Natural Flow

"Everything in life has a natural flow. So to get something done, you must look for the flow and match it as best you can." -- Dad

"You can stand in the river and fight the current, or you can sit in the inner tube and enjoy the ride." -- Mom

"Sell with manipulation and the world is your battlefield. Sell with honesty and the world is your playground." -- Me

First, a huge thanks to Mom and Dad for the natural-flow wisdom that created my philosophy about sales and selling and relationships and life.

Second, while today's message is about selling, it is not about selling what you might think.

Allow me to explain ...

About 10 percent of the hands I shake are owned by people who have been downsized, golden handshook or early retired, and who are, quote, "On the hunt for a new job."

STOP RIGHT THERE!

As Mom and Dad said, life has a flow and to get the most out of life you've got to find the flow and follow it to your destination, instead of fighting against that flow in an attempt to reach your destination.

Hunting for a job is fighting the flow ... there is nothing natural about it. Unless, of course, all you want is a place where you can trade some of your time for money and you don't care how the company spends the time you've sold them.

There is, however, a natural career flow for every person. It's where passion and function merge, and here's how you find that flow.

You must "sell yourself" to three different entities:

Entity One: First, YOU must be sold on You.

Let's call this your personal flow.

I've had more than 100 be-useful meetings with people on the job hunt in the past six months. Despite the fact that I've enjoyed every conversation, every resume they showed me SCREAMED boring. (Unfortunately, half these people are using career counseling services and have invested thousands of dollars and countless hours in producing this boring crap.)

Are you boring?

Then why is your resume a shopping list?

Unless you actually are boring, your resume should shout "THIS IS WHO I AM!" "THIS IS WHAT I LOVE!" "THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE!" "THIS IS WHAT I VALUE!"

Save the shopping list for the grocery store. Your resume must reflect who you are, not what you've done, because people buy people, not resumes.

Entity Two: Second, "they" must be sold on You.

"They" are your network. Let's call this network flow.

You've heard it a thousand times. If you want to find the perfect position, you must network your way to success.

They are the myriad people in your network -- everyone from your spouse to your proctologist. And if they aren't sold on you, they won't help sell you to someone else.

Of the 100 job hunters with whom I've recently met, only a handful offered to help me with anything, while the rest asked me for my help.

Ask for help from 100 people and you'll receive real help from a handful.

Offer real help to a handful of people and you'll receive help from 100.

That's the nature of network flow. You must feed it to get it moving.

Entity Three: Finally, He or She must be sold on You.

He or she is the person responsible for filling the position that perfectly matches your passion. If you build the personal and network flow I described above, he or she is the destination at which you will naturally arrive.

That's the beauty of finding your natural flow -- it takes you where you wanted to go anyway.

Speaking Of Natural Flow

Sometimes natural flow finds you. That's another aspect of flow -- you've got to have your eyes and ears open to spot the right fork.

Dixie Gillaspie and I are not career counselors, are not headhunters, are not resume perfectionists and are not transitional consultants.

But with Dixie's natural ability to help people find and articulate their passion, and my natural ability to turn passion into closed deals, we have a natural energy, synergy and harmony at helping people find the flow to their dream careers.

We realized this only yesterday as our dogs romped in my back yard. So starting with this post (unless Dix beat me to it on Twitter or Facebook) we're now offering a new coaching program for anyone who wants to find his or her passion career.

We'll help you find the flow -- you've got to jump in the tube and ride the current. (The river starts here.)

Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association

Comments

[Jason Thomas]

I met Gill Wagner during my career search and thank God I did. Gill's sage advice lead directly to the position I now serve. Gill challenged my assumptions and pushed me to think outside the proverbial manila envelope most job hunters hide in. From that point forward, I adopted Gill's "lead with your passion" approach and started getting passionate responses in return, from networking meetings and interviews. In more ways than one, I owe Gill a huge thank you for the successful outcome of my career search.

Thanks Gill