In just 24 hours, I was instantly transported from Sunday’s watch and worry on our NH beach to yesterday’s calm of deep green oceans and blue sky, but the same was not so in our Vermont hometown.  With bridges and roads washed out, our little town of Bondville took the full brunt of 12 inches of rain blasting its way into already overflowing rivers.  The unfortunate result has been a real life, film-at-6, disaster with many towns under water, roads split in two and countless bridges destroyed-all of which in a couple of weeks will be forgotten except by the hardy Vermonters people who live here.  Kevin Cullen has a piece in The Globe today which puts everything into perspective.

Vermonters can often be defined by one word, and that’s “resilient”.  For examples of Vermont resilience, I have to go no further than my great, great, great grandfather, Hiram, who bushwhacked his way from Connecticut to Vermont to become a co-founder of the still tiny town of Pawlet a few miles up the road.  Resiliency was apparently a trait also for my great grandfather, Horace, who left Vermont in 1860 at the age of 17 to join the First California Volunteers to defend the boundaries of that newest state before returning four years later to the green mountains.  “Resilient” also comes to mind when one discovers that Vermont had the highest percentage of any state of soldiers lost during the Civil War.

Although Sunday’s floods rival anything since the early 1800’s, including the devastating hurricane of 1938, which old timers in town still comment on by pointing out high water marks cut into the stone 15 feet above the river’s edge, the resiliency of Vermonters will rebuild the roads and bridges, but my guess is that recovery, even with federal funds, will take an extended period of time.   Having said that, I’m sure that resiliency and sheer brute force will make sure that the resorts will be open to the upcoming annual pilgrimage of fall foliage visitors.

Coincidentally, when I was reading through the hurricane news reports yesterday, up popped my daily subscription from the Harvard Business Review which outlined the three best traits of the best salespeople as (1) modesty, (2) curiosity, and (3) a lack of self-consciousness.  Reasonably clever, but I knew that it was missing something, and I also wasn’t happy trying to interpret what self-consciousness meant.  The more I read about Vermont's pain, the more that I knew that “resiliency” needed to be among the top three.  With data showing that only 1% of cold calls even get to make the top of the sales pipeline, and then only 10% of those make it to closing an order, resiliency is certainly an attribute that needs to be high on the list for the most successful salespeople.

So, modesty, curiosity and resiliency would be among my top three attributes of the most successful salespeople.  What about you?  Would these be in your list and, if not, what would you include?

And finally, if you would like a way to donate to the people directly affected in the area of Stratton Mountain, please just click on HERE.  I know that it would be greatly appreciated by the community.

Good Selling, today.

Jack
Head Coach