Handling Rejection Like a Pro

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning of Selling Podcast. I'm Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems and together we launched Franchise Sales Pro with the commitment to work with franchise owners and franchisees to drive sales and boost revenue. Rejection sucks. At least that's how I've always seen it. But others that I've worked with don't seem to get affected by it.

0:28 As a matter of fact it seems to light a fire under them. So what's the difference in our responses and how can we all get better at dealing with rejection? Grab your smiley face buttons, a Scott and I wrestle with handling rejection like a pro and other particular pecadillos on episode 689 of the Winning at Selling Podcast. Some days I need more than just a smiley face button. I don't think I get over rejection. But look up for that topic.

1:00 But before we dive into the book, a Lightning Strategy with Sales by Frank Sespades, we're going to cover chapters 4 and 5. We'd like to share an announcement. This is for our local Minneapolis St. Paul Metro listeners and Scott and I want to invite you to a brand new sales program. It's going to be an eight session class meeting every other week. We're going to start in January. So to kick things off, we're holding a special preview on Thursday, October 16th over lunch at the Better Business Bureau offices in Burnsville, Minnesota.

1:31 Closs is just $10 and you're going to walk away with some valuable skills that you can start using right away. You're going to find out about the program we're going to put together in January. And then you'll also meet some great people, some other people in the area that are in sales that you may want to know. So to learn more to go to mnsales.com, there's a banner for the Keystone Club Class, mnsales.com, Keystone Club Class.

1:58 And we'll hope you join us in just about a week from now on October 16th for this executive briefing. And we'll look forward to seeing you there. In our book, A Lining Strategy with Sales by Frank Sespides, we're going to cover chapter four and five. This is part two of the book and chapter four is the goal of strategy. And I think first we need to be able to define strategy. So strategy is the fundamental movement of an organization from its present position to a desirable but uninheritantly uncertain future position.

2:30 The path from here to there is both analytical, for example, reassessing the value proposition and behavioral, which is reviewing the sales activities. And it also includes which customers we will serve and not serve and what services we will provide and not provide and what activities will we not invest in. But I think first before we talk about strategy, we really need to build a lay down the definition of it. Bill, what do you think of that definition? Anything you would add or change or?

3:02 No, I think that for a lot of our salespeople, they don't think in strategic ways. They let that up to other people and they're kind of in the firing off mode. But if you don't understand the strategy, you don't really know what behaviors are going to pay off the most to build the strategy. We deal with this with the issue between marketing and sales. Marketing has a particular strategy they're trying to follow on sales. Sometimes it doesn't understand it.

3:29 So they don't align themselves with it. So the strategy is coming down, marketing is driving some of the strategy and the salespeople act like, well, if we can ignore this long enough, I'll just go back to doing what I always do. Well, they blink. It's like any edict coming down from on high and not wait them. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk a little bit about what salespeople focus on when it comes to strategy. And sometimes they kind of work like water and choose the path of least resistance.

4:00 And it always water always adapts to the environment, which is a complement of water sometimes. Well, the challenge I think to Scott is that as salespeople, we have certain things that we've been doing and we have kind of a process. And then strategy comes down and says, change your whole process and do it in 60 seconds. Oh, yeah. You know, the strategy has been working with this for months. The leadership's been working with this for a long time. We talked about that in the last show.

4:25 And now all of a sudden we're supposed to jump to and change our whole mindset in 30 seconds. So I think that leadership has to understand that change takes time. Mm-hmm. It doesn't end reinforcements and coaching and adoption. There's a lot of things that go into change. It's not very easy. We all strive to a level of complacency and then we try to protect it so that we don't have to go through change. And that's where a lot of bad habits can start when we become complacent.

4:57 Well, I'm getting you ahead though. I'm getting you ahead. That's my fault. We're going to stick with what is strategy. So it's kind of back to what is strategy. And I think some things that really contribute a lot is what is your unique selling proposition and who is your ideal customer profile? Or your ideal targeted customer that you want to go after? And ask yourself, what are you really building on when you align your selling proposition and your customer?

5:21 And how your product is the best solution for them? And if this is undefined, it's going to make it really difficult to decide what customers you're going to serve and not serve. What services you're going to offer and not offer. Right. And like we've talked about in the last show, sometimes when we get desperate, we end up taking business that's not a good fit for it. And it ends up costing us more time and money and anxiety for a paycheck that we wish we would have focused more on our ideal customer profile stuff that people love to buy from us.

