When I was very young and new to sales, I thought that bigger companies were better managed, better resourced, and had fewer problems. The larger the clients I won, the more I realized that bigger companies have bigger problems, and they have more of them. Wal-mart is now dealing with the very real threat of Amazon.com, a giant problem, and one not easily solved.
I also believed that bigger companies have better talent. I thought that because they had more money and more opportunities, they would acquire all the best talent. The scale of a larger company requires more talented people, and their much larger needs often leaves them with a much larger deficit when it comes to hiring the people they need.
For the first few years I worked in sales, I believed that my larger competitors had advantages when it came to sales. They worked for a bigger company with more locations. They had better technology, and they had way better programs. They also had much better marketing and much better sales collateral. When I saw how crisp some of their people looked, I was sure that they were unbeatable. Over time, I discovered that sales chops level the playing field, and many of the largest companies I competed against were paper tigers when it came to selling.
As I won large clients, I believed that winning them was enough, that I could throw them over the fence and the operations team would take care of executing. I thought that responsibility belonged to someone else. As the problems mounted, I was disabused of this notion by clients who expected to me to be standing right next to them in the fox hole when the bullets started flying. I learned that I was accountable for the outcomes I promised.
Your beliefs will change over time. Your growth and your experience will provide you with new beliefs, beliefs that serve you better than the beliefs you hold right now.
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