Fail More

Credit: Getty Images by Alex Wong

No matter what you think about Amazon, you have to admire its founder, Jeff Bezos. He has become the wealthiest person in modern history.

Here’s what he says about failure:

“Nine times out of 10, you're going to fail. But every once in a while, you'll hit a home run that in business terms is more like 1,000 runs. Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time."

Notice well that he mentions failing nine out of 10 times. That’s a standard rule for us sales folks. Earn one appointment out of 10 phone calls. Earn one new client out of 10 initial meetings. To succeed in sales we need to be willing to fail 9 out of 10 times.

Most folks in our industry aren’t successful enough because they’re not failing enough.

Are you failing enough? Are you trying to earn new clients? Are you trying to recruit new sales reps? Or are you so tired of failing at these attempts that you have given up on trying to grow and are spending most of your day not failing.

I know lots of folks in our industry that just do the failure-proof stuff: sourcing, pricing, order entry, order follow up, invoicing, making deliveries and so much more stuff. There’s no failure in those activities. And there’s no payoff in those activities.

Let me encourage you to take Jeff Bezos’ advice and start failing more!