Rejection is one of the most feared and debilitating emotions you can experience in business. It so paralyses some men and women into inaction, that they eventually go out of business.
90% of new entrepreneurs are too frightened to pick up the phone and ask for new business because they fear rejection. Cold calling is rated as one of the scariest things a business person is asked to do.
Do you agree?
Fear of rejection starts in childhood and is a natural response to being excluded.
Everyone has a story to tell about the first time they were rejected by their brother, sister, in the playground, by a friend, a teacher, a girlfriend, boyfriend, an employer.
Remember the school bus? You can't sit here. This seat is reserved for Emily, not you.
The football team? You’re the last man standing. No one picks you. You hope the ground opens up and swallows you before they see the grief on your face.
Sound familiar?
And we can all remember the chilling feeling of desolation at not being liked, accepted, considered important, valuable, loved, appreciated.
Your response to your fear of rejection either liberates you – or keeps you imprisoned for the rest of your life.
Think about that.
What joy is there in living within a prison of your own making?
No one escapes being rejected. Everyone alive has been rejected for some reason at some time.
There are no exceptions.
Prejudice and bullying are forms of rejection. And school bullying is probably the first time some of us confront rejection.
I remember my school bully.
Her name was Frances.
I was 9 years old, she was 10 years old.
I was the smallest child in my class and very shy.
She was the biggest and the loudest.
The school foyer led to a very wide and high staircase that we all had to climb to get to our class rooms.
And every morning Frances was waiting at the top of the stairs, always with her arms folded and her legs spread apart. Waiting just for me. So she could push me down the stairs.
She terrified me.
And I hated going to school because of her.
And like most children, I never told my parents.
And my teachers didn’t care. I remember one of them actually laughing one morning when I went tumbling down the stairs I had just climbed up.
My fear was so acute, it was making me sick.
I started dawdling on the way to school and discovered that if I got to school just as the bell rang, the staircase was empty and I could sneak into class just a little bit late and avoid Frances.
But not for long.
My teacher started disciplining me for being late and threatened to tell my parents. If I didn’t straighten up, she would ask them to come to school to explain why I was perennially tardy.
No. I couldn’t let my parents know I was afraid of a classmate.
So it was back to the daily confrontation.
Until one day I realised I couldn’t live with this fear anymore. I somehow had to resolve this daily skirmish.
I plucked up my courage and during recess, asked Frances why she always pushed me down the stairs. She responded by laughing at me and pushed me down yet again.
One morning I stood at the bottom of the staircase, eyeing off Frances.
I walked up the staircase with a plan.
Frances saw me and positioned herself to stand in my way.
In a flash, I ducked down, ran between the gap in her legs, turned around and with all my strength, pushed her so hard from behind, she flipped over and crashed down the stairs, head first, to land in an almighty heap, screaming and bellowing and threatening me.
Now I was even more terrified.
I thought she would kill me.
But that didn’t happen, because like most bullies, once confronted, Frances never bothered me again.
The school’s reaction to my audaciousness and act of desperation is another story.
Tackling my daily fear head on liberated me and improved my quality of life beyond my wildest expectations.
A recent story about Peter Holmes à Court in ‘the (Sydney) magazine’ tells of his exclusion at boarding school and being bullied and punched because he came from a super wealthy family.
Peter tells this story often and recalls how mystified he was because he honestly didn’t know if being rich was a good or a bad thing.
At the time, his father, Robert Holmes à Court, was Australia’s first billionaire. Before Kerry Packer. And today, his mother, Janet Holmes à Court, is Australia’s richest woman.
Peter is now Executive Chairman of the South Sydney Rabbitohs Rugby Club. He’s co-owner along with his friend, actor Russell Crowe.
Has rejection as a child toughened him up?
The Rabbitohs are the underdogs in the National Rugby League (NRL). And the NRL lags behind the Australian Football League (AFL) in attendances. In other words, they’re at the bottom of the heap.
