OM DENNE EPISODE
Patrick Engasser had the best excuse available to anyone in outside sales. He was born blind. He cannot drive. The work means walking into companies you have never visited, asking for the decision maker, and reading a room you cannot see. Two years in, he was ranked somewhere in the 500s out of roughly 615 sales professionals in his organisation.
What makes this conversation worth your time is that the blindness turns out not to be the story. Patrick describes those two years as time spent looking out of the window for someone to blame, with reasons good enough that nobody would ever have challenged them. That, he argues, is the more dangerous kind of excuse, because you are never forced to defend it.
“The problem with excuses is they’re very expensive. And a lot of times, the invoice doesn’t show up until later.”
He hired a business and sales coach at the end of that second year. Fourteen months later he was his company’s top new account closer, then a trainer, then district manager for the next decade. But he is careful about where he puts the turning point, and it is not the coach. It is a decision he made before hiring one, and it is the part of this episode I keep coming back to.
We also get into why he thinks confidence works in reverse of how most people are taught, what he means by the difference between vision and sight, and the client who told him her life was over.
For anyone sitting in the 500s right now, quietly running out of reasons to keep going.
Contact Patrick to collaborate:
Website: patrickengasser.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-engasser-645860217/
