Rejection doesn't mean no, It could just mean not now. It could just mean there's an obstacle, something standing in your way, So just be present find out what it is.
You're listening to the audible Ready Podcast, the show that helps you and your teams sell more faster. We'll feature sales leaders sharing their best insights on how to create a sales engine that helps you fuel repeatable revenue growth. Presented by the team at Force Management, a leader in B to B sales effectiveness.
Let's get started.
Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel Klatt Miller here with the John Kaplan. Hi John, Hi Rachel, how are you good? Good? I hope you are doing well. Today. We are going to talk about the topic of rejection. We've all had to deal with it. We want to talk about how do you handle it in a way that sets you up for less rejection, moving for it, and more success.
Well, I think if you're a salesperson, you figured out that this is just a way of life. So if you're listening to this and you're already in sales, you already know that rejection or barriers or hurdles are all part of being a seller are all part of really being I think a human. But I will tell you that being able to handle rejection and how you look at rejection is certainly a characteristic that I think is the elite sellers. They just kind of have a different perspective.
So obviously rejection can be difficult because if you take it personally or you put a motion into it, customer says, no, you have to take yourself out of it, and it's hard. Like I like to tell people, you got to be unoffendable. I think people that are undefendable, they're just like, it's not about me, It's about the situation that we're dealing with.
And maybe the truth is they didn't see the value in our solution as it relates to their business challenges, or they didn't see the value of taking a meeting with me, or whatever. You know, Rachel, One of my favorite stories about Kobe Bryant, who was an incredible professional basketball player in the NBA, tragically was killed in a helicopter accident with some families and children of a team that he was coaching. But a story that happened after
losing one of the championship games. I forget which championship it was, but it was for the end of the year championship. He stayed on the bench, he had his head in his hands for quite a while, and you know, the media started to afterwards he walked off the court when it was all over, he stayed there for a while with his head in his hands, and so the media is like, Oh, he's emotional, he's down, he's this
is tragic, blah blah blah. And so when he got to the media table, they started asking all these questions about how he was feeling, and that they noticed that he was upset after the game. And if you just go look at any YouTube clips of Kobe Bryant, he's pretty serious character about competition and competing and really what it takes. And I just his response was awesome. He said upset. Yeah, yeah, I'm upset. I'm upset we lost.
But I wasn't emotional after the game with my head in my hands on the bench, I was replaying the entire game, in the entire series, and I was identifying what I needed to do to improve to win the next time. And that's why he won all the time, is that he looked at rejection or loss. Yes, it fired him up, but he looked at rejection or loss and looked for areas of improvement to make sure it didn't happen again. So I think that's just a really good theme for us as we're talking about rejection.
Yeah, learning from it and like you said a little bit earlier, it really it doesn't have anything to do with you, particularly in sales, right. It's often the circumstances surrounding what you're asking, whether that be for a meeting, a po whatever, But it can be a motivation killer when you're trying to grind and get those meetings and fill that pipeline. You talked a little bit about this, John, But how do you encourage people to handle rejection in the ways that you mentioned.
I think first of all, you just got to kind of reframe the word and the connotation of rejection. So maybe it's a hurdle, maybe it's a but it's not an end. So instead of seeing it as like a failure, you view it as a learning opportunity, And then each rejection or hurdle or whatever it is, is a chance to understand what didn't work and how you can approve. Like I think the greatest success stor is on the planet.
I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's warm Buffett, I don't care who it is Henry Ford. You just look at the number, Abraham Lincoln. You look at some of the greatest minds on the planet, and it's arguable that they failed way more than they succeeded. So you've heard me talk about playing where your feet are. What I really mean by that is to be in the present. So wherever you are in your situation, try
to be in the present of it. So when people feel rejection, they typically start to project, well, what's this person thinking or what's going to happen in the future, Versus I like to be in the present and I ask for feedback from the buyer. So if the buyer gives me some feedback like I don't think we're going to be able to do this at this time, or a lot of times people's minds race forward and they're like, oh my gosh, you know I'm not going to get
this deal. I'm not going to make this forecast, Versus asking for feedback right in the moment and say what's causing that to happen? So I don't look at a finality, A final I look at it as that's where I am right now, in the present. That's the information I have. Let's go dig in. That's the time to dig in.
Yeah, and it's important to remember that, I know may just be a no right now. So when you get that feedback and you're responding, John, what are your best tips for leading the door open for conversations down the road.
