Successful people understand the value of rejection in the process of developing clients. The more they enjoy rejection, the more they enjoy contacting prospective clients. Rather than taking rejection personally, they realize their attitude and reactions to rejection are critical in developing new business. They enjoy the challenge of converting resistance into receptivity so they can develop relationships that ensure results. First, let’s review the three objectives of the client-development process, which is similar to the process of building a pyramid.

Objective No. 1. In sales we begin by building our client base, which is the base of the pyramid. This requires contacting people five times, on average. Within each of these five contacts, we have a goal to achieve, including gaining their awareness of who we are and what we have to offer, developing an interest in what we can do for them, having them evaluate our product or service, trying our product and analyzing the benefits they will gain from it versus what they are presently using and adopting our recommendations.

Objective No. 2. The second part of the pyramid is developing a stronger relationship with our existing clients to achieve such objectives as earning the right to ask for referrals, gaining repeat or additional business and exploring other applications.

Objective No. 3. The peak of the pyramid is to take our success to the top by contacting the highest-level decision makers – the most affluent prospects – and seeking the largest opportunities.

Each of us in sales understands the importance of achieving these objectives – making the calls, getting more involved with existing clients and calling on more-important people. We have to wonder why – if we are all motivated to contact people, build stronger relationships with our clients and explore greater opportunities – so many salespeople avoid these challenges. As we are motivated by the need to achieve and gain recognition, we can also be unmotivated by the opposite need to avoid failure and rejection.

Fear of failure and rejection can cause salespeople to lose their enthusiasm, their confidence and their initiative. There are, however, two kinds of rejection – one that can amuse us and one that can be damaging to our ego. One word separates the two, and that is the word personal. If we do not take the rejection personally, we might react with humor, but if we take the negativity or unkindness personally, we might become disappointed, depressed and defensive.

There are three reasons we might take rejection personally. Each of the following relates directly to the three sales objectives in building the client-development pyramid.

Frequency. Everyone can deal with some rejection. The question is, how much failure and rejection can you experience before you start taking the negative feedback too much to heart? This is why salespeople have difficulty contacting people and developing their client base. Before they have made enough calls to find a prospect, they become discouraged and stop trying. How many prospecting calls can you make before you become discouraged? How many times can you contact a qualified prospect, who is always negative toward you, before you begin taking it personally?

Emotional Involvement. How emotionally involved can we become with someone before we believe the person knows us so well that whatever he or she says might be true, causing us to feel vulnerable and defensive in our behavior? This is the reason some people can send out promotional material, but have difficulty making cold calls. Or, when they do make calls, they are reluctant to get an appointment to meet people personally. Or, they may enjoy meeting people and easily develop a friendship and perform the necessary follow-up, but they avoid asking for a decision for fear they might confront buyer’s remorse.

Perceived Importance. If we believe someone is more important than we are, then our respect for that person will cause us to feel that whatever they say might be true. The idea that they might reject us can cause us to avoid contacting people of this level. This is the reason salespeople call on people who fall within their own self-image, and they have difficulty taking their success to a higher level.

Checklist. Recognize that there are two kinds of rejection – valid and invalid. If we identify which of the two we are confronting, we will know how to react appropriately.

If the rejection is valid, then you want to know what you did to irritate your prospect. Their critical comments are the information you need to make the necessary adjustments in your strategy and selling skills.

If the rejection is invalid, and the prospect is just using you to release frustration, then you have to be concerned about what is causing the anger, rather than taking the unkindness personally.

If we believe we need to achieve and be accepted by others to feel good about ourselves, then we will be vulnerable to failure and rejection. Successful people thrive on failure and rejection because their self-esteem is based on their own sense of value. They believe they can gain more from failure than success, and that negative feedback can be of greater value than positive feedback. This is why – whether they fail or succeed or are loved or rejected – they always feel good about themselves.

This Power Training module is based on an interview with Art Mortell, author of The Courage to Fail (McGraw-Hill, 1992) and World Class Selling (Dearborn Trade Pub, 1991). A top motivational speaker, Mortell has given more than 4,000 programs at leading corporations including IBM, Merrill Lynch, Price Waterhouse and Lockheed Martin.
Address: PO Box 721
Malibu, CA 90265
Phone: 310/457-2551
Web: www.artmortell.com

Quick Tips for Your Next Sales Session

To follow are examples of beliefs, attitudes or thoughts for enjoying failure and being amused by rejection.
• I love rejection.
• Rejection turns me on.
• Negative feedback ignites my energy.
• Hostile people amuse me.
• I attack my fears.
• Failure sharpens my objectivity.
• Adversity makes me more resilient.
• Failure is a maturing process.
• I do better under pressure.
• Stress stimulates my creativity.

Sales Manager’s training Guide

At Your Next Sales Meeting

Below are nine practical steps to improve your team’s ability to turn rejection into a sales advantage.

1. Prior to the meeting, develop a presentation that reviews the key points of the training module, as well as a handout for each of your people.

