focused action. Nothing is guaranteed, but this is as close a sure thing as you will ever have.