I think that's so good. I've heard you say this. It's not you said this to me before on something when we were doing I can't remember what we were doing. You say, well, that might not be mister right for something we were looking for a solution. He said, it's not that it's not mister right, it just might be that they're not mister right now. Yes, I think that was actually one of your sayings that when we were dealing with something out of partnership or something. And I
like that because no rarely means no forever. And I like to qualify by asking in the customer and qualify. Are we just is this a timing thing or is this just a total miss on requirements or culture? And I think when you speak words that are spoken from the heart and to the heart to all who hear them. When you ask somebody a question like that, an authentic question, you're more likely to get an authentic answer. And people
we're not designed to be ugly to each other. So if you're miss hearing something and somebody is saying, no, your culture sucks, then you follow up. They're probably going to give you good feedback on your culture. If they say it's not right now because we've got other things going on, and if you try to assume that it's more about you and you authentically say is this something that we've done in the campaign, those things typically kind of work themselves out because people like to be authentic
with each other. That's how we were designed to communicate. So I just think, call it out. No rarely means no forever, figure out what it means.
Yeah, exactly. And you know another part of this, John I wanted to bring up. I'm thinking about people in like a BDR type role where they're cold calling, and rejection is.
The meaning every day, right, every hour?
Yes, So you need to become used to that.
Understand it's might not be a no now, but it's just a no right now.
You have to be resilient.
And I know you've talked a lot about that concept, John, talk about the importance of being resilient as a salesperson as it relates to rejection.
Well, I think in those roles, the more at that you have, the more times you're going to fail. Sales is about pipeline, and pipeline in the very essence is you're not going to get all that pipeline. So some of that pipeline is going to fail. And let's just put it in perspective, like I always like to think about Ted Williams. Sorry about these sports analogies, but I think this one. I think this one really hits home
from a percentage standpoint. When you think about this, Ted Williams is considered to be the greatest hitter of all time, and he's got a lifetime batting average of three forty four, the highest of any baseball player that ever played. Three
forty four. So if you know something about averages, it means if you hit three hundred for a lifetime, you're guaranteed to be in the Hall of Fame based upon that, right, Well, what that always meant to me is that you got to understand that you're going to fail seven times out of ten means you hit the ball three times out of ten. There's three hundred. You're going to fail seven times out of ten. But in this you're still considered the greatest of all time. Okay, so I got to
get my mind right. The greatest of all time fails seven times out of ten and it's successful three times out of ten. So what does that mean. It means that I have to try to get as many bats as I can get. I have to get the biggest pipeline that I can get, And that analogy has always worked for me. It's the people that don't have any pipeline or that don't have any other at bats. They get in at bat and they fail, and they don't look at it as kind of like a three out
of ten thing. They look at as a one out of one thing. And I failed, and I got up again, and I failed again and I got up again. Well, you're probably going to do that seven times, but if you don't get ten at bats, you're not going to add three hundred. And so it's always about pipeline. I just want to encourage people. You know, when your bosses are telling you about building pipeline and doing PG days and doing activity days and making it all about activity.
The reason why they're doing that is because it's the natural. It's the law of nature in sale else. That's why we call it pipeline. There's a pipeline. There's a line of opportunities they are feeding in a funnel, which means not all of them come through this funnel successfully, so you have to have more in the pipeline. And so anyways, I think that that's just if you think about your life that way as a seller and you're hitting three hundred,
that's pretty dog gone good. You're going to the Hall of Fame. It means you're also going to not be successful seven out of ten times. So it's just perspective.
Yeah, that's a great perspective.
When you were saying that Ted Williams stuff, I was thinking about Roger Federer, the tennis player, and his commencement speech where he talked about, you know, he's like one of the greatest tennis players in all time. Obviously, I think they say he won eighty percent of the matches he played, but in that speech he said he only won fifty four percent of the points in his matches.
That's it. You should link that somehow. That's one of my favorite I didn't see that until about a year ago. I think it's a wonderful explanation of what we're talking about.
Yeah, yeah, great perspective on You are going to get rejection, You're going to mess up, right, It's all about what you do next that matters. John, you gave us some great takeaways here. Do you have another bottom line or are we dropping the mic with that?
Well? I think just the summary, okay, summary for me is maybe just reframe the word rejection for me is not a final point. It's a hurdle. Rejection or a hurdle or an obstacle is probably the right word if you reframe that and then realize that we are in a business through activity, which includes pipeline, and the reason why we have that is because we are going to
fail more often than we are going to win. But that's not a problem because we can still make it in the Hall of Fame if we win three out of ten times. And I don't know what the number is the pipeline, that's pretty good one like you have to have three to four times the amount of pipeline in order to be successful in order to hit your number.
It's not one for one on pipeline. And rejection doesn't mean no, it could just mean not now, it could just mean there's an obstacle, something standing in your way, so just be present find out what it is. But we are in the business of rejection, and really business kind of starts when the obstacle gets put up, and that's really just kind of the law of the land.
That's why they pay you so much, right, that's how you earn your buddy.
That's right.
Thank you, John, You're welcome.
Go get them, and thank you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast.
At Force Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Are proven methodologies, deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth of your teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our strength is our experience. The proof is in our results. Let's get started. Visit us at forestmanagement dot com.
You've been listening to the Audible Ready podcast. To not miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Until next time.