Wayne Gretsky, the hockey player, famously said, “You’ll miss all the shots you don’t take.”

Meaning if you have an opportunity to take a shot, and you take it, you might score.

Or you might miss.

But if you don’t take the shot, you won’t score. Ever.

This is often used when motivating sales people and those who wish to collect phone numbers.

If you don’t ask, you’ll never get.

So you may as well ask, right?

Most people realize a shift in thinking when they understand that many endeavors can be seen as a “numbers game.”

This is certainly a helpful model.

After all, if you figured out after some experimentation that every seventeen phone calls you made, you would make a sale worth $50, then you’d simply see the total number of calls as worth about three bucks each. So long as you were consistent with your pitch, the more calls you made, the more money you’d make.

This goes with sending our resumes, grant proposals, business startups, even stocks you buy. If you follow the SAME strategy, and figure out what the “numbers” are, you’ll be in good shape.

However, we humans are good at something besides sorting through numbers.

And that is learning through experience.

Take some guy who’s talking to ladies hoping to get phone numbers. Sure, if he repeats the same robotic pick up line, he’ll get one number out of seventeen (or whatever).

But suppose he takes the time to LEARN from every encounter?

What if he not only IMPROVES his “routine” each time, but learns how to adjust it to whomever he’s talking to?

Think he’ll do MUCH BETTER than some goof who repeats the same lines over and over?

Of course he will!

The same goes for sales, job interviews, even talking to the SAME PERSON (like your kids, your spouse, your boss, that cute girl at Starbucks, etc.)

Dale Carnegie taught YEARS AGO that the best way to get somebody to do something is to get them to WANT to do it for THEIR OWN reasons.

What if there were a simple way to get other people, ANYBODY, to do things YOU want them to do but, for THEIR OWN reasons? Even agreeing that doing it (whatever it is) was a GREAT IDEA?

Think interacting with people would be easier? More enjoyable? More fun? More rewarding?

Of course it would!

Just remember the last time YOU did something for YOUR OWN REASONS that happened to be what somebody else wanted as well?

Like seeing the SAME MOVIE your friend wanted to see, or eating at the same restaurant.

That, “hey that’s a great idea, I was just thinking the same thing” type of feeling.

That is pretty easy to create in others.

All you’ve got to do is ask the right questions.

Easy to learn, easy to do.

Get Started:

Interpersonal Resonance