Throughout class the past few days, there has been a strong emphasis placed on one’s ability to keep moving forward past rejection, otherwise known as buoyancy. I found this idea to be very interesting, and actually never really thought about its application to sales. One of the biggest techniques we discussed in dealing with failure was to embrace and enumerate. In focusing on the idea of “embracing” our failures, it was said to count and keep track of the “no’s” you may receive in a sale. You then take those no’s and keep them placed in the back of your mind so as to remind yourself of the persistence and hard work you have put into it. A great example of this technique is displayed by well-known entrepreneur Steve Jobs.
I came across a commencement speech (below) given by Jobs at Stanford University in 2005, where he tells some brief stories from his life that emulate this idea of “embracing” your failures. Starting Apple from his garage, Jobs went on to grow the startup into a $2 billion company, but eventually was fired from the very business he created after a falling out with the board. While most may accept defeat and give in at a time like this, Jobs did not. He states that ” The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life”. Embracing his failure in these moments, Steve Jobs went on to start more companies such as NeXT and the famous Pixar animation studios, eventually returning to Apple after they purchased some of his technology. Steve Jobs is a fantastic example of an individual that refuses to dwell on the negatives in life, but rather harnesses the power of the rejection to be even more successful. While he states that being fired from Apple was “awful tasting medicine”, it enabled him to grow and restore faith in creating new things in his life. Having that mentality of refusing to settle and refusing to dwell on our mistakes can have an enormous impact not only on sales, but also how we live our lives.
Ethan David
This is something that even though can be extremely painful and frustrating, but is something that is so crucial to learning how to succeed in sales. This humbling that sales people experience early on is usually what causes them to succeed later on in the process.
It is inspiring to know that people like Steve Jobs value embracing failure so much. In one of my posts, I wrote about Elon Musk who said the same thing about failure.
I think embracing failure is very important because it helps us grow and learn from the past. I think it can be really motivating when well-known people describe their failures and how they overcame them. It can show us that failure is normal and even expected, but we can overcome it.