Contagious Passion: How to Tap Your Inner Power and Sell More - Softcover

Cox, Jeffrey R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1450222927 ISBN 13: 9781450222921

Publisher: iUniverse, 2010

Synopsis

"In Jeff 's book, Contagious Passion, he provides first-hand insights into selling and how to apply many practical approaches to improve one's effectiveness. Jeff shares authentic life experiences with candor and purpose. These brief but valuable messages surely help any of us in our world of selling!"

-Mark Brashear, C.E.O. Hugo Boss

"It's possible to keep selling using the same old techniques, but every so often new tools come along that make things so much easier. Jeff 's book, for me, is one of those new tools; Contagious Passion has made me look at my old ways and really appreciate what new ideas can now do for me."

-Earl Estep, Advertising Director Curtco Media/Robb Report

WHY NOT SELL MORE?

Jam-packed with insights from a 35-year plus sales career, this book is going to show you

• 1) how to make more money,
• 2) truly enjoy all your moment-to-moment daily encounters, and
• 3) experience richer, deeper personal relationships.

Whether you're just launching your sales career or have many years in the field, this will become the book you'll refer to like a trusted friend.

Discover how easy it is to:

• -Tap passion's power!
• -Sell your product simply by sharing!
• -Connect on a deeper personal level with anyone!
• -Appreciate everyone in your life, including you!
• -Have a positive impact on people you meet and those you may never meet!

You can visit Jeffrey Cox at his website: www.jeffreyrcox.com.

About this title

About the Author

Jeff Cox has been an international sales trainer, motivational speaker, and luxury salesman for more than 35 years. Voted "Manager of the Year" at Neiman Marcus and luxury jeweler Black Starr & Frost in Washington D.C., he currently works in the luxury watch industry, lectures on sales, and spends time writing.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Contagious Passion

HOW TO TAP YOUR INNER POWER AND SELL MOREBy Jeffrey R. Cox

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Jeffrey R. Cox
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2292-1

Contents

1 Contagious Passion..........................................................172 Reflection Protection.......................................................213 Finding True Color..........................................................254 Father......................................................................295 The Rookie..................................................................336 Mr. Persuader...............................................................417 Put a Shine on the Day......................................................518 Warm Money Sales............................................................559 Scouting, Triggers, & Activation............................................5710 (E)motion...................................................................6511 A Bowl of Cinnamon: The Art of Information Distribution.....................7312 Cosmic Con..................................................................7913 Invisible People............................................................8314 Moments of Discovery........................................................9115 Software Upgrade............................................................9516 Black & White...............................................................10117 There Go I..................................................................10518 Kiddy Kars..................................................................10919 Smooth Evolution............................................................11120 The Missing Link............................................................11721 Fear........................................................................12122 Plant It Forward: A Path toward Passion.....................................123

Chapter One

CONTAGIOUS PASSION

It was in Dallas, 1985, under a canopy of North Texas stars, that it finally hit me-I had become addicted to a motivational "yo-yo" diet.

I glanced about at my peers now locked away, too, in their automotive bubbles. Just moments ago they had been, as I was, fist-pumping positive and ready to conquer the world. Now their faces contorted and flashed calculated glares as the competition heated to merge onto the LBJ Highway. The two-hour revival meeting hadn't created any lasting change beyond the parking lot.

Why had this happened again? Why the temporary boost of emotion quickly followed by the predictable letdown (even moments after the big event)? Would I ever find and sustain the high level of motivation the most successful salespeople seemed to grasp?

As questions such as these have stalked me through life, I inevitably turned back to the pull of motivational books: The Power of Positive Thinking, by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie; How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, by Frank Betcher. I devoured motivational seminars with famous speakers such as Zig Ziglar, like the one I'd just dropped seventy-five dollars to see.

There he was in the flesh, his dynamic performance crackling with verbal flames of fiery passion like some other-worldly preacher berating his followers on the consequences of their ways. Surely, if ever there was a fire-and-brimstone motivational speaker who could snap me out of my malaise, it was Zig Ziglar, the master of all masters.

