This next insight will sound like a cliche to you it is, but I want to dig a little deeper and bring meaning to it. You've heard the expression, it's a numbers game. Anything, you're selling anything you're pitching in life, it's a numbers game. And that is true when it comes to being persuading to people. Now there is the old joke of someone and I'll clean this up and make it politically correct for current times. But someone stands on a street corner and asked someone of the opposite sex out on a date just randomly, every person who goes by one out of 100 will say yes, playing the numbers game.
That is not what I'm talking about here. You don't want to just randomly scattershot, throw out your pitches everywhere in the workplace, or on a street corner. There has to be a focus there has to be a strategy. But still, I do want you to think about how you can increase the overall number of times, you're giving a pitch or a presentation or a talk where you're trying to persuade someone. persuasion is a skill like anything else. People who golf daily in general are better than people who golf twice every six years.
People who write every single day are generally better than people who write once every three months. It is a skill, you get better by doing it more often. But there's also just the percentages. If you're doing it a lot, you don't have to close 100% of the time. You don't have to successfully persuade somebody 100% 90 or even 50%. I would say in my own presentations, where I'm trying to persuade a prospect, I fail maybe 75% of the time, but I'm giving dozens Have pitch presentations pretty much every single week.
So I wouldn't even want I don't know what I would do if I closed on 100%. I had to hire a lot more people. But that's a separate issue. My point is, you've got to be looking for opportunities to present more to pitch more to try to persuade. If you don't talk to someone, then you're guaranteed of not persuading. And if you get something you really believe and you have something good to pitch, you have a good idea.
And you figured out a way to get getting in front of people, you will be successful. But it is a numbers game, the greatest soccer players in the world when they're taking to score a goal, they fail. More than 90% of the time the greatest baseball players in the world, the best sluggers are still gonna fail to persuade that baseball To leave the the outfield and be a home run, more than 70% of them are even hit the ball, they're going to fail 70% of the time, it is exactly the same way when it comes to persuasion in the workplace. In fact, if you are 100% successful with every time you're trying to persuade someone, you're probably not aiming high enough. If you're not getting some nose, it means you're not reaching far enough. So please keep that in mind.
It's not about the significance of any one time you failed to persuade. It's about the overall trend, the overall process how many times I'd much rather you fail to persuade 100 times in the next year than to be 100% successful if you only try to persuade somebody once or twice. So part of becoming a better and better. persuader is simply looking for more and more opportunities where you'd like to have influence where you would like to persuade people and then giving your pitch giving your presentation talking to people to try to in fact persuade them