What 'tough' means in selling: if you filled invesco field with 76,000 businesspeople of all sorts, there would only be 50 really top sales producers among them. It would be tough to find them in the crowd.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On Management

SELLING IS A HARD JOB. ONE IN 10 TRIES it. One in 50 sticks with it for at least two years. One in 400 makes a career of it, and one in 1,600 makes it to the top 25 percent, who are the best paid, best respected salespeople in business.

Selling is a hard job. How do you know that you have what it takes to be successful? Here are some simple characteristics that we find in the best salespeople that work for us.

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The best can take a punch and seem to turn it into positive energy. Many people just can't take the negative stuff, the rejection that everybody in sales gets, and that's why they quit sales. The good ones seem to be unfazed by the rejection. I remember once when John Ralston, a Denver Broncos coach of days gone by, told me that good football players really liked getting hit. To them it is more of an energizer than an energy-sapper. It's like that with a good salesman after a bad call.

The best are really hard to say no to. If the prize is worthwhile, the really good salespeople keep on coming. They're usually also smart; they realize that once someone says "no," it is usually fruitless to just keep pounding. Instead, they get more ammo! We have a great young salesman on the phone for us now who, when he gets a genuine "no," is off the phone just long enough to get new information for a new approach. He gets lots of job offers just based on his persistence.

The best do the hard stuff first. Always make the hardest call first. Try the biggest possibility first. Take the biggest risk for the biggest payoff. While at it, top salespeople ask the toughest questions first and don't easily let the client get off with anything less than a full answer. The best salespeople always ask...