The person blessed with drive, not talent, is the one who achieves the most.

Talent is perhaps one of the most dangerous words in the language of business. The reason it can be deceitful is that it describes something that is not altogether tangible. We cannot count talent the way we count money, we can’t examine the effects of talent the same way we can examine the effects of marketing.

But the main reason why talent can be problematic is that those blessed with it are often cursed by the gift in the long run. When people are used to coasting as a result of some natural knack, it makes it very hard for them to survive in the world of sales, because no matter how talented you might be, you’re still going to fail more than you succeed.

As David Mayer and Herbert M. Greenberg concluded in their article What Makes a Good Salesman, “. . . failure must act as a trigger–as motivation toward greater effort . . . ”

Talented people are not used to failing, so they quit. As Stephen King aptly observed, “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

The person blessed with drive, not talent, is the one who achieves the most. They are used to failing, and as a result, they can quickly pick themselves up and keep fighting. It’s not about avoiding failure, it’s about how fast you recover from it.

Raw talent might serve as a good foundation, but commitment and ambition will win every time. In the words of basketball coach Tim Notke, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”