I am grateful and appreciative to you for helping to make my new book, Selling Boldly, a Wall Street Journal bestseller in its first week of publication. It’s incredibly difficult for a new book to “break into” the bestseller list, and we did it.
Perseverance
This is the culmination of a long journey for me, and I want to take a moment to tell you about it here.
My publisher, Wiley, did not want to buy this book at first.
And by “at first” I mean several years.
I pitched this book idea — applying the principles of positive psychology to grow sales — more than a dozen times, in different ways, with different approaches, until, I think, my editor simply got tired of saying no. Today, he is the editor of a Wall Street Journal bestseller.
My previous book, The Revenue Growth Habit, was rejected more than 50 times by the entire business publishing industry, over many years, before an editor bought it. I remember an agent saying at the time that “if by some miracle your books sell, we can figure out what to do then.” It has sold more than 10,000 copies, a clear success among business books.
In my company, I have had entire years where every new client I worked with had told me no previously. If I hadn’t persevered, I would have had no sales that year.
Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they quit.” This is my favorite quote, of all quotes.
I’ve had clients who rejected me for years before they worked with me. If I had quit on them, I wouldn’t have had the chance to help them, nor would they have had a chance to benefit from my value.
It’s not my job to quit on prospects.
Just as it’s not your job to quit on your opportunities.
That’s not the work.
Quitting is not the work.
Trying like crazy to help people is the work.
You have amazing value, but sometimes it takes a few — or many — efforts to get others to realize it.
When you persevere in sales you work to help others understand your great value.
It’s not your job to quit on people.
It’s your job to persevere to help your existing customers more by offering them additional products and services.
It’s your job to persevere to uncover new customers so that you can help them like you help your current ones.
If you believe in it, and you want it, and it’s righteous, then fight like crazy to make it happen.
I once heard Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, say that perseverance is twice as important as talent is to success. That is, your talent is half as important as not giving up.
Perseverance is the most important thing.
So don’t you quit.