The clues were there, you just didn’t see them. The fact that your wife was so specific about the restaurant, and the time, was unusual but it didn’t click until it was too late. You should have figured it out a few weeks ago when your brother went out of his way to not remember your age. Maybe you should have spotted that look in your business partner’s eyes when you accidentally picked up his cell phone. It all seems so clear now.
When you walked into that darkened room, and then the lights and the singing, you almost forgot how much you hate surprises. The surprise party holds a strange place in most of our minds. It’s an experience most of us want to have, but we don’t know how to react when it happens. Even if you suspect ‘something’, you will undoubtedly react with open-mouthed shock when you’re suddenly the main focus of attention for a room full of people.
‘Surprise’
You’re probably wondering why I’m talking about surprise parties. Having attended one recently, and been the subject of one in the past, I was thinking about the similarities between surprise parties and selling your insurance agency. There are plenty of them.
Like surprise parties, you can enjoy insurance agency sales in spite of yourself. You may want to ignore the possibility of selling and hope it will never happen. However, once it does come along, you will find it refreshing to review your success and see your business as others see it.
‘I Had No Idea’
They’re also similar in the way you treat clues. Just like the events that should tell you that there’s a surprise party in your future, the signs that you need to sell are easy to miss. You’ve been getting closer and closer to retirement. The business has passed its peak value. Your will to carry on is waning and recently you’ve found yourself fantasizing about retirement and golf courses, rather than business deals and expanding to new offices.
Taken on their own, you can explain away these factors. Your age doesn’t matter, you’ve seen many peers carry on into their seventies. You’ll be able to turn the business around and start it growing again; you’ve done it before. Those thoughts of retirement are just age catching up on you; all you need is a short break then you’ll be back on track.
‘It Seems So Obvious Now…’
Then, when you’re standing in the dark with that sense that the room is actually full of people, it hits you. The clues come together at once and you realize what’s happening. You feel so stupid for not spotting it before, it was so clear. You need to sell your agency, and you need to sell it yesterday.
You didn’t identify the meaning behind the clues, because you weren’t looking for them. You weren’t expecting anything out of the ordinary so the little clues just seemed so minor. All that’s left to do is to figure out how to sell, or just enjoy the party.
It’s important to remember the one key difference between insurance agency sales and surprise parties. One of them is much more fun when you don’t know anything about it, the other is much, much worse when you don’t recognize the clues. You can probably guess which is which.
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