The summer I turned 16, I remember a pretty girl would walk her dog down the street past my house every day. A true girl next door. You could say I was a little smitten. Every time she passed by, I would say “Wow, there she is!” After a couple of days of watching her walk by my dad was fed up. He asked me, “Do you think she is just going to walk up and knock on the door”? As he walked over to the door and knock on it himself “Hello, is chad here? NO, she isn’t.” Annoyed he told me “Just go talk to her. She isn’t going to knock on your door.”
I gathered the courage and walked outside to meet her. I was a mess because I didn’t know what to say. Although I thought I did have a rough plan of execution, I wasn’t prepared. I just acted and I was very nervous. Do you know the famous Mike Tyson quote? It was like that and that’s almost what happened. It was a total disaster.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
I caught up with her just before she was going to cross the street. This was no quiet neighborhood street. This was a busy street with lots of cars. You had to run across to when the opportunity presented itself before the next wave of cars came racing by. She didn’t see me walking up to her as she was waiting for a break in the traffic. I came up from behind her and said, “Excuse Me”.
Well, I immediately found out that this was a bad idea. Her dog was an overprotective Pitbull and he turned around faster than I could finish saying, “Hi” and he started to bark violently. Caught off guard, my dream girl held her ground and it took everything she had to hold the dog back as he lunged at me. I started to back away. She was scared and screaming at me,
“Why would you ever do that? Are you stupid?” Humiliated I said sorry, but there was no way she heard me. The dog had overtaken the conversation! I turned and walked away, quickly and feeling, yes correct, stupid!
We did not live happily ever after, to say the least. I never did see her walk by again and I never did get her name. At least I didn’t get mauled by the dog. However, at least one person found tremendous humor from the situation after I told my Dad the story.
Even though this is a horrible story. The result isn’t the point! I was just a kid. I’m over it and some say I turned out ok. Seriously, I’m over it. Anyway, the point is, I learned a tremendous lesson that day from my dad. If you want something you have to go after it. It will not come knocking on your door.
This lesson can be applied to prospecting. The good news is the person on the other end of the phone doesn’t have a vicious 75Lbs Pitbull waiting to bite your leg off! A plan is essential, and it doesn’t even have to be a good one. Action alone will be enough to gain the confidence to continue. I was not confident at 16 to talk to girls but I had to do it sometime. That first time of really taking a chance was the starting off point of knowing what I needed to do to make opportunities happen for me. It was what I needed to have a little less courage and little more confidence to talk to the next girl. And so on.
You have to ask, and if you don’t ask you will never know.
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