Chances are you have learned behaviors toward rejection that you have never given much thought about. So ask yourself: What are your reactions when a prospect/client says, “No”?
Over 20 years ago, I had the incredible opportunity to pay my way through college by working for a telemarketing firm. A good friend of mine was a manager there, and he convinced me it was easy money. What he failed to tell me was that in order to make this easy money, I would have to change my belief system about rejection.
During my initial training period, I was given a pair of headphones, escorted into a booth in the center of the calling bullpen and told to listen in on phone calls. As I listened to the eager college students trying to close three times on each initial cold call, I noticed a pattern emerging. Those who were making the sale didn’t let rejection affect them while those who were not making the sale were affected. What I didn’t understand at the time was how the successful students were preventing rejection from affecting them?
However, now after thirteen years of being a financial advisor and seven years of coaching financial advisors, I know what you need to know about hearing the word “no”.
That brings us to the five strategies for understanding the Art of Rejection Perception:
Strategy 1: Your belief about rejection will affect your outcome.
Fear of rejection is a learned behavior that many advisors design a belief system around. Your belief about rejection will affect your outcome because it will dictate the type of actions that you are willing to take to avoid or accept rejection. If you have a strong negative belief system regarding rejection, it is time to challenge that belief system to conquer your fear.
Strategy 2: Objections are merely a natural part of the selling process.
You must understand this and view rejection as a natural reaction to a prospect’s perception of the value of your products and service. All you need to do is inquire about their problems, “sell” them your solutions then set an appointment so you can help them.
Strategy 3: Prospects are not rejecting you personally.
They are merely rejecting their perceived value of the products or services you are offering them. In other words, it is not about you! Keep in mind that often prospect’s perception of what value your products or services can add to their lives is completely false. That is because they have not or will not take the time to understand what your products and services have to offer. They may not even realize this or they may not view their lack of curiosity as a problem.
Strategy 4: Your conviction is correlated to your resilience.
There is a direct correlation between your level of confidence regarding your products, services and yourself AND your level of resilience to rejection. How can you be affected by rejection when you know that your products and services can help prospects with their financial challenges? It is almost impossible to feel the sting of rejection if you know that the prospect just does not understand how much you can help them.
Strategy 5: You determine who the rejecter is and who is the rejected.
The law of averages dictates that there are too many qualified prospects to talk to, thus, you must simply reject those who are not interested in your products and services. When you become the person who is rejecting instead of the one being rejected, hearing “No” has much less of an effect on you.
It all comes down to how you choose to view rejection. The five strategies above are meant to help you view what rejection really is and to help you realize you are in control of whether it affects you or not.