My personal hero was Tommy McDonald. A college performer at Oklahoma, he became a 5’8", 175 pound All-Pro receiver with the Philadelphia Eagles. I heard him speak to an athletic banquet when I was 12 years old. If the truth be known, he really inspired me to do what I do today as an international speaker! His message: "Play Bigger And Better Than You Are!" And play bigger than he was, is exactly what he did. He averaged a touchdown every 5.1 times he caught a pass…third best in NFL history. He was recently inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame…and he’s a world class artist, too!

How do you "Play Bigger Than you Are" as a salesperson? How do you go about becoming a world class performer when, like Tommy McDonald, you are "small, marginally talented and not given much of a chance to be a superstar?"

There are 6 basic strategies to master. And here they are:

Master an appreciation for the power of a positive self-image. You will never be any better at anything (including sales) than you believe you will be.

Master the skills required to enhance your self-image. Learn the magic of affirmations and the majesty of mental rehearsal.

Master the strategies of positive expectation and prosperity consciousness. Learn to expect the best and see the world as being full of opportunity, not restriction…of prosperity rather than poverty.

Master an understanding of the mechanics of positive, effective goal setting.

Master the skills of planning, scheduling and time management.

Master the science of knowledge acquisition. Learn all you can about your profession, market, customers, skills, principles, product, competition and how they all integrate with one another.

What brilliance! To know more about how to sell "bigger than you are," you need to know precisely what to notice. And, here’s what you need to notice more about:

• Yourself
• Your customers
• Your goals
• Your time
• Your product and how it solves customer’s problems
• Your competition
• Your skills and attitudes

That leads to an interesting question. How hard are you willing to work to become the best at your profession? How much time, energy, effort and exertion are you willing to expend? Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to success. Virtually every sales superstar with whom I have worked or observed over the course of the last 20 years or so shares a common trait. And here it is – a strong work ethic.

Call it tenacity, stamina, physical energy, dogged determination or even a tendency toward workaholism. Like it or not, agree with it or disagree with it. The bottom line is simply this – salespeople who succeed "big" generally work harder at their profession than those who don’t!

But there is another story here. They also understand that there is a big difference between activity and results. A difference between managing your time and energy around objectives rather than activities. A critical difference that yields a sense of success, fulfillment and satisfaction rather than frustration and disappointment over expending too much time at things that yield too little results.

The real question is this: How hard and smart are you willing to work at "playing big?" It’s an easy thing to say, you’re prepared to do that, but a much more difficult thing to pull it off. Work hard with a clear direction and you, too, can "play bigger and better than you are" and become somebody’s hero. Just like Tommy McDonald was (and is) for me.