There’s an old cliché in the sales profession – no one wants to buy a drill bit.

Even when a customer shows up to the hardware store looking for a drill bit, they don’t care about the bit itself. What they need is a hole in their wall.

The amateur salesperson sells the features of the drill bit – material, manufacturing process, whatever – but the experienced salesperson focuses on benefits. They emphasize how a given drill bit will produce the hole the customer needs, for without any hassles. How it will slice right through the wall and leave a clean hole for whatever the customer want to hang.

The underlying principle being exposed here is that we don’t do things just for the sake of doing them. There’s always a deeper reason.

In the sales field, you can’t succeed unless you live and breathe this. But even in our everyday life, this same principle shows through in nearly everything we do.

I don’t workout each morning because I want to workout. I workout because I want the benefits from that workout. I want to look and feel a certain way. I want to be healthy and be there for my family for many decades to come. I want to be able to run around and pick up grandchildren when I’m in my 60s and 70s.

But even that doesn’t tell the whole story.

More than anything, I workout each morning (along with eating right and otherwise leading a healthy life) because it’s part of who I am.

There are inherent beliefs I hold (and we all hold), both consciously and likely subconsciously, that define who we are and the type of life we lead. These beliefs lay the foundation for nearly every decision, even when it doesn’t appear so on the surface.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow.

-Brandon