Nine days to Christmas, and the race is on to find the perfect gift for those you love. My advice? Give them a copy of Messages from the Morning Man. As a preview, here’s one of the 69 messages from the book. It’s called ‘Please Say No to Me’.

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One of the toughest jobs I've ever had was as a direct sales executive. Yeah, the title sounds posh, but the work was definitely not. Every morning, I would carry a heavy, collapsible wooden stand to a supermarket somewhere in the greater London area, and spend the whole day trying to convince grocery shoppers to sign up for a credit card that charged exorbitant interest rates and trapped some users in a vicious cycle of consumer debt.

The toughest part of the job was that I was paid purely on commission. That meant I only got paid for the number of customers I actually signed up.

All day I would pace around in front of my wooden stand, trying to catch the attention of busy strangers long enough to convince them to give their personal bank details to a  young black African they just met in a supermarket…man, it was tough.

I had targets to hit, and as I kept hearing people say no after no after no to me it was very natural for me to start buckling under the pressure. I would stop approaching people, I'd look at some people and decide just from their appearance that they probably don’t need a credit card, so I wouldn’t approach them. I'd just let them pass by. It was a really tough job, but it was also the job that taught me the most important lesson in life.

You see, success in any sales job revolves around one simple principle: the more people you talk to, the more people will say yes to you. By standing back and letting shoppers pass by without talking to them, I was also letting potential customers slip through my fingers simply because I didn't want to hear them say no.

My people, success, like sales, are a numbers game. The more chances you take, the more opportunities you explore, the more success you will find. If you stand back and let opportunities pass you by, just because you don't want anyone to say no to you, you will never hear anyone say yes to you either.

The simple truth is that the more no's you hear, the more yeses you will get. It’s a numbers game people. We need to get through the nos in life in order to get to the yeses. So today, let’s resolve to learn the crucial skill of handling rejection.

Just remember, every time someone says no to you, you are one step closer to the one who will say yes.

GOOD MORNING, GHANAFO!

(Messages from the Morning Man is available in all EPP and Challenge Book Stores, as well as the front desks of Joy and Luv FM. To buy in bulk as corporate gifts and hamper fillers, please call 0242608824)