“Your price is too high. I can’t afford it”, he exclaimed. “I can get a better offer elsewhere”. If you have sold before you will agree that those words are not news to you. In case you have not yet , trust me when I say that you will hear many stories as such from potential customers. I almost quit my first job selling software and training solutions. Reason being the prospective clients always made promises but never delivered on closings. “Come back tomorrow and see me” they always muttered almost like that line was scripted! Tomorrow became a week, a week a month and a month a three months. There was always a new obstacle and hurdle to jump. Bottom-line, i had zero sales and it stung like a wasp sting!
Fresh out of University I was filled with a kind of hope that no one could measure but me. It was way too big, high and deep! The plan was simplistic. Graduate. One month after, get a job and begin the adult life of work. The job would be in the capital city and pay well. At least these were the stories that most of my University friends and I would tell each other in anticipation of the bed of roses after graduation. The plan was very well laid out. Our imaginations had the best of us. The journey to the line of fortune was meant to be instantaneous. No hustle. No breaking a sweat. At least that is what we believed. After graduation. A month turned into two, two into three, three into six months with no job. Reality had struck and it was biting hard!
Boredom was the least of my worry. All that mattered was to get hired. My dad asked me to come back home but I declined. I was so determined to find a job and “start life’ so to speak. I was renting a one room apartment in my second year of University around the University suburbs. The rent was rather affordable because I was not the one paying it. My father had my back covered. After graduation the rent seemed too mountainous because the responsibility to settle it had shifted to me. It was squarely on me. No job after six months of graduation meant no money to pay the rent. I had mastered survival skills so feeding and other necessities were easy to go around friends in the same boat of hunting for jobs and survive somehow.
Thank God for my landlord who was very patient with me. I tell you if you can and are still renting, make friends with your landlord. They will give you a time out in times of trouble when you can’t pay the rent.
I was blessed to get my first job about a year and 2 months after graduation. The Job was a software salesman. My job description was explicit. Selling software and training Corporate clients on the software usage. The execution was, hit the streets, knock on the doors of prospects and convince them to buy. It was by far much different than we had imagined while still at University. selling requires grit. If you don’t have thick skin, you will resign after 3 days. Hope was my fuel. I owed rent for a year and 2 months. This was my motivation to keep going back every day. My pay was based on commission and a transport allowance.
One day after I had been tossed for months by prospects with zero sales. I got back to my single room demoralized, deflated, shattered, devastated and scathed. I fell on my knees and prayed a prayer I had never prayed in my life. I will spare you the details but it was one of a broken heart. From that moment all I was left with was to get into transactions with God. The negotiations began with God from that day. God I must make a sale because if I do not I am done for. The next few days I made my first sales. It was refreshing. I had discovered the formula to get results. I learned it was never about my might, nor by my power but by the spirit of God. Zechariah 4:6. From thereon this formula would be my first priority and nothing else. I got to apply it all throughout my first job and my entire career years after.
I learned a big lesson to always put God first and the rest became history. What happened to my overdue rent? I negotiated with my landlord and paid him off all rent arrears and oh my what a relief it was. It was just like having a heap of a 100 kgs sack of stones lifted off my shoulders. I had lined up my actions for a fortune but then my discovery was that Jesus Christ was my fortune all along. Am sure and I know because I have the evidence. The formula that works is Jesus Christ first. That one is a great guarantee more valuable than any bank can offer.
Till next time. Choices, chances and Cherishes!
