Today is World Pasta Day. I’m not kidding – its a day “to draw the attention of the media and consumers to pasta. Communication should underline the fact that pasta is a global food, consumed in all five continents” according to many culinary websites.
What made me smile is that I just shared a similar thought with some participants a few weeks ago – it was an international group and we were discussing food. I had an ‘aha’ about noodles being in most every ethnic diet.
When I saw this prolamation about World Pasta Day, two actions came to mind:
- The Bleeke family needs to eat pasta today. I think gnocchi is our choice.
- Its the perfect time to repost a popular post about a lesson I learned from making pasta!
Mangia!
Preparation, Purpose, Persistence and Pasta
Long-term success involves preparation, purpose and persistence. (This shared by Judy Murrah from Motorola.) And I’d like to add a fourth “p” – pasta!
It’s no secret I am of Italian heritage, and my good friends – NONE of whom are Italian – missed out on my relatives’ great cooking. So, on a REALLY rainy Saturday, I had a purpose. To introduce friends (and my children of course) to some home-made pasta! And they got to be part of the pasta making!
I prepared all the ingredients and tools (I thought) to make ravioli and pasta noodles. Even though I haven’t made ravioli in over 6 years and pasta in more than 18, (Without my Mom it wasn’t fun.) I was pretty excited to show them the process.
I’ve had friends help with pasta making before. They have fun, we enjoy a great dinner afterward and then they let me know that they will NEVER help again. Why? It is very messy, time consuming and there are a lot of details that make or break the finished outcome. (Sound like some of your work days?)
The pasta making process started with my children. Though they grumbled, they did well filling, cutting and forking the raviolis. Then Kayla and Kara came and we moved to the pasta noodles. Remember I said that I haven’t made pasta in over 18 years? Well, rolling the dough and cutting it into pasta (love my manual Altea pasta machine) was good. Where we got stuck was how exactly to lay the pasta out to dry. This is where the persistence came in.
I know Mom had a way of wrapping it in to a nest on a floured surface so it dried nicely. After 20 minutes it was obvious that wasn’t working for us, and we were going to end up with a big blob of dough stuck together. Not to be deterred, three relatively intelligent women got their brains going and devised a drying rack – using hangers, wire, tape, etc. I kept saying “I just can’t remember how she did this, but I know that she didn’t hang it!”
We ended up drying the spaghetti noodles draped over hangers positioned from the light fixture (see actual picture). And it did work! We then enjoyed a fabulous dinner (after hours of clean up) to savor our hard labor.
What is the sales lesson in all this? Persistence! We dug into a tedious process for the reward of great food. We had to troubleshoot when barriers got in our way and we used team power to make it all work.
In your sales, do you stick with it through the objections, through the bad appointments, unqualified leads, and technical issues to make it to the close? It takes persistence to stay in there for the long haul. It takes planning to eliminate as many obstacles as you can, and a clear sense of purpose of why you are doing this! (your solution, the value you bring or for winning). And some great pasta along the way never hurts either!