Publicly losing is one of the most heartbreaking forms of rejection. And part of his football baggage.
Believe me when I tell you that rejection is part of everyone's life.
And some people face it many times in a day.
Think of the entertainers who get rejected at casting call after casting call.
Would you want to put yourself through that agony just to get a part in a movie or a play or a musical?
But they do. Because that’s the life of an entertainer. They have to endure the rejections before they get the acceptances.
And in business, it’s just as pernicious.
Think about this.
Any day of the week, only 3% of your market is ready to buy what you have to sell.
Next time you go to a function, ask how many people at your table will be buying a car in the next week or so. Around 3% will put their hands up. Ask how many will be buying a car in the next two months, and another 3% will put their hands up.
94% of the guests aren’t in the market for a car on that day. Or a photocopier. Or a new computer. Or sales training. Or anything else you want to sell them on that day.
The numbers game says only 3% of people want what you’re trying to sell them on the day you call, send your brochure, put your ad in the newspaper, on radio or on TV. The rest aren’t interested - on that day.
Could this be the reason average response rates usually hover around 1%-2%?
Rejection is endemic in business and so much a part of finding new business that you either accept it, get over it, and move past it; or go out of business from your fear of being rejected.
Think about this.
When your phone rings with a sales person on the other end, do you say yes to everything?
I don’t think so. You’re not in the market for everything every day of the week.
And neither is everyone else.
Even when you’ve narrowed your market down to a highly targeted segment, you’ll still be rejected. Because only 3% of people are in the market to buy at any given time. Another 3% might be, and 94% will say no.
“I’ll think about it” is business speak for NO!
A no isn’t a personal refusal. It’s just a fact. I’m not interested at this time.
Accept rejection as part of the territory. And the rudeness, the abruptness, the gruffness and the apparent lack of bad manners that accompany many rejections.
Accept it. Then move past it.
You can’t grow if you’re not expanding your customer base, or increasing the amount of product a customer buys from you, or forming strategic alliances with other businesses.
All 3 require you to ask someone to enter into a transaction with your business. And if you don't ask, you perish.
Do you know what the best way is to overcome your fear of rejection?
It’s by doing what you need to do. And doing it over and over again until you’re not bothered by the rejections.
Make the phone calls. Get used to being told no.
I learned the following from Brian Tracy, perhaps the best down to earth salesman of all time.
When you do what you’re terrified of doing, you develop courage.
When you develop courage, your tension is reduced and your stress levels go down.
Then your fear stops.
When your fear stops, you own your future.
When you own your future, you prosper.
At one time, I, too, was fearful of cold calling. But Brian's advice turned that around for me. I'm now so used to approaching companies and people cold, I don't even blink an eye. Yes, I get told no. But I accept that as part of my path to success. And so should you.
Remember that everyone, including the best sales people, get told no every day of the week.
But they also know they can’t get to the yes people until they go through the no people.
A friend of mine owns a business services company. His favourite story of triumph over rejection happened in the 90’s when he secured IBM as a client.
Everyone congratulated him and told him how lucky he was to score IBM, as they rarely change suppliers.
He tells me he wasn’t at all lucky.
He endured 10 years of IBM rejecting his overtures. But he knew if he kept at them, he’d be first in line when they were ready to make a change.
Why?
Because almost everyone else drops out at the first rejection.
It’s a fact. 95% of companies never knock on a door twice.
During his 10 years of perseverance, IBM got to know him and what he could do for them. They were almost friends. And when they changed, there was no competition. It was just a phone call to say, come on over and let’s talk.
That’s the upside of accepting and mastering rejection.
It’s never a permanent no.
Situations change. Going back to see if the landscape has altered, results in laying the foundations for future business.
I’ve developed an institutional market segment by going back to it over and over again.
My first foray into the segment was a 100% rejection rate. Doors slammed in my face one after another.
It was a bit sobering, but reflecting on it, I changed my approach and tried a second time.
