When it comes to rejection, are you the type of seller that…
A) Suffers through it, though unhappily
B) Deals with it well enough
C) Hates it, you’ve had enough
D) Never lets it “get” to you
There are many salespeople who never become entirely comfortable with the rejection and no’s they deal with in their sales career. These are the ‘A’ people. They suffer silently and feel it’s the worst part of what they do. Typically, signs of this are things like call reluctance and low numbers in the “funnel” or pipeline. If they could adopt a better mindset, it would greatly accelerate their results.
For the ‘C’ people, dealing with rejection is enough to get them out of “sales” completely. They get frustrated and easily discouraged. They’ll quit not because they want to, it’s just too difficult from the emotional standpoint.
For the ‘B’ people, they are able to view the rejection as just part of the process and move forward despite some bad feelings every now and then. B people often are sales leaders and they look for tools to help the A’s and C’s since they don’t necessarily have the tools to help them the way they want to.
The ‘D’ person is a special breed. Somewhere along the line, they developed the mindset and skills to deal with sales rejection and make everyone else annoyed, envious or both. They are the ones to come up to us after we speak to a room of 500 people and tell us that they’re glad we spoke to everyone because while ‘no’ has never been a problem for them, they recognize it’s a big issue for most other people.
What if the A and C sellers (and B’s too) could learn to do more than “tolerate” or “suffer through” failure and rejection and the no’s? What if they could thrive? Often, these people also had a negative experience in the past where they faced a crushing or embarrassing rejection from a prospect or customer. The record of that event can play in the background of the subconscious over and over.
Is it possible to reprogram yourself into more of a B person… all the way to a D person? In our experience, the answer is, absolutely.
And, in our methodology, we start with changing how you view failure and success.
We’ve all been taught and trained to operate in a world where yes = success and no = failure. But what if failure was actually the secret to success? Consider the fact that to a large degree, success is a “numbers game.” So, the value in increasing your failure rate is to literally improve your “chances at success.”
For any salesperson, the mere act of increasing the amount of product you show and services you offer increases both the yeses and no’s you will hear. The same goes for prospecting calls and following up with prospects who have said ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ in the past.
The ‘D’ sellers have no magic power different than everyone else; they simply look at failure and rejection the way it should be viewed. They understand that rejections literally pave the way to closed sales. They understand that failure and success – yes and no – are not opposites; they are opposite sides of the same coin and they simply let the law of averages work for them.
Whether you are an A, B, or C seller, you can start the process of changing how you think and feel about rejection by going for no today. If you are a leader, embrace this as a fantastic opportunity to give people the tool of a “go for no” mindset.
What do you think? I’d love your comments. (Have you read “Go for No!”? If you want to develop your persistence through failure and rejection it will greatly help you.)