But in the end, after Ziggy beat me down and tried to build me back up like some raw recruit, after every book was read and shelved again, every seminar attended, every conversation with a "sales expert" hashed over and over in my mind, I felt that same hollow pain and wondered again why fleeting bouts of motivation were all I could conjure.

Under the suffocating heat of that Texas night in my Jeep Cherokee, I resigned myself to this workable destiny. Stumbling through stacks of motivational books, tapes, and seminars, always pressing onward, the real key was always elusive and never permanently took up residence within. There were certainly worse fates in life.

And so, much like a quirky friend, motivation would just show up unexpectedly at my doorstep. This would be our relationship for the next nineteen years, and I was quite thankful for whatever amounts of time motivation granted me during these brief stays.

But then, during a quiet evening in 2004, my search ended. While reading a bedtime story to my granddaughter on the subject of trees, she asked me the kind of question only kids can conceive: "Do trees breathe?"

"They do," I began, "but not like we do. Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen as a by-product. Humans do just the opposite. So people and trees help each other live."

Later that evening after saying prayers and putting her to bed, I began to wonder. What did I desperately need to survive as a professional salesperson?

That's easy; motivation, of course. Tell me something I don't know, right? I then thought, Well, could this emotion be the by-product of another emotion that already exists within me?

Rather than attempting to generate and maintain motivation, which had proven exhausting for me and, quite frankly, for everyone else I knew, I wondered if perhaps there was a source of perpetual motivation that was simply the by-product of another human emotion I already possessed.

Then the answer came to me in a single word: passion. That universal portal, that door one must discover and pass through to experience an eternal state of effortless motivation.

The one word became three: aim for passion!

As long as passion exists, it automatically converts emotion into boundless motivation. Passion and motivation are eternally linked-in seeking one you find the other, but your search must be ordered correctly.

Find your passion first.

Then you have found your source of eternal motivation.

Amazingly, passion grants perpetual motivation as a by-product to those who seek it. Rather than manufacturing motivation, let your passion be the source and generator for you like the world's most powerful energy factory. It's a package deal, and best of all, it's effortless.

I had reached a turning point in my life. Without hesitation, I chose cold turkey to leave the pack and the endless motivational marathon I had bound myself to for so many years. I would set my new life course towards a single purpose: passion. Soon passion became my lighthouse perched high upon a stony cliff to guide me through the treacherous seas of life.

This book serves as my journal, a collection of places visited, sights seen, and wonderfully colorful characters encountered. Each experience has enlightened my understanding, guiding me along my journey, and peeling off the layers, one by one, onward towards my destiny. I became determined to invest whatever precious time I possessed to seek out and engage in those things of true value.

As you will see by reading this collection of stories, I have discovered my own personal Holy Grail, my eternal source of endless passion and motivation. It had been furtively concealed from me in plain sight, surrounding my entire life. It lay in the people with whom I share my precious time on earth.

Finally, I discovered something else along the way: it is true that passion produces motivation, but passion, too, is simply a by-product of love. So to find your passion, start your journey with love. It is my sincere hope that you, too, will discover passion in life as I have, that your motivation will be generated eternally by the passion you discover. By leaving yourself, you will find yourself. Through giving, you will receive.

Chapter Two

REFLECTION PROTECTION

On a brisk December evening in 1958, I witnessed my first miracle. I was eight years old, my cap and jacket were scattered under a bush and lost, and I was chilled to my core even after a demanding neighborhood game of kick-the-can. A larger dilemma loomed: I had completely lost track of time and was late for dinner. I looked into my future and cringed at the booming death knell of my mother's voice as I tried to creep unnoticed back into the house-"You're late for dinner!"

So I ran. Sprinting down the gravel road towards home, each footstep sent a loud crunch and scattered pebbles into the night. Buster, our neighbor's vigilant, one-eyed boxer, heard the familiar footfalls and began his guttural bark from behind the six-foot wooden fence separating his menacing threat from mankind.

