Focus On Things You Can Control

John Wooden once said, “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” Along those lines, consider this thought: don’t let what you can’t control distract you from what can control.

As sales professionals, we often get caught up in the emotions, feelings, personalities, and suspected motives of those we work with — in our own organization as well as our customers’ and prospects’ — that we lose focus and time and motivation worrying about these things we can’t control.

True professionals are unconscious defenders of their time. They eliminate and avoid tasks, even thoughts, that would distract them from accomplishing what they want to accomplish. If you want to succeed in sales, truly succeed as a top 1% professional, keep your thoughts single-minded on those things you can control and those things you can do, and, as Thomas Henry Huxley has said, leave hoping and fearing alone.