The salesman kept thinking to himself, "Wouldn't it be great if she would just come over here and start talking to me?" He went back to gathering snails. All of a sudden he looked up, and the beautiful woman was standing right over him. They got to talking and she invited him back to her apartment a little ways down the beach. When they got there, they started fooling around. It got so hot and heavy that he was exhausted afterwards and passed out.
At six thirty the next morning the salesman woke up and yelled, "Oh my gosh! My wife's dinner party! She is going to kill me!" He gathered all his clothes, put them on real fast, grabbed his bucket of snails, and ran out the door. He ran down the beach all the way to his apartment. As he started up the stairs, he dropped his bucket of snails. Snails went flying and were all over the stairs. Just then the door opened, and his wife was standing there, wondering where he had been all this time.
The salesman looked at the snails scattered on the steps, then he looked at his wife, then back at the snails and said: "Come on little guys, we're almost there!"
Moral of the story. It's almost the end of the quarter. As a professional salesperson I want you to ask yourself if you have been wasting too much time this past few weeks on small deals that aren't going anywhere? Leave these "snail" prospects in the sand where there belong! Start looking for bigger game. Start fishing in deeper waters. There are whales out there, and sure they're hard to land. You may never even catch one.
But how will you know if, instead of casting a few times, you waste all your time on the beach, with a bucket, herding snails?
"By perseverance the snail reached the ark." - Charles Spurgeon
