How to Fail Forward

I've never heard of failing forward, but I like the idea of anything that makes me feel better when I fail at something. Today sales trainer Tom Reilly shares how you can find power in failure and use it to your advantage. There is a right way to fail and a wrong way to fail. The one thing you do not want to fail at is failure. Consider the following:

--In a study of more then 1,000 successful people, the researchers found that successful people failed more than twice as often as less successful people.

--In our Best Sales Practices Study, we found that top-achieving salespeople do not quit on a piece of business until they receive on average 5.3 rejections from the customer. The rest of the sales population quites after 3.7 rejections.

--Michael Jordan said this about failure: "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed."

Here are some tips for failing forward - extracting value from failure:

--Always view failure in the short term and success in the long term. You are on a path of long-term success, littered with short-term failures.

--The sale is never over until you or the customer call it quits. Sometimes, the customer may quit before you do, but don't let that slow you down.

--Treat failure as feedback. It teaches you what not to do. If you quit too early, you lose the benefit of learning what did not work.

--Failure holds no power over humility. A humble person says, "Look what I learned."

--Feel the sting of defeat and use it positively to prepare for your next opportunity.

Failure need not be final. It need not describe you as a person. It is commentary on your outcome in a specific area.

Tom Reilly is the president of Tom Reilly Training. He is an authority on value-added selling, and speaks to thousands of salespeople and managers annually on increasing their value to their company and customers.