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Little children, they say, are “resilient.” They can fall down, scrape their knee, cry for a minute, get back up and go on playing. Resilience is also a trademark of highly successful salespeople. They can hear “no,” get down, feel disappointed for a moment, get right back up and go after the next opportunity. Perhaps you aren’t quite as fortunate. Maybe when you get rejected for one reason or another, it takes hours, days, or even weeks to get back up. Clearly, that’s too long. You can’t afford to pull back from your sales, marketing and prospecting efforts for long gaps like that. It will kill you career!
What you can do is learn how to face rejection in a different way. Here are some ideas you should consider: - Sales is about rejection. Like baseball, you’ll probably be called out more than you’ll reach base. That’s the nature of baseball and that’s the nature of sales. Get used to it. Just think, if every client that you asked to do business with you said yes, you couldn’t handle it!
- Don’t take rejection personally. Most times the client isn’t saying no to you as a person, she is saying no to your offer. Perhaps she isn’t interested. Perhaps she has a well-established lender of preference. Perhaps she has other pressing priorities on her plate. Think about the last time a waitress asked you if you wanted to see the dessert menu and you said "no thanks". Should she have taken that personally?
- Use rejection as a learning tool. Why did the client say no? Was it because my presentation wasn’t very strong? Was it because I didn’t do much homework? Was it because I really did not take the time to get to know this client and his or her real needs? Maybe the reason why you were rejected can be fixed! Analyze every failed opportunity and ask yourself what could be done better next time.
- Probe for why. When a client rejects your offer, try to find out why. For example, you might say: “Ben, I thought this would be a good resource for you to have. Did I miss something?” Or perhaps: “Susan, I appreciate your relationship with your current lender. If there was an opportunity for you and I to work together down the road, what could I do to position myself in the best light?” If a client says no to you, you can always ask why they said no.
- Get over it. Brooding over rejection won’t help you in any way, it can only hurt. As one sales professional once said: “Some will, some won’t, so what?” What he means is that some people will do business with you and some won’t, so what! Agree with yourself that you can’t win them all and move forward…quickly!
- Strengthen your resolve. When rejection rears its ugly head with yet another “no” make a personal resolution to work much harder to get the next client or prospect to say “yes.” And when that happens, you’ll feel like you’ve really earned it.
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