If you ask a non-salesperson why she so adamantly wouldn’t sell to earn her living, more than likely she’d say something like, “I couldn’t deal with all that rejection.” To a non-salesperson, a prospect’s “no” is seen as a harsh personal repudiation, a direct assault upon her sensitive ego—it’s so humiliating. A master salesperson is apt to roll her eyes at such a comment. As the gangsters say, “it’s only business”; a master salesperson never feels personally rejected.
Learn to never take “no” personally. Instead, take responsibility for it. In baseball, no batter gets a hit every time up and no salesperson closes every prospect. Selling is a numbers game, a law of averages marathon. My father-in-law always says, “You have to get the “no’s” out of the way, in order to get to the “yes’s.”
We live in a free country; everyone has a right to say no. To take it personally, to hang on to it for dear life, to keep replaying it over and over and over again is to surrender your power to someone who isn’t even a customer. Why would you do that? What possible benefit can it bring you?
If you go to your next presentation with that kind of baggage strangling your concentration, you’re allowing a “no” to do double damage to you and your career.
A salesperson must have skin thick as a rhinoceros; prospects can be downright insulting at times. It should go in one ear and out the other. You’re there to make a sale, that’s all that matters; indulge in anything peripheral to that sacred purpose and you’re being self-destructive.
Never take it personally; it’s only business.