It was an unsettling bark, however, if only to those who didn't know Buster. Beyond the specter of bodily harm conjured by the booming bark, the only possible harm Buster might administer on some poor intruder was drowning by way of full-on slobbering licks.

"It's just me, Buster!" I yelled, the same greeting shouted since I could walk and speak.

At this very moment, an arresting sight snared my gaze. I froze. My frail chest heaved billowing fog against the night air, and a little cloud formed around me as I stood transfixed. A miraculous Christmas tree (as defined by an eight-year-old) stood in the grand front window of the only two-story house in our neighborhood. It was bursting radiant light and shards of vivid color, and it was adorned in glistening multi-colored globes, garlands, and hand-strung popcorn strands. There were bubbling lights of splashy colors and gobs of silver tinsel, and the tree was crowned with a gleaming star perched atop its crest.

Then it happened. This tree began transforming itself through a rainbow of assorted colors-vivid candy apple red, fresh green grass, morning sky blue, spring daffodil yellow, and climaxing with flying saucer silver. How could an entire Christmas tree change colors? This simply boggled my eight-year-old mind. But, again, I was late for dinner and had to speed onward to face the judge and jury.

My answer to the miracle tree came a few nights later, when my mother and I walked down the street to visit Mr. and Mrs. Finchum (the owners of the house and, hence, the magical tree). As the three adults sat in the dining room discussing the events of the day, I quietly snuck, unnoticed, into the living room to give said tree a closer investigation.

Standing sentry before the large plate-glass window, the tree simply ignored my curiosity and continued changing its colors. I shot a glance toward the adults to see if they, too, were seeing this miracle, but they were unfazed. After some more detective work and poking around, I observed a small contraption on a stand placed on the floor in front of the tree.

The odd bit of hardware consisted of a large wheel with five panels of bright cellophane in red, blue, green, clear, and yellow. Tucked behind this wheel was a spotlight beaming up at the colored panels.

Although small, the little spotlight bulb was powerful enough to saturate the tree with each panel of vivid color. The mystery of the miracle had been cracked: the tree was being transformed through the power of reflection. Or, put another way-reflection dictated the color of the tree. Eureka! I had closure.

It occurred to me that this Christmas tree possessed no inherent color. Sure, it was silver when the spotlight was turned off, but it was more like a mirror than the real silver color I had in my crayon box at home. For this tree to reveal mutable colors, it borrowed them from the turning wheel. The color of the tree was dictated by the colors cast upon it. And that was about the end of giving over any further cognition to the tree.

It wasn't until many years later, at about age seventeen, that the significance of all this revealed a deeper message to me. In an effort to please everyone else in my life, I had given up my true color, the color I was meant to be, bit by bit, brush stroke by brush stroke. Eventually, I had become a walking mirror. I was colorless.

I now presented a reflection of the color I was supposed to be whenever someone came along and doused me with the tint they thought best suited me. They must know more than I, right? They were, after all, people who appeared to know better than I, people who presented a very confident opinion of who and what I was to become.

I became quite good at this reflection business. In fact, this ability served as a survival technique; it was great for getting along with others, great for never rocking the boat, great for avoiding conflicts. But it wasn't great for finding and presenting my true color. I had, without conscious thought, bargained away my true essence and become a patchwork of what others needed me to be. I had become the magic Christmas tree!

Chapter Three

FINDING TRUE COLOR

When one goes through life as only a watery reflection of what others think, there's always a gnawing sense that somewhere deep inside the soul is paying a heavy toll. And yet, one day I sensed-no matter how clever I was, no matter whom I fooled-I would ultimately become the color I was meant to be; my true color would rise up and shine forth. But from elementary school through high school the "reflection protection" mask served me well. Good with the good guys, bad with the bad guys, got along well with almost everyone.

The only area where my system lagged was in closer personal relationships. I would start off every relationship as a contrived personality. I would draw from thousands of bits of personality traits and compile the persona I believed my new girlfriend wanted. This approach worked well in the beginning of every relationship. I would just become this new person. Mr. Happy Go Lucky. Mr. Cool. The Mystery Man.

