Robert Kyosaki tells a great story about a village that had a serious water issue. They did not receive enough rainfall to provide water for the village’s daily needs, and the river was a couple of miles away and highly inconvenient for the village people to go to every day. The mayor decided once and for all to put an end to the problem. He would put the job of bringing water from the river to the village up for bid, and they would outsource the project to the winning bidder.

Well, as luck would have it, two men put in their bid, and they were both awarded the project. The mayor figured a little competition never hurt anyone, and they would also always be sure that they would have enough water. Immediately, man number one went out, bought two water buckets, and started carrying buckets of fresh water early in the morning back and forth from the river to the village 6 days a week. He took Sundays off, so on that day the village did not have water.

Man number two did not buy buckets or start carrying water at all. In fact, no one was sure what he was up to. This made man number one quite happy, as he was earning all of the money as the sole source of water for the village. It was terrific! Man number one continued to carry buckets day after day, all day long under the hot summer sun, and he made a darn decent living doing so.

Meanwhile, man number two had gone to work gathering investors, developing a business plan, and received permits to build a stainless steel pipeline from the river to the village. Once complete, he was able to offer an endless supply of water to the village 7 days a week that was cleaner than what man number one was able to provide for 10% of man number one’s price! Competition had arrived with a fury!

The example was told to Kyosaki by his “rich dad" to illustrate a point on work and investing, but doesn’t it also apply to you in the world of competitive sales? In the past 10 years, anyone in sales can tell you the game’s rules have changed, and they have changed with a fury!

If you are mindlessly cold calling day after day, with no long range plan on how to put your prospecting on “auto-pilot", how are you any different than the guy carrying two buckets back and forth every day from the river? How can you continue to compete with a stainless steel pipeline with your two buckets as you get older and your back starts to ache from the unending physical toil? As the odds of you succeeding against those with a long range plan become slimmer and slimmer, how do you get out of “bucket carrying" mode and make your own pipeline before it’s too late? How can you possibly avoid burnout? How will you continue to compete in the new digital age with ancient methods of “water transfer?"

You can’t. And, you won’t. If you do continue on the road of carrying buckets day after day, the inevitable end will be sales burnout, ending up broke, bitter, and completely confused as to “what happened." Even as you work right now, some of your competition is in the process of building stainless steel pipelines of new clients. And some of those customers used to be yours. How do they do it? What are they doing? How did they know? But perhaps most importantly, how can you do it?

The answer to the last question is different for every field and every industry, but yet the answer is the same in concept. It’s the power of leverage. How does the pipeline carry more water than the individual? It is a structure that took a lot of time and effort to build, that works 24 hours a day even when you don’t, required a vision for the future, and it fulfilled a need. You need to repeat that exact same process in order to create your own pipeline. If you are not in an industry where that is possible, you may consider finding one where it is. Carrying buckets long term will almost guarantee sales burnout.

When you take a look at your industry, there is already someone who is building a “better mousetrap" and is in process of building their own “stainless steel pipeline" for finding qualified customers. It is never too late to catch up. But do not be fooled, there is no shortcut in the process. There are hours of hard work involved, tremendous amounts of planning to fulfill a market need, and a long range view of where you want to be. When you decide to become a pipeline builder instead of a bucket carrier, your mind will explode with creative ways to make it so, but it will still require a ton of hard work to get there. The sooner you can identify where you are in the process, the sooner you can begin to work towards where you want to be. Eventually, you should be able to put your prospecting on auto-pilot. Best wishes in your pipeline building!