CHAPPED HANDS AND SUCCESSFUL SELLING

What does a minister, cold weather, chapped hands, and selling final expense insurance, all have in common? Read on..

Ministers are often stigmatized to never wanting to “get their hands dirty”.  My father would be an exception. Although his ministerial calling has driven him, literally, into a cross-country, circuit-riding, itinerant ministry, he savors home-projects of physical labor.

The winter months are no exception. While working outdoors for several weeks, his hands became dried out by the constant wind, as well as the cold, dry temperatures. Cracked areas of skin appeared on his hands. To seek relief, he found a bottle of ointment in the medicine cabinet. The daily moisturizer would be given to a full lather on both hands several times per day.  Problem solved, right?

After a few days, instead of the flaky dryness of his hands decreasing and going away, it increased. Dad’s hands would become even MORE parched as coarse as sandpaper by day’s end.  The skin-cracks were deepening.  Well, more ointment is needed, he presumed.

However, after a week and a half of religious ointment application, his hands worsened to shed a “dandruff” of flaked skin, covering both hands as freely as a frosty mug. Puzzled by the failure of the moisturizer, he voiced his dilemma to us, his family.  We listened and suggested a doctor visit.  The crackled, flaky skin was raw when he showed us his hands. Poor dad. What could be causing such an intense outbreak of skin dehydration?

One day later, the cause was discovered. The label of the moisturizer product that was being used was carefully read.  “LIQUID SOAP” it declares on the front label!  He had been using soap, assuming it to be a moisturizing lotion, to gel the dryness of his fractured skin.  Instead, the soap was chapping the hyde off his hands.

Now, here’s the rub.   Can you try to identify with this in terms of selling final expense insurance?  How could you be failing in Final Expense sales, when it seems you are employing your best technique to close daily sales? This is when life schools us.  Sometimes,

familiar skills that we utilize in business to make things better may inadvertently be opposing success. Perhaps the good ole methods of yesterday, or “yesteryear”, aren’t working on today’s sales platform.

My dad’s chapped hands were worsening, because of bad luck?  No.  Bad weather (circumstances)?  No. Bad hands?  No.  Bad choices?

No-No-No.  The situation worsened, because he did not consider that his own chosen remedy to the problem was, in fact, making it worse.  Even if you did not initially contribute to defeatism in your business, you can refuse to work differently, to your own frustration.

Your failure will turn on a dime into a personal success by asking, “How can I accept responsibility in this? I have made some mistakes. Where is my point of correction? What can I do differently now? (I cannot help my situation by myself alone. I am willing to be helped.)

A feeling of powerlessness to change your situation instantly turns around when you realize the problem is likely in the mirror.  This is one thing that I do have control over – me. I can change course. The feeling of power is given back; the answer soon presents itself. In this respect, your failure becomes good for you, because this is a place where new success can spring forth.

“Read the label” of your sales technique, when it keeps worsening. You can continue to stay stuck in old habits of sales failure (using liquid soap for moisturizer), or you can switch by making specific changes identified in the mirror.