Ever wonder what separates a $50,000 earner from someone who banks $7 million a year at one of New York’s premier real-estate brokerages – besides the $6,950,000? According to one firm’s principal, it does not come down to contacts or how hard a person works. It boils down to “having something to prove and getting back after taking a hit.”

“What’s the essence of all real-estate brokerages or any other sales position?” Barbara Corcoran, a reality TV “shark,” asked her interviewer during a discussion with Business Insider. “It’s not how well you sell or talk. It’s really how well you can take a hit and how long you take to feel sorry for yourself.”

There is a strain of DNA that runs through the best salespeople, she intimates, and sales success is borne out of an innate sense of resilience, since rejection is commonplace in this high-stakes, fast-paced environment that frequently attracts stronger personality types.

During her interview, Corcoran also touted her people skills. “I know how to spot people,” she said. “I can hire the right people, and I’m really good at firing. I get rid of the losers quicker than a wink.”

However, by her own admission, even those with the ability to read people can fail the eye test and take on those who are ill suited to a particular position.  That is not to say that Corcoran’s intuition or business wisdom is misguided or faulty; it’s not. On the contrary, what she has realized is what Dr. Herb Greenberg and Caliper have espoused from the company’s inception: given one’s unique motivators, a person is either hardwired for a certain type of work – from real-estate sales to professional sports – or not.

What Corcoran possibly overlooks is that she was always a shark, never a minnow. She didn’t grow from the latter to the former. It just took the self-described “lousy student” several missteps to find her footing and realize how to leverage her personality strengths.

She told Entrepreneur.com back in 2012, speaking on a similar topic, that she “fails well.” Once one makes up his or her mind to move forward after a disappointment, “there’s almost a battle-cry that goes out in the universe and the world rallies around you… Life is fair in its own weird way. You will be swept up by some lucky chance. It happened to me every time I got back up.”

With Caliper’s validated personality profile, we can save employees the time it takes waiting on the universe’s cosmic goodness to kick in, as the assessment gets right at the heart of what makes you tick. Our targeted pre-employment tool, which can be tailored to your business’s competencies and needs, can separate the resilient revenue generators from the paper-pushers, and it can spare businesses the hassle of having to be really good at firing in the first place.