Hello and Happy New Year! Hope you have a great start to 2018. I just came back from a well-deserved holiday skiing in Austria with my family and friends. Thought I start 2018 with a very inspiring story.

This is a great story, which taught me how to multiply my results in my sales career. In this brand new year, I want to share this story which inspires me on how a shift in mindset and attitude can make a significant difference. This is especially true now that I am now in period of career transition and there is no certainty where I will end with in my career.

How to sell combs to monks

The story of how to sell combs to monk is an age-old story that never fails to inspire me to become a better Sales and Account manager. Most people regard it as a motivational story for salesmen to achieve sales target. But I see it as otherwise because the learning points can also be applied in life, career development and entrepreneurship. In this highly competitive society, hard work alone is not sufficient to succeed.

Once upon a time, a merchant who owned a comb factory in Singapore wanted to penetrate the huge China market. Thus, he advertised for a position of Regional Sales Manager in the newspaper. Understandably, many applicants applied for the job. Therefore, during the interview sessions, he asked the applicants on how they would sell combs to monks. Many of the candidates were stumped by his question because we all know monks do not need combs. Some of them also felt that he was mocking at them.

Eventually, three applicants impressed the merchant during the interviews with their attitude and they were dispatched to China to test out their strategies. After three months, all of them reported back to him with surprising results.

Candidate 1 told the merchant that he managed to sell a comb to a monk. Out of curiosity, the merchant asked how he did it. To this, he lamented “Every day and night, I traveled to all the temples in China and tried to sell the combs to the monks. But all of them rejected me. I almost gave up the challenge until one fine day when I met a young monk on the way down a hill. He was scratching his bald head like crazy and seemed to be in pain. So, I told him to buy a comb for him to relief the itch. He agreed and thus I manage to sell a comb to a monk!”

The merchant was deeply moved by Candidate 1’s hard work and perseverance. He was about to award him the job when Candidate 2 interrupted and said “Nothing fantastic about selling one comb. I managed to sell one hundred combs to a monk!” On hearing this, the merchant was shocked and questioned Candidate 2 on how he managed to achieve this feat.

Very smugly, Candidate 2 said “I visited many temples and was also rejected by the monks. However, I did not give up and instead, spend one day sitting at a temple to observe the worshipers. I noticed that the strong wind in the vicinity had made the worshipers’ hair looked messy. I told the Master of the temple that the worshipers should look prim and proper to show respect to Buddha. Thus, I recommended the Master to buy one hundred combs from me so that he could lend the worshipers the combs. He agreed and therefore I sold one hundred combs to a monk!”

Extremely impressed by Candidate 2’s ingenuity, the merchant was about to award him the job when Candidate 3 interrupted and said, “I managed to sell ten thousand combs to a monk.” On hearing this, the merchant was stunned beyond words.

Calmly, Candidate 3 explained “I also visited many temples and was rejected by the monks. However, one day, I visited a huge monastery and an idea struck me during a chat with the Senior Master, who mentioned that he was heartened that so many worshipers visited his temple over the years. He had always wanted to repay their faith but did not manage to figure out how to do so. To this end, I proposed that he bought ten thousand combs from me and to give a comb as door gift for each worshiper. On each comb, I also suggested to engrave some wordings as a form of blessing from Buddha. The Senior Master agreed and henceforth bought ten thousand combs from me on the spot.”
Needless to say, the merchant hired Candidate 3 on the spot. The experiences of the three candidates provide a few learning points.

Firstly, all of them complied with the rule of selling combs to monks and none of them took short cut. Yet the outcomes were remarkably different because of the strategies they took. For Candidate 1, his approach was to work hard and passively waited for opportunity to arrive, which it did. Despite yielding no results, he did not learn from his failures and had not thought of changing his game plan.

Very often, I look around me and saw many of my friends including myself pursuing the path of Candidate 1. They worked day and night, slogging their guts out for their companies thinking their hard work would be rewarded. They were waiting for that one golden opportunity to achieve that big break in their career. But what they didn’t realize is that companies don’t need you to work hard for them. They just want people who are smart and can provide business solutions for them.

Innovative workers who can deliver will always shine more than those who arrive work on time. So, the key is to really to “show up”, instead of just being punctual at work. Make your presence count. It is so important that we look out of the box and in this age of technology disruption this is ever more important.