Building Resilience: The Art of Bouncing Back in Sales

On Sunday, Scottie Scheffler won the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. Looking at the final scoreboard, his five-stroke victory seemed like total domination. But I was there on the ground, and what I saw wasn't domination. It was something far more valuable for you as a sales professional and has everything to do with success. What I witnessed was a master class in mental resilience. And in this Sales Gravy podcast and article, I'm going to break down exactly how Scheffler's approach to adversity can transform your sales results. The Brutal Grind Quail Hollow is beautiful, but make no mistake—this course has teeth. It chewed up and spit out many of the world's best golfers without an ounce of remorse. Just ask Bryson DeChambeau, who on Saturday watched his lead evaporate on the "Green Mile" – the brutal final three holes of the course. Or ask Jon Rahm, who briefly held the lead on Sunday before plummeting to eighth place after getting absolutely bitten by those same closing holes. If you just looked at Scheffler's final score, you'd think he cruised through effortlessly. But that's not even close to what happened. It was a grind—every single hole, every single shot. Scheffler came into Sunday with a five-stroke cushion, but by the front nine, he had completely lost that lead. Let that sink in for a second. The world's best golfer, playing his best golf all season, watched his commanding lead completely vanish. For most players, that would have been it. Game over. The spiral begins. The tournament slips away. But not for Scottie Scheffler. Bounce Back Percentage - The Key to Winning There's one statistic from the tournament that explains everything – and it's a metric that should become your new obsession as a sales professional. It's called the "bounce-back percentage." The bounce-back percentage measures how often a player makes a birdie or better immediately following a bogey or worse. In other words, how often do you recover from failure and immediately create success? For the entire field at Quail Hollow, the average bounce-back percentage was 17.4%. For Scottie Scheffler? An astonishing 62.5%. Think about what this means. When the average player faced adversity, they bounced back less than one time in five. But Scheffler? He transformed failure into immediate success more than three out of every five times. That is massive mental resilience. It's the difference between holding a trophy and watching someone else hold it. It's the difference between being number one in the world and being just another talented pro. And it's absolutely the difference between sales mediocrity and sales excellence. Bounce-Back Matters in Sales So why am I talking about golf statistics on a sales podcast? Because the bounce-back percentage is the perfect analogy for what makes or breaks a sales career. I've got news for you—bad stuff is going to happen in your sales career. You're going to fail, lose, and face adversity. That's not a possibility—it's a guarantee. You're going to have situations where everything seemed perfect, and then the deal falls apart. Sometimes it's your fault. Sometimes it's not. Maybe the champion of your deal suddenly gets fired or leaves the company. Maybe a competitor swoops in at the last minute with a ridiculous offer. Maybe your prospect ghosts you after six months of work. Each day you're going to run into situations when you're prospecting where someone slams the phone in your ear, and then you've got to immediately turn around and make the next call. There will be days where nothing goes right and everyone says no. Your ability to bounce back doesn't just influence your success – it defines who you are as a sales professional. It is the key to winning. Full stop. The Goldfish Paradigm  When I'm hiring salespeople, one of the things I'm measuring for is optimism. It's essentially Ted Lasso's goldfish paradigm—the ability to forget fast. On the show,