As an athlete, dealing with failure is never easy. Growing up, I absolutely despised losing. But there is something about failure that actually can benefit someone more than it can hurt them. One of my failure stories brings me back to my freshman year of college. So only a year ago. After coming off a hot summer of good golf, I was more than ready to tackle my first semester of college golf. Disappointingly enough, I ended up playing no where near to my potential. As frustrated as I was, instead of wining like a little baby, I grew from it. Having a lot of time to sit back and think about what I did wrong, that winter served me well. Not only was I able to identify what aspect of my game was causing me the biggest trouble, but I was able to take that and run with it heading into the spring season. I ended up playing some really solid golf and lead the team with one of the lowest 18-hole averages. Looking back, if I didn’t treat my failures the way I did, by no means would I have been able to effectively turn things around for the better.
Similar to my story, if a salesperson can’t take failure as a positive learning experience, there won’t ever be room for growth. As imperfect human beings, we are all going to fall short and make decisions that may lead to failure. It’s how we deal with that failure that makes us who we turn out to be.
BoweryJE22
Keeping with the sports theme…one of my favorite quotes comes from arguably the most influential athlete of all time: “‘I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Point is, MJ failed thousands of times and that failure drove him to be the best ever. The same principle should be applied in sales.
Athletes usually do a pretty good job of understanding failure and success but I think it is something that non-athletes should really pay attention too and work on if they need to.