FLIPPING A SAILBOAT & SELLING
By Dan Seidman
It’s my honeymoon. My wife and I are learning to sail. She’s currently the captain, with control of the sail and won’t back off. We are flying, we’re leaning waaaay over and Wendy is about to flip the boat. I’m hanging on for dear life, stuck in this little space with a crazy woman!
So I yelled at her for the first time ever (practicing for when we’d have kids).
Why did I yell?
I didn’t want to get wet - even though I grew up on the ocean. I didn’t want to get wet - I’m a great swimmer and certified diver. I didn’t want to get wet - everyone on shore was watching.
I yelled again.
She stops us dead in the water, the boat bobs to a stop. She looks me in the eye and says,
“Are you going to let me fail or not?” It’s what I get for marrying a trainer. Hey business pros, how does failure feel to you? Has it happened enough that you’re okay with it? Or… Are you afraid when you see it sailing over the horizon?
Are you nervous that when you turtle up in front of a prospect (and can’t close) that you’ll be embarrassed in front of your peers?
Are you upset when a campaign falls short of your lead generation expectations?
Here is a list of lots of phrases you can adapt to deal with failure. Pick some, or all of them, and print them out. Post them for you and everyone around you.
• There is no failure, only feedback. • Fail forward.
• Remember, no man is a failure who has friends (from the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life).
• Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
• I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
• Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
• Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
• Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from
10 marketingtimes success, you know. Thanks here to Edison, Saroyan, Wilde, Kennedy and others.
Failure gives us the opportunity to know where to improve, to know what not to do, to know we’re steps closer to true and consistent success.
So embrace failure, then move on quickly
You are now smarter, wiser and you’re gaining a boatload of experience that cannot be bought.
Sail to success on the backbone of that failure and your brainpower will be a valuable resource for everyone in your marketplace!
About the Author:
Dan Seidman is the designer of the global sales training program for
ASTD.org, which has 74,000 members. You can see him present The Secret Language of Influence at SME Vietnam’s event in April. For a unique keynote or to review your existing sales training program (it might be time to redesign!), contact Dan at 1-847-359- 7860 or
Dan@GotInfluenceInc.com.
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