Life is tough, but that doesn’t mean you just stop living every time it gets hard. Instead, you persevere through the tough times so that you make it to the good ones. While a successfully salesperson is made up of many different traits and personalities, I am choosing to focus on an area which I find lacking in many of today’s generation of salespersons, that is, perseverance.

Having coached salespersons for more than a decade now, I understand that being a sales professional is anything but easy and sometimes doors will shut in your face and you’ll get rejected time and time again. But instead of totally quitting, you need to continue to strive to your end goal because if you keep trying, someone will finally say yes and then more doors will open for you. Here’s why it pays off to persevere in hard times and continue on your path of success:

1) Makes you stronger

Roadblocks in life, work and personal matters are hard, but if you continue to work past them, you’ll come out of the situation stronger. Each time you face a problem, you test your abilities and strength and when you overcome it, you’re that much stronger than you were before. The cycle will continue and you’ll be super stronger by the end of it all, making you an unstoppable force.

2) Giving up achieves nothing

If everyone gave up whenever life or work became hard, we’d be nowhere as a society. There would be no breakthroughs in medicine, science, technology and just about any other industry because giving up achieves absolutely nothing. Just because something doesn’t go your way doesn’t mean you have to completely give up. If you want to land the biggest sales deal of your career, you’re not going to do so by giving up after the first no. Instead, continue to push through the hard times, no matter how hard it may be at the moment.

3) Reap the rewards

If you hang on until the end, you’ll reap the rewards and that can be anything from the account of your career or even the start of a fruitful relationship that can lead to even more success down the line. If you hang on, you may be the one who discover opportunities no one else has the chance to see. When you give up, you’re not opening yourself to the many possibilities of success you’d have if you just pushed through a little longer. Hard work pays off and so does perseverance, which is why you need to hang in there and continue to strive for success because there is a light at the end of that tunnel.

4) Hard work

Life isn’t supposed to be easy and we have to work for what we want and perseverance is part of that hard work. Sure, there is an art and science to selling, but if you don’t put in the work and push through, then what good is trying to sell if you’re not willing to put yourself out there? A little hard work and lots of perseverance can go really far.

But even though you should persevere through hard times, you have to persist wisely and know when to stop. You should make sure to focus on an opportunity and see if the hard work is worth it because if it’s not, it’s okay to let go, but just be sure about it.

A great salesperson combines this traits with other behaviors such as a well-planned and structured selling process. Continuously coming back after facing rejections may be perceived as either “irritating” or hungry for results. How you are perceived would depend on how you conduct the sales call. Today, I am privileged now to work with top sales people who demonstrate need-based selling, and because their focus is always about customer needs, their persistence is seen as the desire to add value. If you are keen to discuss more about empowering salespersons, please reach out anytime.

This week has been a week of mourning for many as our founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew left us, but it is also a week of empowerment as Singaporeans draw closer, and are reminded so much about how the nation has progressed in the past 50 years. A lot has been possible because Mr. Lee never gave up, and because he too, knew when to stop. While this article is not about MM Lee, but it is inspired by his life journey. Thank you so much, sir.