1. I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed. And the number of times I succeed is directly related to the number of times I fail and keep trying.
2. I never see failure as failure but as a learning experience. Any proposal that doesn’t close is a valuable lesson on what I can do in the future to improve sales.
3. Any negative feedback I receive is needed to make changes in my proposals that’ll improve my performance.
4. Every sales call is an opportunity to practice my techniques and perfect my performance — whether I make the sale or not. Every time I talk or demonstrate to a prospect who doesn’t buy, I get to practice my presentation.
5. Every time I get rejected puts me one step closer to the next sale. Selling is a percentage game — and those who risk more failures by working with more prospects will close more sales. It’s inevitable to fail frequently if you risk failure frequently. Success demands a certain amount of rejection and failure. In sales, it’s not the number of times you fail that counts but the number of times you keep trying.

That’s about $63 billion down the tubes — some of it probably your organization’s cash.

And the problems of project failure don’t just rest with IT. A recent Business Week survey of 1,000 employees found that 8 out of 10 people said their company had some organization-wide initiative underway that they believed was likely to fail.

The respondents seem to be speaking from experience, not conjecture. The study found that 78% also reported that they currently were working on a “doomed project.”

The report confirms the overall findings on corporate initiatives: Sustained research shows that across the U.S., estimated failure rates for corporate projects range from 66% to 91%.

The Business Week researchers identified all the usual project problems most every leader knows and can spot  — things like sponsors wandering off the reservation, team members underperformance, and pressures to make unrealistic commitments.

But their conclusion was that it’s not these problems that doom projects. It’s how leadership reacts when they occur.

An antidote the researchers recommend: Talk about the problem and address it, instead of trying to ignore or work around something that seems inevitable and too tough to tackle.

To read the complete Business Week assessment, visit here.