I decided today to introduce you to the D.E.A.D. Principle. This is an amazing principle that a close friend of mine shared with me a few years ago. Cliff Maynard of Success Innovations in Charlotte, North Carolina works in the automotive industry and recruits and trains sales and management professionals.
This principle will be valuable to you whether or not you make your living in the sales arena, as the principle applies nicely to all walks of life and therefore, in my opinion, is perfect for everyone who wants to be more successful in whatever they do.
As I’m sure you guessed already this principle is an acronym made up of four separate but complimentary things you must have and focus upon if you are to be a success. My plan is to break the D.E.A.D. Principle into a series of at least four blog posts. I think this will serve you best in that it will essentially give you four progressive lessons from which you can learn and apply.
The first “D” is the most basic and, frankly, foundational of the four and it stands for “Desire.” Rule or principle number one of the D.E.A.D. Principle is desire. No matter what you do you must have a high level of desire associated with what you are doing if indeed you expect to achieve any amount of success. If you are a car salesperson, then cars and everything to do with them need to be incredibly important and motivating to you. They need to get and hold your interest. You need to want to be in a place where you spend all day long every day learning about them, test driving them, talking about them and so on. If you don’t have this level of desire, you probably will eventually fail. Apply this to other fields and you will find the same to be true. If you are in ministry, you had better not only love studying Scripture, but you need to love people. You have to care for them, counsel them, teach them and be willing to stay up late and wake up early to minister to their needs. This must be your overwhelming desire in order to be a successful shepherd. What about if you have decided to go into the marketing field? Then your desire must be to study and know your products or clients you are promoting. You need to love to dig deep and learn about the demographics that would most likely want and need to use your clients’ products or services. You will have to have a deep desire to work in a fast paced world and make lots of phone calls and send and receive a lot of correspondence and track and measure efficacy of your campaigns. If not, you are likely going in the wrong direction!
You can easily see how regardless of the situation, the “desire” must be there. Without this key element you are just fooling yourself. It is not to say that you couldn’t fake it for a time. Maybe you are in a place where something you truly desire is not available or even possible. You may find yourself marking time and collecting a paycheck in order to survive. My advice to you if you find yourself in this situation is to let the desire for that paycheck be all the motivation you need in order to keep food on the table and a roof over your head. Simultaneous to this fake or drummed up desire, find the time to seek out, find, or create the position you are truly and naturally passionate about and actually desire. What you naturally desire is key. I’m talking about the desire you don’t have to work at or stir up, it is always there!
Are you where you truly desire to be? If the answer is yes, fantastic! Let this lesson serve as a reinforcement to what you are hopefully already experiencing. If the answer is no, then it is likely time to make a plan and set some goals and hold yourself accountable and go after your true hearts desire.In a couple days we will take a look at the “E” of the D.E.A.D. Principle. Come back and check out part 2