The second time I got a 99.99999% rejection rate. But this time one door opened and I gained a new customer.
Most people would have given up. But I thought one customer was encouraging.
Now I have 83 loyal customers from that segment. Who buy from me on a regular basis.
And mull this over.
95% of companies would have walked away, convinced there was no business there for them to get.
This market segment is a hard market to crack. And I did this over a period of three years by ignoring the no’s and knowing that situations change.
And combined that with my firm belief that the segment could use my product.
I just needed to develop a relationship with the market so I could also develop the skills I needed to be able to sell to them.
People buy when they know you, trust you and have confidence in you. When you take the time to develop those characteristics, you become irresistible.
And I did.
This is what happens when you overcome your fear and keep going back.
The more someone hears from you, the more they get to know you. The more they get to know you, the more familiar you become.
In return, you get to know them and start to develop a feel for what they’re looking for. You start to develop the skills you need to have, to be able to sell to them.
Then one day, they sit back and can’t understand why they’re not doing business with you.
Overcoming your fear of rejection is a process. And this is how it works.
1. Keep doing what you’re terrified of doing because it develops courage.
2. Once your courage kicks in, it reduces your tension.
3. Which reduces your stress levels.
4. And changes your attitude from negative to confident.
5. Suddenly, people are responding to your confident manner in a positive way.
6. You’re developing and mastering the skills you need to own your future.
7. And to your surprise, you’re prospering.
Try it. It works.
This isn’t a one week trial.
Like everything in life, you need to put effort into it. Work at this process for 6 months.
You have to be serious and committed.
Because . . . .
There will be days when you’ll feel like you’ve gone 10 rounds with an angry Tasmanian Devil.
But if you practice making cold calls every day for 6 months to your target market, you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes to your business, your self esteem and your confidence.
If you’re really serious about overcoming your fear, you’ll notice your focus changes from you - to them.
You’ll start thinking about how you can help them.
And when your customer becomes more important than you, you begin the alluring process of developing a relationship of trust and confidence that’s appealing to them.
Your skills in opening doors and closing sales will improve exponentially with your effort. And before long they will skyrocket.
I’d be hard pressed to believe you weren’t experiencing significant positive changes in your revenue at the end of 183 days.
Is your fear of rejection a death blow to your business?
Or do you brush it off and say it’s part of business and part of what you need to master so you can move forward and find the people who want to do business with you?
It’s a choice. And it’s your choice.
Freedom or imprisonment.
Death or success.
It’s that simple a concept.
You can liberate yourself and own your future by accepting rejection as part of your business life. Master rejection and you prosper.
Or you can live in a prison of fear - of your own making, until diminishing returns force you out of business.
This Guerrilla From The Bush makes that choice every day. Vive le freedom!
What’s your secret for overcoming rejection?
I’d love you to post your comments and let’s see if we can help each other. Better yet, let’s have as many people as possible pitch in and share their experiences.
Take care,
CAROL
Carol Jones
Director
Interface Pty Ltd
The Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover, Roadworks Apron, Log Lugger, Travel Bug Shoe Bag, Mr Chin’s Laundry Bag and Sweet Shoo are all simple solutions for difficult problems. And every one is a joy to use.
We’ve developed markets for these 6 products without national or international retail distribution. To see what we’ve achieved, click on our website at http://www.interfaceaustralia.com/.
Read the story of how our business began on The Ironing Board Cover Lady. No sales hype. Just a down home story about how we started our business on the dining room table of our rural property, driving on ‘L’ Plates, without an instructor.
A comment about LinkedIn. If you’re not a member of LinkedIn, when you click View Full Profile, you’ll be asked to join. It’s free and the option is yours. There are benefits to joining. Once you’re a member, you can key in the name of any person you do business with. If they’ve taken the trouble to complete a Profile, you’ll be able to assess their background, their capabilities and the calibre of person they are. You might be, as I am, often pleasantly surprised. So go have a look.
