On Friday, April 14, we had a gust speaker in sales in the startup David Starcher . He is from the class of ‘88 GCC, and is currently working at his family business, Keystone Ridge Designs. He brought a lot of sales knowledge and experience to class to share and was very engaging with the classroom. I personally thought that he had a lot of honest advice for the class also because of his experience in the sales world. He talked about a few different things, but one that stuck with me was the act of being gutsy. He said that you only have to be gutsy for 5 seconds, and than you have an in and the ball will be rolling. David gave an example of being denied by a recruiter for a job. He had applied for a job and he thought that he was going to get it, but instead he received a rejection letter in the mail. So, David decided to give the recruiter a call and basically tell the guy that he messed up and the guy that they offered the job to instead was not as good as David. It ended up that David was able to basically sell himself to the recruiter and he was offered a job where he was able to do what he was enjoying. He has also used that same tactic when even recruiting others for positions and using the reversal tactic.
The lesson of the story was that sometimes you have to burst out of your little comfortable bubble, and be gutsy. You never know if you hold back on something you could be putting your whole future on the line just because you were not gutsy! It is a good thing to be comfortable with getting out of your comfort zone because so many doors could be opened as a result.
I really liked his advice on being gutsy. As a natural introvert, I find it hard to be forward and gutsy at times, it may different contexts, but this advice to we only have to do it for about 5 seconds gave me a bit of peace of mind. Doing well in sales and just starting relationships in general all start with being gutsy and taking that first step and just being honest through everything that you do.
So true, this was one of my favorite pieces of advice that Dave had to offer. Being gutsy is not something we have to do all the time (nor should we be all the time) rather it is a pivotal 30 second moment where we have to make a decision o=to be gutsy and make the big play or not. It is these little moments where the remainder of lives are determined.