The Next Link In The Chain
By Jeff Bajorek
Mentorship changed the trajectory of my life. That's not an exaggeration; that’s literally what it does.
In a sales context, it showed me the difference between what sales actually is and what I thought it was. For someone wired the way I am, I have to understand how things work before I can do them well. Once I understood the mechanics, I could make things my own. Once I made them my own, I could do things with those skills I never could have otherwise.
My mentor (He Who Shall Not Be Named, because he's never come on my podcast) made a significant investment in me. He saw potential and poured into it, and we spent a lot of time in the field together. He showed me what to do and why, and he helped me understand what was working and what wasn't. When I say that I learned to sell by drinking beer, this is what I mean. Our end-of-day recaps closed a lot of those open loops in my brain.
He modeled good behavior (and occasionally bad behavior), but he always encouraged me to do it my own way and gave me the space to do it that way.
That last part matters more than people realize.
I’ve had a lot of mentors in my life (some more aware of it than others). By and large, I try to learn something from everyone I interact with. Parents, friends, bosses, colleagues, authors, thought leaders… Not everybody has the bandwidth to pour themselves into this kind of role, and it’s important that you don’t try to force it.
Mentorship is not puppeteering. You can’t just make someone do what you want them to do. The job is showing them how to navigate those decisions for themselves. Good mentorship reduces the scope of choices because that scope can be overwhelming. It gives people a map.
Not just the direction, but what to look for and what to look out for. Done right, you end up with someone who not only knows how to make decisions for themselves but also feels empowered to do so with their own integrity intact.
I've been on both sides of this now. When you watch someone you've invested in find their footing and run with it, you glow. You feel a lot of pride, but also gratitude, because you remember what it means and what it took, and you remember that someone did the same thing for you once.
You're not the origin of this thread. You're a contributor, a steward, and the next link in the chain.
That brings my fundraising campaign full circle. The reason I'm involved with Chosen Vision is because of my mentor. He's on the board and runs the event. When someone like him asks you for help, you say yes.
This year, in exchange for a $100 donation, I've put together a fireside chat series with four colleagues covering the sales-adjacent stuff that actually gets people stuck. The things nobody trains you on that show up in every hard conversation a seller or leader has when they're trying to figure out what's next.
Jeff Bajorek is a sales consultatnt who helps sales teams design and implement their sales strategies with a focus on the fundamentals, and by noticing what others don't.
Website: www.jeffbajorek.com