Slipping Up Botched a sale? Learn from the error of your ways-dust yourself off and try again.

In a perfect world, no one would ever make a mistake.Fortunately, though, most people are willing to forgive humanerror. I've certainly made my own share of them. I once wantedto send a gift to a customer at FedEx to thank him for hisbusiness. It was a nice gesture on my part-except I sent itto him by UPS. It was a careless error, but the client got a kickout of it, and sharing the joke actually strengthened ourrelationship.

Although there's no way to completely avoid making mistakes,here are three key methods of dealing with them:

1. Put your ego aside. Remember this: Confidence canknock down huge barriers, but humility opens doors. It's easyto get angry or frustrated when things don't go your way, andit's easy to stubbornly hold on to the idea that it'ssomeone else's fault things went wrong. But there's onlyone way to find out what the problem was-ask the customer.Listen to what he or she has to say. Then say, "Is that theonly thing that's stopping us from doing business together? IfI can do that for you, can we make an agreement?" You neverknow: There may still be time to save the sale.