Ellis Redding

Morgan Freeman's "Red" from Shawshank was worried.

He was, after all, a man you went to see when you needed things. He knew life outside the prison walls was very, very different. Paraphrasing, he mentioned "people can just open the Yellow Pages and get anything they need".

If you're an entrepreneur or in a pure new business development role, it's hard not to feel like Ellis "Red" Redding sometimes. Even compared to 10 years ago, buyers can make a few phone calls and- by the time they get back from the restroom- have a dozen vendors doing synchronized cartwheels in the lobby.

Your job as the entrepreneur or salesperson becomes to either create unmanifested demand or consistently find that needle in the haystack. And if your on someone's payroll and fail to do either quickly, you'll be off their payroll soon.

I've lived it for 20 years with all the requisite bumps and bruises.

People want results and they want them now.

Turnover in Sales dwarfs any other line of work I'm aware of. Sales happens to be the default career for many. That said, there are many bad salespeople out there and they, rightfully, are typically jettisoned quickly. There are also very talented marketing/sales people out there, with the singular ability to turn NOTHING into SOMETHING who would be much better served answering only to themselves.

Virtually every great entrepreneurial story speaks of the man or woman who were repeatability told by others that they- and everything they believed was right- didn't fit the formula or system.