First and foremost, we need to believe in our ability to grow. One of the attitudes most closely related to success is having a growth mindset. "Growth mindset" is the term Carol Dweck used in her book Mindset. In her studies, she found a huge difference between people who believed qualities could be developed and those who believed talents were simply innate. She followed these different personalities from childhood and saw that the "growers" consistently achieved more in all kinds of areas.With that in mind, the next step is to fail. Because if every mistake helps us grow, then let's make mistakes. I’ve been reading biographies of great salespeople, and it strikes me that almost all of them go through this phase in their lives: they are broke and survive by selling some simple product thousands of times. "I was rejected a million times... and then I began to understand." Desperation, and sometimes sheer ambition, led them to put themselves in unpleasant situations thousands of times. They became immune to failure.Attentive, intentional repetition is the path to mastery. "Attentive" in the sense that we must reflect after each attempt. Coaches help us with that: to observe and study ourselves.We use technology to create scenarios where we can fail faster and with fewer consequences. At its simplest, this could be a machine that fires tennis balls to practice returns. At its most complex, simulations to learn how to fly planes. New developments in artificial intelligence expand the possibilities for practicing communication skills. I hope that just as fewer planes crash today, messages will be better understood tomorrow. At Alboro, we’ve built an application dedicated to teaching sales skills. You can practice your pitches and techniques by talking to virtual agents. Salesia gives you feedback to see what you could have done better. You can also upload and evaluate real sales calls. We extract all the value from your attempts; you bring the growth mindset.