The built-in problem, however, was the energy it took me to maintain this false identity. Gradually, fatigue, frustration, and resignation would lower my guard, and the girlfriend would catch glimpses of the real Jeff, who wasn't the original boyfriend she admired. By then, it was only a matter of time before this revelation ended the relationship. The questions haunted me even at age twenty-how could a guy ever keep up this perfect front? Then again, why did a guy have to keep up this perfect front? That's when I witnessed my second miracle.

It was a postcard-standard California day: seventy-five degrees, a light breeze, the azure sky full of promise. I'd dropped in to see my friend Anne, whose house was just two blocks from mine (mine being a small, refurbished garage three blocks from the beach). While we chatted in her kitchen over a cup of organic tea, she asked me if I knew a girl named Heidi, a very cute girl who lived on the other side of the tracks from us-the side where you didn't have to live in a garage and worry about how to pay your rent each month.

"Of course I know Heidi."

"Well," Anne said, "Heidi told me that if you asked her out tonight she would go out with you."

That was all I needed to hear. I thanked Anne for the tea, hopped back into my 1963 green Volkswagen bug, and buzzed home to make the call. The good fortune-I was going out on a date with Heidi!

I remember whipping into my driveway, bolting from my car, and trotting down the driveway as I glanced over the short fence that separated my house from the neighbor's. At that moment I spotted three beautiful girls seated in beach chairs, enjoying the warm sun and friendly conversation on the backyard lawn. The bounty of life in California, it seemed, never relented. Although I had never seen the girl seated in the middle of the three, something struck a chord in me, and in that moment-even with the well-heeled Heidi on slate-I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this mystery girl!

So I went against all my previous history and hopped the short fence, sauntered across the grass right up to the girls, and introduced myself. During that brief stroll I had already made a decision I would never regret: I decided to just be Jeff. Amazingly, three hours later we were still sitting on the lawn on that glorious sun-splashed day. Heidi wasn't even a vague memory at that point; she had left my consciousness completely. And then I did it-I asked this new girl to marry me. And much to my delight, the mystery girl, Mary Catherine Wheeler, said, "Yes."

Mary informed me that her father was in fact "at sea" on the day we met-he was a merchant sailor by trade-so it would be just over a year before we were finally able to tie the knot. The ceremony was on June 24, 1973, at precisely 3 p.m. in the Santa Maria Chapel, a quaint structure perched high upon a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Both families, including my soon-to-be father-in-law, were in attendance.

After the simple ceremony and festivities wound down, we settled into a small cottage that sat on the same piece of property where we'd met the year prior. It was there we began the task of building a new life together, including the planting of our first of countless vegetable gardens. We grew carrots, squash, zucchini, corn, and tomatoes. It wasn't long before our neighbors began avoiding the newlyweds for fear of being handed more sacks teeming with vegetables.

This was an extraordinary time in our lives. Mary and I were in our early twenties and madly in love, and our lifetimes stretched out before us like a lazy cat on a sun-drenched windowsill. We looked forward with great joy to building our family and spending our entire lives together.

Fast forward: Mary and I have now been married for thirty-six years and have adult children of our own. Over the years our children have asked me for advice about their relationships. Generally, these inquiries surfaced as they were getting their hearts trampled and because their mother and I get along so effortlessly. They felt we held some sort of special secret key to this complicated relationship deal.

My answer would always start with the same question: "Are you being your true color, presenting your true self?" Our children understood this question, as we had stressed the importance of being you no matter the circumstances. I would share with them that whenever you mix two people together, as in a relationship, it's similar to mixing two colors of paint. Certain combinations just don't work. I shared with them that on the day their mother and I met I risked being my true color, which I have always pictured as bright blue. Mary, their mother, I envision as vivid yellow.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Contagious Passionby Jeffrey R. Cox Copyright © 2010 by Jeffrey R. Cox. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1450222927
• ISBN 13: 9781450222921
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 140