Why Failure Is So Important To Success in Home Improvement Sales
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You can't have success in sales, or anything for that matter, without failure. Failure is crucial to success as long as you understand why and how to use that failure to your advantage.
Accept That Failure is Part of the Game
Without evil, there would be no good, and without failure, there would be no success. Keep in mind that everyone who is first started out last. Anyone who wants success must go through failure first, and by doing so, it makes you better.
First, it improves your character, which is a key part of success. Just like pressure turns coal into diamonds, heat and fire create steel. Your character is a vital component of your success, and failure helps you build and strengthen that. It’s just like the saying, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, said, “If you want to increase your success, double your failure rate.”
Visualizing Failure: The Circle Diagram
One example of how I view failure is with a diagram where you see circles representing adversity or failure.
What I found is that life works by having you go through multiple circles before you finally get to the good stuff—the success in the middle. The more circles you pass through, the closer you are to the good stuff. The trick, though, is that you don’t know how many circles are left until you reach the center, so you just have to keep going until you get there. The sad part is some people quit when they may be only one circle away.
The Old-Fashioned Water Pump Analogy
Another analogy that Zig Ziglar uses is that it’s like an old-fashioned water pump.
There’s water underground, and you’re trying to pump it up. When you start pumping, it’s really hard, but slowly and surely, the water starts coming up. Once it finally reaches the top, it comes out easily and in quantity. The problem is, many people quit because they pump for a while and nothing comes out. The sad part is that the water may only be an inch below the surface when they quit. If they had only kept pumping for a minute more, they would have gotten the water. You don’t realize how close you were, so it’s important to keep pumping until the water comes out. In life, you need to keep going until you win.
My mantra is, "It’s not over until I win." You don’t want to play Monopoly with me 😊.
Failure is Just Feedback
Failure is just feedback telling you that you’re doing something the wrong way. It’s a necessary part of learning. Failure is not personal; it doesn’t reflect on you as a person—it reflects on the actions you are taking. Every time you fail, you get closer and closer to success.
Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, failed 10,000 times before he succeeded. When asked how he kept going after so many failures, he responded, “I’ve not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Dealing with Rejection in Sales
In sales, rejection is part of the game. They aren’t rejecting you; they are rejecting your business offer. Another way I viewed the rejection side of failure was like mining for gold. If I knew that for every 10 rocks I turned over, four would be gold and six would be dirt, I’d be happy every time I found dirt. Why? Because I knew I was one step closer to the gold.
Persistence: Learning from Failure
You need to have persistence and drive to get through the stress that failure brings. Nobody likes to lose, but it’s important not to let failure discourage you. Instead, let it encourage you because you’re getting closer to success.
Embrace Adversity and Failure
Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you are relentless. It’s almost like a "bring it on" attitude because you know you won’t stop. Once you develop that trait, nothing can stop you. You’ll almost look forward to adversity. When you keep going and learn from failures, nothing can prevent your success.
Things Often Get Worse Before They Get Better
I don’t want to get too metaphysical here, but when things go bad, they often get worse before they get better. It’s like life (or whatever you believe in) kicks you when you’re down to see how much you really want success. But there comes a point where they say, “You know what? Let’s move on. He’s not going to give in.” That’s where you want to be.
Adjust Based on Failure Feedback
The key to overcoming failure is adjusting what you’re doing based on the feedback it provides. If you don’t adjust, the failure becomes a waste. It’s like the quote, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
Failure is feedback, and it’s telling you that you’re doing something wrong. Learn from it and change your approach.
Learn from Every Sale (or Non-Sale)
In our business, when I didn’t make a sale, my number one goal was to figure out what I could have done differently. If I had the same situation again, what would I change to make the sale?
Lots of times, you can figure it out yourself. For example, if they thought my prices were too high, I needed to work on price conditioning. If they fought me the whole time, then I knew I needed to improve rapport and connection. If you can’t figure it out, talk to someone more experienced who can help you learn from the failure.
Pay Tuition or Make Commission
One phrase I like is, “Every time you make a sales call, you should either be paying tuition or making commission.”
If you don’t learn from the failure, you’ve wasted that experience. Don’t waste the "no sale" by justifying it with statements like, “It’s just a numbers game,” or “Nobody could have sold that.” To learn, you must take responsibility for everything that happens in your life or, in our case, for the sale or no sale.
It’s your fault they didn’t buy, but the good part is, because it’s your responsibility, it’s controllable, and you can change it. You’ll never become a world-class salesperson until you learn to use failure and take 100% responsibility for it. Understand that it’s part of the job, and look forward to it 😊.
