Selling Boldly

12Perseverance versus Surrender

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success before they gave up.”—Thomas Edison.

To me, this quote means that if you've already been rejected eight times, a ninth rejection is no worse. It's the same. Because, really, what's the difference between eight and nine rejections? Or 12? Pretty much nothing. You still don't have the business—so it certainly hasn't gotten worse.

So try again.

Try a different way.

Ask a different question.

Go to a different person, perhaps.

But do not give up.

Let the competition give up.

We don't give up.

We persevere.

The Power of Perseverance

I was speaking at a consulting conference about three years ago, and also speaking that day was Martin Seligman. Now, I am in front of audiences once or twice a week, so I rarely watch other speakers. But when I heard that Seligman would also be speaking, I parked myself in a seat with a good view and sat there, transfixed, hanging on to every word.

Why? Because as I detailed earlier, I studied Seligman in college. He is in the psychology textbooks! In fact, he has been in them for 40 years or longer!

Well, here stood Seligman, a fellow speaker, presenting at the same conference as I was.

Today, as discussed in Chapter 3, he is not only still working and researching but he also runs the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is widely acknowledged as the father of the field of positive psychology, around which ...