The phone isn’t ringing.

Nobody is calling to say “Please come buy my house.” Nobody is calling saying “Can I please rent this house?” Nobody is calling saying “Can I please invest some money?”

The phone isn’t ringing.

When the phone isn’t ringing I look for reasons. It’s Spring Break. It’s too rainy and nobody wants to get out. The sun is shining and everybody is gone to the park (lake, river, whatever). It’s the holiday weekend. Yada yada yada.

For those of us in the sales business it is demoralizing—emotionally debilitating and a waste of energy—to focus on why the phone isn’t ringing. We can’t stare at the phone and cause it to ring.

We’re very much like farmers. A farmer’s job is to prepare the soil, plant the seed, and wait. The rain may or may not come on schedule. The season may be too cool, too hot, or just right. But for centuries farmers who have planted seeds have consistently gotten a crop. Some years better than others, but a consistently over the years we get more crops than we don’t. Sometimes bountiful. Sometimes skinny. But harvests are consistent events for people who sow seeds.

Our job is to prepare ground and plant seeds. We try to avoid stupid things like planting seeds right before Winter or at the beginning of Summer, or failing to plant seeds at the beginning of Springtime. But we don’t focus too much on wishing for rain, or that it would quit raining. We don’t control rain and sun. We control preparing ground and planting seeds.

Much of life’s pain would be relieved if we’d let go of what we cannot control, and focus on the things that we can control.

An ancient book of wisdom written by one of the world’s greatest salesmen says “In due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary.” It’s interesting that he didn’t say “In due time we shall reap.” Why did he ad the “weary” part? Because this business if sowing and reaping has just enough uncertainty to it to keep us off balance and to cause us to lose our focus—to grow weary of the things we can’t control and to give up our sowing enterprise.

When you are weary like I am, don’t lose heart. Surround yourself with people who refuse to lose heart. Don’t focus on the weariness of sowing, or the “worry-ness” of why the rain and sun aren’t coming in perfect proportions exactly on schedule. Instead, focus on the faithful truth that today’s reapers are yesterday’s sowers, and those who grow too weary to sow, experience 100% crop failure.

Now I think I’ll go down to Nixa Hardware and buy some seeds……….