Why You Should Take Sales Rejection Personally
All of us have heard, pretty much since week one of our sales careers—“ Don’ t take sales rejection personally.” You know the mantra:“ They’ re not rejecting you, they’ re rejecting your product or service.” I have to admit, I agreed with that for my entire 31 ‐year sales career until a recent experience changed my mind. About two weeks ago I was calling insurance agencies to let them know about a sales seminar I was doing for one of the local state insurance associations. Typically this is a very warm call where I simply state my name, the name of the association I’ m doing the seminar for,
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which they usually have a very good working relationship with, state who the seminar is for, the ultimate benefit to the target audience, and let them know I’ m sending them an e-mail with the details. This takes about 15 seconds.
Dealing With Rejection
This is a layup because there’ s no real sale involved, I’ m simply e-mailing information about a seminar that offers a large benefit to the target audience. Every call I’ d made in the past, about 1200 of them, had gone fine, but on this day, one particular call did not. When I finished speaking, the person on the other end of the phone said,“ Thanks for the offer, but I’ m all set.” This was not a typical response and it threw me off for a second. My brain did a quick scan for possible reasons