Research has uncovered that a common denominator found in nearly all high-performing athletes was drive. Drive to succeed. Drive to accomplish a goal. Drive to make a difference. Drive to win. Drive is so important and powerful that it often pushes less talented individuals beyond those who have been born with higher skill sets but lack a burning desire to succeed.
So, why is drive so important? Because it requires you to have intense self-motivation in the face of rejection and because your business exerts constant pressure on self-esteem. People who possess high levels of drive are willing to smile in the face of rejection and have the constitution to thrive in today's competitive business environment. While your relationship skills, perseverance, value proposition, persuasiveness, emotional intelligence, referral network, and passion are important, these traits are not sufficient without drive.
In their groundbreaking book, Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again, Richard Abraham, speaker, writer and consultant to many Fortune 500 companies, and Christopher Croner, Ph.D., a principal with SalesDrive, studied more than 80 years of research in the sales sector and uncovered the following three elements that makeup drive: (1) need for achievement, (2) competitiveness, and (3) optimism.
Need for Achievement
People who exhibit high-drive tendencies are motivated by the need to achieve outstanding results and are willing to do virtually anything it takes to get there. They are ambitious, disciplined, and always focused on advancement. They are never satisfied. These people have an insatiable appetite for success, setting the bar higher and higher. Their need for achievement is the inner motivation that causes them to relentlessly pursue excellence.
Where does this need for achievement come from? “Like most personality traits, it is heavily influenced by a person's childhood experiences,” state Abraham and Croner. Research substantiates that the “parents or guardians of high achievers are praising, supportive, optimistic, hardworking and success-oriented.” It is interesting to note that high achievers are not always star students. “They excel at whatever is important to them in accomplishing their goals.”
Competitiveness
Driven people are born to compete and win. They relish the thrill of the race and the rush of winning. And they hate to lose. “In fact, their loathing for losing is often as strong as their passion for winning. Like a thoroughbred racehorse, they are always eyeing their peers...always comparing their performance to others.” Simply put, they are hard-wired to be number one.
As you may have experienced firsthand, competitive people with high drive are sometimes difficult to manage. In these cases, they even compete with those of authority. But it is the tradeoff that must be reconciled as competitiveness is an essential element of drive.
Optimism
Optimism is the ultimate element of drive as it provides the armor to withstand inevitable rejections and hardships. To the high driver, rejection is just part of the game. “Optimistic people credit themselves for success but do not take defeat personally.” People who possess high levels of optimism have advantages over their pessimistic peers in three ways:
- They expect to win. They go through life with a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
- They believe that their problems can be solved. They persist until a solution is developed.
- They are thick-skinned. They interpret failure as something temporary, unusual, and outside of their control. And they have the unique ability to put rejection into proper perspective.
You can now appreciate the three elements to drive -- need to achieve, competitiveness and optimism. If you have one or two of the three elements, can you achieve drive? No, all three must be present. Abraham and Croner summed it up best by saying, "If the need for achievement is the engine, and competitiveness is the steering wheel, optimism is the key to the engine. Without all three, you are never going to get out of the garage."