Opportunity creation is one of those things people usually understand backwards.
They see someone land a big client, meet the right person, find an investor, or make a move that changes the direction of their business, and they call it luck. Maybe it is. But that ignores everything that came before it.
Where were they going? Who were they speaking to? What were they paying attention to? What situations had they put themselves into?
You can’t control luck, but you can control how often you give it a chance to show up.
Luck Doesn’t Usually Arrive on Schedule
I’ve never been a big believer in sitting around waiting for the perfect opportunity.
There is always something you can be doing. Looking at your numbers. Developing yourself or your team. Fixing a system that isn’t working. Putting yourself in different environments.
The point isn’t to stay busy. It’s to change your exposure.
You can spend an entire week being productive without creating a single new possibility. You clear your inbox. You finish the work that’s already in front of you. You improve a process, sit in the meetings you’re expected to sit in, and deal with the problems you already know how to solve.
None of that is necessarily bad. In fact, most of it probably needs doing. But it doesn’t automatically put you in contact with anything new.
Creating opportunities sometimes means changing the environments you’re exposed to. Having a different conversation. Speaking to someone you wouldn’t normally speak to. Looking at a problem from outside your usual circle.
You don’t know which of those things will matter. That’s the point.
You’re increasing the number of situations in which something useful could happen. You don’t always know beforehand what will be useful.
You Don’t Always Know What the Opportunity Is
This is where I think salespeople can get themselves into trouble.
We get so focused on the transaction that everything starts looking transactional.
What’s the opportunity?
Who is the buyer?
What’s the next step?
What’s the value?
Those are useful questions. But if you ask them too early, you can miss the point of the interaction entirely.
Sometimes you get a useful idea from someone who isn’t a buyer. Sometimes you learn something that changes how you approach a problem. Sometimes a conversation is useful simply because it gives you a different way of looking at something.
And you won’t always know that while it’s happening. That’s probably the part we underestimate.
If you’re only paying attention to things that have an obvious return, you can miss a lot of information that doesn’t look useful yet.
A conversation doesn’t have to produce a lead. An introduction doesn’t have to become a deal. Even a failed conversation can tell you something about how people think, what they care about, or where your own assumptions might be wrong.
You don’t need to turn every interaction into an opportunity. Sometimes you just need to be curious enough to notice what the interaction gives you.
The problem is when you only measure value in immediate commercial terms.
Create the Conditions
You can’t force something useful to happen. But you can make it more likely.
That starts with some clarity on what you’re trying to achieve. You need to understand the downside. You need to know what you’re willing to risk.
From there, you put yourself in relevant situations and pay attention to what becomes useful.
Maybe that means having a conversation you wouldn’t normally have. Maybe it’s spending time in a different environment. Maybe it’s just being open to something that doesn’t immediately look relevant.
You still need some direction. Otherwise, you’re just doing random things and calling it opportunity creation.
But you also can’t be so focused on the outcome that you ignore anything that doesn’t fit the plan.
That’s the difficult part. You need to know what you’re looking for without assuming you already know where it’s going to come from.
READ: The #1 Reason Your Sales Performance Drops After a Good Week
Opportunity Creation Is Really About Increasing Your Chances
You can do everything right and still get unlucky. Deals fall through, partnerships disappear, and decisions don’t always work out the way you expect. There are simply things you can’t control.
But you can change the odds by increasing your exposure. Speak to more relevant people, explore more options, and keep learning from those further ahead. None of it guarantees anything, but it increases the chances of something useful showing up.
That’s really what luck looks like in practice. Not something you wait for or control, but something you make more likely by being in enough of the right situations.
I’m Roel Mojico, and I’ve helped sales professionals and business leaders develop the people, systems, and strategies behind stronger performance.
If you want to build a business that creates more opportunities instead of waiting for them, I’ll show you how here.
