Sales, Zen and the Art of Archery

The following excerpt is taken from an amazing sales book called “The Tao of Sales: The Easy Way to Sell in Tough Times” by E. Thomas Behr, Ph.D. If you ever want a book that goes beyond the typical sales suggestions and touches on how to actually move people through the art of pull rather than push, this book is it. I highly recommend it. He references Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery with the following story:

“Don’t think of what you have to do, don’t consider how to carry it out!” [the Master] exclaimed. “The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise. It must be as if  the bowstring suddenly cut through the thumb that holds it. You mustn’t open the right hand on purpose.”

“Do you know why you cannot wait for the shot and why you get out of breath before it has come? The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.

So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way–like the hand of a child. Your hand does not burst open like the skin of a ripe fruit.”

“The right art,” cried the Master, “is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not to yourself does not happen.”

How to use this story:

• You are coaching a salesperson that has become so focused on goal they have stopped paying attention to how they are building relationships for the future.
• You are talking to a group that is ready aim, aim, aim . . . they keep preparing to sell, preparing for every possible interaction but they aren’t making the calls.
• You have are resistant employee that will not get into the “flow” of their latest project, and continues to push back trying to force things to happen.