Don’t Take Rejection Personally The Sales Pro Blog at www.salesproblog.com 1

Don’t Take Rejection Personally

Originally seen at

http://www.salesproblog.com/dont-take-rejection-personally/

For anyone who has ever done cold

calling, rejection is a natural part of

life.

Should that really come as a surprise

though?

Whether it’s B2B or B2C, cold calling

by definition is an unsolicited

interruption. They don’t know who you

are, they may not even be familiar with

your product. And here you are disturbing them in between whatever it was they

were doing a few seconds ago.

Any interruption can cause a negative reaction and often a straight out rejection.

By the way, if you want to know how to reduce the chance of rejection, check out

my previous post about pattern interrupts.

The thing to remember though is that they are not rejecting you as a person. You

shouldn’t take it personally. It’s not because they don’t like you (they might be

annoyed though). And it’s not because you’re a bad person.

This is one of the main reasons sales reps don’d like prospecting. Because who

wants to run right smack into being rejection.

I know I don’t.

But I do anyways because (1) I don’t take it personally, (2) I truly believe I sell an

amazing product, (3) I know for a fact that the product I sell will help their

business.

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Now if you don’t feel the same way with your product, it might be prudent to

reconsider other employment but that’s for another post.

Assuming you do feel the same as I do there are a few steps you can take to make

rejection less likely during your cold calls.

Be An Expert First of all is to do build your professional brand by establishing yourself as

an expert. If your’s or your product’s reputation precedes you then the

conversation will go much more smoothly.

You must know as much as possible about your product to do this. And before

every call re-study any single topic you think that prospect might ask you about.

For me, in the property management software field I generally work with multi-

family or commercial companies (and sometimes mix). If I am spending my time

that day cold calling on commercial only companies, I only have to freshen up on

the commercial management software side.

Do Your Research Find out everything you possibly can about the prospect you are cold calling. Find

out where they went to school, what associations they are a part of, what

companies they have worked out before, etc.

Anything you can use to associate them with yourself will give you an excellent

talking point.

“Not sure if you new this but I am also a UCLA alumnus”

“I saw on LinkedIn that you and I are members of the commercial management

executives group”

“I found an article about your involvement with Wounded Warrior Project, my

uncle is part of that as well.”

Whatever it is you can use to build rapport you should use as long as its ethical.

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Get To The Point You’re intro should be quick. I like to use my name, where I found his name, and

and ask for 30 seconds to tell him why I’m calling (pattern interrupt). 99% of the

time they say sure.

The first 5-10 seconds is the intro to your company and product. That’s all you

get. If you check out my LinkedIn page you’ll see a version of my pitch.

“I help real estate investment and property management firms better manage

their assets and reduce their monthly expenses with enterprise level software”

I feel that this one (run-on) sentence gets my point across in a short amount of

time. Quick and easy.

Ask Questions After you give your pitch you get to speak one more time and ONLY to ask an

open ended question.

You can ask what issues they’re having with this current set up. Or maybe added

features you’d like to see on your next upgrade.

The point is to let them take the next steps and get them talking. You’re an

awesome sales rep, you can take it from here.

The main point of this post is not to lead you through the cold call but rather to

help you get past the rejection that is likely to happen.

What’s great though is that as time passes and you make more and more sales

calls, you’ll get better and better at it and you won’t feel the sting of rejection like

you use to.

So go out there and make some calls.

~ Johnny Bravo

Image courtesy of winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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