Stay Focused On Your Sales Territory And Your Own Opportunities

We have all heard the phrase, “The grass is greener on the other side of the hill.” Many sales people find it difficult to focus on their territory, product, or customer base. They want to move into a new territory, or find themselves wishing they had the area worked by other sales people. Several years ago I was training a new sales person who had been in sales for about a year. He was given the accounts that no one else wanted. He also had the opportunity to find new sales opportunities, but all of the real good accounts were previously assigned to the other sales people. He had all the dreaded accounts and having any large degree of success was very unlikely. He was always talking about how great a sales person he could be if he only had the other sales people’s accounts. He was always looking at other’s success and wishing his territory and account base were different.

That first year was not a successful one. His attention was blurred by the success of others, and he was unable to focus clearly on his own potential. As we began the second year of training, I was finally able to help him see the untapped potential within his own accounts and his own territory. He began to prospect in areas previously overlooked. He dug deeper within his own accounts. He brought insight to companies unwilling to listen in prior months. He changed his belief about his area and his accounts and focused on finding success. Within a very short time he began finding greater success than he ever thought possible. More people seemed to have a need for his product and those who purchased previously were now buying in greater quantities. He was receiving referrals and introductions to companies needing his services. What he discovered was very similar to the story told by Russell Conwell entitled Acres of Diamonds. Here is the story. See if you can find any correlation with this story and your own sales attitude and focus.

Acres of Diamonds

There once lived near the river Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Al Haphid. Al Haphid owned a large farm, that had orchards and grain fields and gardens—money at interest—and he was counted as a wealthy and a happy man. Happy because he was wealthy and wealthy because he was contented. One day there visited him one of the ancient Buddhist priests—a wise man of the East—who told him about the discovery of diamonds in Europe. He said that diamonds are so very valuable that if Al Haphid had a handful he could purchase the whole country, and with a mine of diamonds, he could place his children upon thrones, through the influence of their great wealth. Having heard all about diamonds, Al Haphid was determined to seek for them.

He sold his farm the next day and with the money departed, traveling up and down the whole of Europe. He sought in every place where he had heard of any indication of such gems but finding none, he spent all his money and became very poor, in rags, in poverty, and in hunger. At last, in despair, he flung himself into the sea—on the shore of the Thames—and sank from sight, never to rise in this life again.

Al Haphid’s successor, the man who bought his farm in India, one day led his camel out into the garden to drink. As the animal put his nose down into the shallow water of the garden brook, Al Haphid’s successor noticed a curious flash of light from the white sands of the stream. Reaching his hand into the stream, he pulled out a black stone having an eye of light that reflected all the hues of the rainbow.

He took the pebble into the house, and put it on the mantle, which covers the central fires in an Eastern house, and then went his way and forgot all about it. A few days after that, the same old priest that told Al Haphid about diamonds came in to visit Al Haphid’s successor. The moment he entered the drawing room door he saw a flash of light from the mantle and he rushed up to it and shouted, “Here’s a diamond! Here’s a diamond! Has Al Haphid returned?” The old farmer said that Al Haphid had not returned and also said, “That is not a diamond. It is nothing but a stone. We found it right out here in our garden.” Said the old priest, “I know a diamond when I see one. That is a diamond.”

Then together they rushed out into the garden. They stirred up the white sands with their fingers, and 'lo there came up other more beautiful, more valuable gems than the first. And, thus was discovered the great diamond mines of Galconda, the most magnificent diamond mines in all the history of the world. The Koohinor of England, and the Orlov of Russia, the greatest crown jewels on earth came from Galconda’s diamond mines.

Had Al Haphid remained at home and dug in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, poverty, and suicide in a strange land, he would have had acres of diamonds!"