Your Success Formula for Sales-Grit!

This Wired Magazine article (Which Traits Predict Success, The Importance of Grit) is, perhaps, the most important article you will read this year as it pertains to improving your sales results—if you read it and apply what it prescribes.

. . . success in the real world depends on sustained performance, on being able to work hard at practice, and spend the weekend studying the playbook, and reviewing hours of game tape. Those are all versions of deliberate practice, and our ability to engage in such useful exercises largely depends on levels of grit. The problem, of course, is that grit can’t be measured in a single afternoon on a single field. (By definition, it’s a metric of personality that involves long periods of time.) The end result is that our flawed beliefs about talent have led to flawed tests of talent. Perhaps that explains why there is no “consistent statistical relationship between combine tests and professional football performance.” We need to a test that measures how likely people are to show up, not just how they perform once there.

Success doesn’t have very much to do with natural talent. I have known countless naturally talented people who have failed, especially in sales.

Grit is, self-discipline, competitiveness, initiative, and determination, coupled with a powerful set of beliefs. Success is the result of waking up an hour earlier, spending time developing yourself, and trying harder.