Optimism is critical to sustained sales success for two reasons: Most sales calls are rejected. Rejection, when personalized, can lead to depression and diminished performance. Salespeople who are high in innate optimism do not personalize rejection. Like strikeouts in baseball or missed shots in basketball, they see it as part of the game and do not expect to get a hit every time. In other words their optimism protects them and allows them to put their job in a healthy perspective. Knowing that sales is a numbers game that includes both hits and misses, optimists see a miss as simply getting