salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

Renewing Dampened Enthusiasm

October 9, 2008 at 12:21 pm · Filed under rant

We’ve all been there. You’ve a new idea that you’re convinced your bosses will love. A new product you know will change your customer’s life. Excitedly, you deliver an impassioned pitch. Their response? Yawns, at best. Demoralisation crushes your pride.

There are countless examples of world-beating pitches falling on a staggering amount of deaf ears. How many record companies turned down the Beatles? Isn’t it the case that JK Rowling got turned down by a dozen publishing houses before going on to sell 325m books over the next decade? I even learned recently that Hewlett-Packard no less, surely famed for innovation and RnD, turned down a design for a personal computer. Not just once, but five times. What happened to the person who’s idea it was? They left to pursue their idea themselves by forming a company called Apple. The rest, as they say….

Next time someone pours cold water on an idea of yours, as well as readying yourself for the long haul, tell them these (of many) wonderful words, courtesy of Albert Einstein:

“If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”