The reason it’s important to know how to deal with rejection is because it’s an inevitable part of being a salesperson, a business person, or for that matter – a human being.
As a salesperson excessive rejection can lead to feeling unproductive which will suck the energy out us. And everybody knows how important energy is to making a sale. Once you apply these 3 steps I’m going to share with you here you’ll be numb to rejection and won’t even care if it happened.
1. Have Many Irons in the Fire.
The best way I’ve found to deal with rejection and the highest producers in any industry have dealt with rejection is by having so many leads, prospects, and deals cooking that you don’t care if a client says no to you or no shows you on an appointment.
Of course, we want to close them all, but perfection is impossible.
I remember in 2006 or 2007 I saw Donald Trump speak live at a real estate conference at the LA Convention Center. I’m not attacking or defending the guy, but you can’t deny his credentials as a business man. I’ll never forget, he said, “You always want to have many deals working at the same time because if one goes south you won’t care, but if you only have a 1 or 2 deals and one of them doesn’t work out now you’ve got a serious problem.
In other words, you want to have a pipeline so full you don’t have the time to feel the impact of rejection because you’ve got other people to deal with.
2. Don’t be afraid to double-book yourself.
If you have no other option to than to double book yourself then so be it. It’s better to have the higher quality problem of having multiple clients to help at the same time than nobody to talk to at all.
When I was selling a certain product I would do this. It was great because if I had 3 appointments at the same time and 1 or 2 of them canceled I was relieved and could dedicate more of my focus to the person in front of me. Now, if all 3 clients showed up at the same time – which almost never happens because they’re usually late.
By the way, It’s ok and acceptable for them to show up late, but we can never be late to our own appointments – If they did happened to show up at the same time I would ask them if they would mind waiting, most of the time they don’t.
And if they did I would now have a lead to give to another salesperson for a percentage of the deal. The client was happy because they didn’t have to wait, the salesperson was happy because they now had a client to help, and I was happy because I would get a piece of something as opposed to all of nothing.
3. Shift your focus from how can I not get rejected or no-showed to how can I fill my pipeline and get more leads?
How can increase the number of referrals I’m getting? How can I prospect more effectively? How can I position myself better online and on social media? How can I use direct mail more effectively so I’m not so dependent on this one thing?
Once we can get clear on that and how to get more leads we can deal with the cause and not the symptom.
As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
So to recap, to deal with rejection so you’re not at the mercy of your feelings.
- Make sure you have a full pipeline so you don’t feel the sting of inevitable rejection.
- If you can do it without compromising your integrity don’t be afraid to double or triple book yourself so you have a higher quality problem.
- Ask yourself how can you position yourself and market better so you have an abundance of leads and you don’t mind getting rejected.
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