Symbolic Surplus and the Sales Pipeline

February 12 began the Lunar New Year for 2021 for a fifteen-day celebration ending February 26. Happy New Year as we enter the Year of the Ox! One of the traditional New Year lucky foods is to eat fish, but not all of the fish, to symbolize surplus. There are more details about the preparation and eating of the fish, but what I love is the symbolism of entering into the New Year with a surplus. It would be easier to just eat all of the fish, especially if you’re really hungry, but the point is to keep the discipline of surplus, having more than you need.

The first day of the year is not just any day. It’s important to enter the New Year with the right mindset for what you want to create in the New Year. And what could be more worthy than the idea of surplus, and the respectful honoring of the discipline required to create surplus, encoded into the New Year’s ritual of eating the fish, but not all of it, during the festival season?

Symbolic surplus is a concept that applies to many things, including our sales lead generation job. We see people avoid the daily discipline of “hard dialing,” which builds their pipeline, in favor of calling their shorter, warmer list. They’re basically eating the whole fish instead of allowing for prosperity and surplus. Hard dialing is one of the core habits listed in the TeleReach Corporate System for Success.

Core habits and workflow. On the workflow side of the System for Success is the item to maintain a pace of a certain number of dials per hour, however, if you are adhering to the steady pace but not dialing on the right records, which includes adding fresh leads into your pipeline, then we’re right back to the core habit. Surplus is created by the core habit of “hard dialing.” It is possible to dial, yet remain on a hamster wheel, not getting anywhere.

Why do people choose to stay in their narrow lane of calling only their follow up calls instead of building a better pipeline of leads for the future? Some of the reasons include:

• Awareness. Maybe the person is new and not aware that they are unknowingly limiting their future money-earning potential. Some people are fortunate to be able to hit the ground running in their life by being born into a meaningful support system of people who help show them the way, such as being steeped in the culture and symbolism of creating surplus. It’s very important to have the equivalent career support network in place and especially for people working from home. It can be very isolating working from home. At TeleReach we come together daily on virtual huddles, encourage each other, and review success materials such as the System for Success, the virtual call center equivalent of creating the right mindset for going into the new day, the new week or the new year.
• Comfort zone. It’s easier for people, all of us, to stay in the comfort zone of what you know than it is to boldly go out and hunt for fresh new leads that will replenish the coffers and stock them for the future to create surplus. Cold calling strangers is hard, and also a key discipline required to be successful in our cold calling career. Being aware of what is needed and having a support group of encouragers, coaches and mentors makes it easier and more fun. After all, isn’t it way more fun to celebrate Lunar New Year with a fun Spring Festival than all by yourself?
• Skill. Maybe the person has not yet developed all of the required skills needed to boldly go out and hunt for fresh new leads and build their pipeline in an effective and efficient way. One of the other core habits in the System for Success is to listen to the calls of others. It’s a way to accelerate the learning curve and become more efficient and effective when making outbound calls. It is possible to follow the workflow by scheduling blocks of time, however, if you don’t follow the discipline of the core habit of listening to calls, you may end up with more time on the hamster wheel.

The food of wealth. There are other foods too that are an important part of Lunar New Year, and one of them is dumplings. Dumplings are another one of the lucky foods. They are delicious and symbolize wealth for the New Year. Dumplings can be formed into a shape that symbolizes ancient Chinese gold ingots. I have some symbolic ancient Chinese gold on my desk which is made of golden plastic. It is beautiful and I love it, but I sometimes wonder if I am violating any laws of feng shui by having it double as a container for my paper clips. To me, it’s a bonus that it serves a multipurpose, both practical and symbolic, as I don’t have that much room on my desk.

In my family, we enjoy celebrating Lunar New Year by eating the symbolic lucky foods such as long-life noodles, and attending the Lion Dances and big festivals. In the New Year, The Year of the Ox, may you be granted the courage to start what you had dreamt of and finish what you had left incomplete, and may all of us create surplus in the New Year.