2. Open the meeting by asking your people to decide on which of the three sales objectives they will focus.
a. Prospecting to develop new clients
b. Getting more involved with existing clients in order to gain referrals and additional business
c. Taking their success to a higher level by seeking greater opportunities, such as contacting higher-level decision makers, more affluent people or larger orders

3. Ask your people to think of why they might have difficulty achieving these objectives.

4. Discuss how the fear of failure and rejection can cause us to become defensive and avoid our objectives. Now get more specific with your people.

5. Focus on those sales activities that cause their greatest difficulty, such as cold calling on the phone, gaining the administrative assistant’s cooperation in speaking with the decision maker, confronting objections or closing.6. Have each person share a success story, about what he or she did to convert rejection into acceptance. Prepare a brief presentation on how thoughts determine emotions. Create the following visual:

Thinking that: I will succeedCauses us to feel: Excited and enthusiasticCreating performance that: Perseveres and stays right on target

Thinking that: I do not want to be rejectedCauses us to feel: Apprehensive and defensiveCreating performance that: Seeks to take on less- threatening responsibility

7. Ask your people to write down what they believe successful people think about regarding failure and rejection. What causes them to do better when confronting such experiences?

8. Develop, with your people, sales techniques that can disengage their fear of rejection.

9. Have your people decide how many cold-call conversations are required to find a prospect, how many prospects are needed to gain a new account and therefore how many calls in total are needed to get one new client.

Quick Tips for Your Training Session
To follow are examples of beliefs regarding the value of failure that can ensure our success.
– The more I fail, the more I succeed. Failure is merely part of the process of succeeding.
– There are only two ways of failing. One is by not trying, and the other is by quitting.
– Failure gives me insight into where change might occur.
– Failure is an experience that was less than I expected – in which I must know what I have gained.
– I never see failure as failure but only as an opportunity to try new ideas.
– I learn more from my failures than my successes.
– I am paid for the number of times that I fail.

Ask your people why rejection and negative feedback might have more value than positive feedback and acceptance. To follow are examples of beliefs regarding the value of rejection as part of gaining acceptance.
– Negative feedback is the information I need to make changes in my course of direction.
– If the rejection is invalid, then I cannot take it personally.
– Rejection, rather than being humiliating, renews my humility.
– My self-esteem is not based on the reactions of others but my own sense of value.
– Rejection reminds me not to take myself too seriously.
– People who are saying no to me are speeding me on to someone who needs me.
– If people are going to reject me, let it be from someone important.
– I imagine rejection as raindrops off a duck’s feathers.
– I raise my self-image and fly above the storm.

Our beliefs determine our attitude toward failure and rejection – though beliefs and attitudes are separate subjects. While we might take rejection personally, because we believe we need the acceptance of others to accept ourselves, we can still develop an attitude that overrides any self-defeating assumptions and beliefs.

Our beliefs affect our attitude; our attitude influences the way we perform; and our performance determines our results. Attitude is critical, but attitude is not everything: performance is everything. If we think negatively, we can still perform positively.

Before we discuss how successful people react to rejection, consider the two negative reactions to rejection: 1) avoiding the situation, backing off and retreating and 2) counterattacking, becoming more aggressive and overreacting. If we understand which of these two reactions we are most likely to use, we might then realize our own solution to dealing with people who are resistant to us.

One way of seeing which way you tend to perform when under pressure is to remember the Peanuts cartoon and answer one question, If you had a choice of being Charlie Brown or Lucy, who would you prefer to be? If you prefer to be Charlie, you are the warm, sensitive person who establishes a friendship with your customers, but for fear of rejection, you might avoid any conflict, such as confronting objections or closing, and your results might be less than desirable.

If, instead, you prefer to be Lucy, you are probably the strong, assertive person who quickly establishes your position of authority, but you might become so aggressive as to threaten people and damage the relationship.

Charisma is the trait of balancing opposite qualities into a personality with which most anyone can identify. In creating this ideal balance, answer two questions: What do you believe to be Charlie’s best quality? What do you feel is Lucy’s primary strength? If your answers are sensitivity and aggressiveness, then the ideal reaction to rejection is to be aggressively sensitive or relentlessly compassionate or perseveringly pleasant.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you really change limiting beliefs that are based on experience? Most people are convinced their beliefs are completely valid because they can remember times when those beliefs proved true. However, because beliefs influence the way people see the world, they were probably ignoring evidence that ran contrary to the belief, while noticing evidence that confirmed it.

How do I know when a belief is not a law of nature? Any law that, at its base, contains the phrase “and because of that, I feel bad” (or something of the sort) is a belief that can be changed. Such beliefs combine an interpretation of reality – an attempt to put meaning into a situation and then use that meaning to produce an emotional state. While there are situations (such as a death in the family) where sadness is appropriate, being rejected in a sales situation is simply not all that important.

What’s the key to dealing positively with rejection? Five words sum it up: do not take it personally. Things happen. Customers have bad days. The economy goes up and down. You have the choice to make those events an excuse for failure, or you can work on the four things that you have under your control: your beliefs, your attitude, your emotions and your performance. Take care of those four, and the fifth – good results – will take care of itself.