The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is a book I find myself coming back to over and over. The tenants are simple to understand and incredibly challenging to incorporate into practice. Each time I revisit the 4 agreements I find new value. There will be an attempt to go through each one with examples from my experience.
1st Agreement. Be impeccable with your word.
“The word is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life. You can speak. What other animal on the planet can speak? The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is the tool of magic. But like a sword with two edges, your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word can destroy everything around you.”
In sales, in business, in life you must build trust with others. Being impeccable with your word is one of the most valuable ways you can demonstrate your reliability. When you say you are going to do something, do it. If you say you are going to do something and can’t do it, communicate. A very simple instruction and yet one that is so difficult to undertake in practice.
Let’s take an example from my early days as an SDR (front line “cold caller”) at Salesforce. My manager wisely instructed me to make lots and lots of calls. After all, sales is a numbers game. I was pretty good at it and I got a lot of people telling me to call them back to talk more. It didn’t take long for my to-be-called list to get out of control. I was swamped with tasks which made following up when I said I would impossible. I had no discernment from a real ‘call me back later’ and a total brush off, but that’s a blog for another day. I made promises to call people back and I didn’t do it. While my task numbers were higher than anyone on the team, my conversion ratio sucked. I wasn’t building trust at a foundational level. I cleaned up my task list and started to be impeccable with my word. If I told someone I would follow up next Thursday, I called them on Thursday. My numbers started to go up. Building trust in sales is crucial to success. Be as impeccable with your word as you can. And when you screw up, mea culpa, then do better next time.
2nd Agreement. Don’t take anything personally.
"Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me”….Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves..........Taking things personally makes you easy prey for predators...... They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up. You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your garbage. But if you do not take it personally, you are immune....when you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts."
There is so much to unpack with this one I could probably write a whole book on the damage taking things personally can do to a person. All humans are living our lives with a unique set of baggage, trauma, fears, patterns, habits, circumstances, and preferences. Whatever others think of us is colored with the particular set of their collective experience. This is not to say you should not accept feedback, criticism, or praise from outside of oneself. You certainly should. But just try not to be offended by it. Try not to take anything too personally and whatever you do don’t ever let anyone outside of yourself be determining of your worth and value. This must be cultivated from within.
As a seller, it is imperative to not take anything personally. What’s going on at the other end of the line has nothing to do with you. Don’t take a ‘no’ personally, move on to the next.
3rd agreement. Don’t make assumptions.
Once you start to observe, you’ll find that all humans are making all kinds of assumptions all the time. We are making assumptions about the actions and thoughts of others without truly gaining clarity. We make up
“We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking — we take it personally — then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word…….Have the courage to ask questions until you are clear as you can be, and even then do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation.”
