In all of the coverage of Derek Jeter’s fairytale end to a fairytale baseball career, one fact goes unmentioned: across 12,000 plate appearances, Jeter struck out over 1,800 times placing him 13th on the all-time strikeout list. And yet, Jeter is widely considered to be the greatest ballplayer of his generation. He, much like Babe Ruth before him, trained himself to overcome the fear of striking out in pursuit of getting on base.
Great salespeople do the same thing everyday. Being a sales professional requires a special kind of mental toughness to ignore all of the times the word no is spoken in pursuit of yes. In my experience, there are five traits found in every extraordinary salesperson that help define this resiliency.
