Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
August 2018
- When This Executive Was Fired, He Took Charge
- Obeying The Speed Limit Has Never Been More Fun
- London Black Cabs Helped Uber Grow
- Bette Graham Created A Product To Fix Her Mistakes
- Flamin' Hot Cheetos Had An Interesting Start
July 2018
- Fear This Instead Of Failure
- Re-Releasing Songs Created Success
- A CEO's Purposeful Mistake
- The Tardy Student And The Unsolvable Problem
- Fixing Potholes Through Graffiti
June 2018
- A Surprising Mistake In The Oxford English Dictionary
- US Army Embraces Mistakes
- Blocking A Hymn
- Eddie Shore Was Truly A Tough Guy
- [Video] Elon Musk Didn't "Pivot" He Failed
May 2018
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness Part 2
- Necessity Turned Accessory: Allen Iverson's Sleeve
- This Doctor Has Continued To Fail
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness
- MIT Accidentally Creates New Smelting Process
April 2018
- Johnny Cash Quit Singing Lessons
- Cruise Control Came Out of Frustration
- Time Spent Gaming Pays Off In The Navy
- Rock Around The Clock Was a Commercial Failure
- Sigmund Freud Should Have Been Discouraged
March 2018
The Failure in Sales
If you’re in any form of sales—even the process of selling yourself as a viable candidate to a potential employer—you know the sting of failure. Perhaps the most common frustration is the phone call that is never returned.
You can’t sit around waiting for the phone to ring, but that plastic box sometimes seems to be taunting us with it’s silence. Why do others fail to call us back?
Photo © Flickr User Menno van der Horst
Perhaps what’s most interesting about this particular failure is that we tend to assume the worst. We don’t presume that our friends and family are just busy; we think we’ve inadvertently wronged them and that they are stewing with hatred. We don’t assume business contacts are out of town; we think they have no interest in our services and hope we will go away by avoiding them.
The truth is that every telephone call starts out looking like a failure. You dial and listen to the rings, wondering if anyone will pick up. A telephone calls is failing as long as you haven’t reached anyone. Even if you leave a voicemail message, you have failed to connect to your party.
But in this sense, every call is a sequence of failures until it leads to some meaningful result. You may eventually counsel an old family member, get an appointment or make a sale, but you will be waiting on rings, leaving messages and playing “phone tag” until you do. The telephone is a failure device.
We need more than just perseverance in sales, we need a healthy perspective on error. Learn more in Failure: The Secret to Success. Buy it today!