5:49 Right. So the strategy should help us to avoid wasteful activities and get ourselves focused on the most profitable activities. I hope that leadership is thinking of those when they're thinking about that strategy should be. Yeah. Yeah. And I have five questions that I think everybody in the sales channel, the sales department needs to ask themselves. So strategy must follow and answer these five questions. So what strategic goals will be delivered in customer value in exchange for the company's financial value?

6:23 And the next chapter, and I'll bring it up here because I think it's a little bit more relevant. Do we sell for more or do we make it for less? And there's two different directions that a company can go when it comes to that customer value in exchange for that financial value that the manager actually has. Well, I think there's also that question of are we going to be a market leader with new developments and new processes?

6:48 Or are we going to be a market follower who takes ideas that other people have come up with and do them cheaper? Right. What's that strategy going to be? That's a big part of it. I always think of Bose headphones. Bose is always on the cutting edge and then something like, you know, electrify or whatever, some other headphone brand. They just, you know, they copy it and say, okay, we can kind of do it, but we'll do it cheaper.

7:11 Well, the sell it for cheaper too. Well, that's right. Yeah. And who knows if they'll make it for cheaper? Not most likely. They probably will make it for cheaper. Well, we know that making things cheaper has a cost. It really does. And it doesn't really always reflect what the better one's value is. So, okay, good. And the book also talks about some of the pitfalls of trying to sell it for more. And you got to really maintain a higher level of expectations when you sell it for more.

7:39 And you have to be consistent in that. And I think sometimes this is where some private equity comes in and they buy a company that offers a tremendous value. They redirect it and they try to get as much money out of it, cashing in on that reputation that they have in the marketplace. And that strategy too. That's part of an exit strategy. So, let's move on to the second question. Is where will we play and where will we not play?

8:05 Who is that ideal customer profile? What industries do we really want to focus on and own? Hopefully, there's one industry that we own and we've got some ancillary ones that are kind of overlap a little bit. But where will we play and not play? And this is a very difficult challenge sometimes because what do we hear when we ask somebody, you know, who's an ideal customer profile? Where they say, oh, I sell to everybody. No, you don't. You don't sell to everybody. You have to define a niche in order to have the best value.

8:33 Well, like I've always said that my customer is someone who believes that they're people are the most important asset that they're company. If they believe it's the systems or they believe it's their computer system or they believe it's their stores that are the most highest value, they're not going to invest in the people. So, I don't try to play with people who don't like their own team. Basically, or don't trust them or don't think that they're valued.

8:57 Right. Yeah. Number three is how will we win in a chosen segment? What will cause us not to be successful? I think getting into different associations and different groups and different industries. We cannot discount the people that have the greatest influence in that industry. And we need to build a recognize them, ask them for advice on things that we can do and really learn from those conversations from the people that have been there within that marketplace.

9:26 How can we win in the chosen segment? You and I have talked with companies about fulfilling a proposal for services. And the question that we ask is what does it take to win this? What are you really truly looking for in order for us to win on this project? And hopefully our prospect will be transparent and share information with us as to how we can leverage that and give it back to them what they're telling us. Because they might be just testing us going, can they do it or not? And if they're going to share it with us, are they going to share it with us with confidence?

9:55 Number four is what capabilities must be in place to win? How will we obtain them? What are going to be some of the resources that we need? What are some of the skills that we're going to have to develop? What are some of the areas that we're going to have to be able to put out there to increase our awareness so that people recognize the brand and deal with some of the questions that somebody has in the marketplace. A prospect may say, how come I've never heard of you? Well, I don't know why you haven't heard of that.

10:25 They've said what you heard, what do you like? Or what are you looking for? But it's like they find so much value in the question, how come I've never heard of you? Well, sometimes we're the best kept secret and we really target our message to the best qualified prospect. And today you're it. So can we talk about what would be most beneficial and advantageous for you when it comes to working with companies like us and the services that we provide?

10:49 Wonderful. I always think that it's important to be able to uncover and define the expectations that somebody has in a conversation. So number five is what performance management systems are required and how will we measure and manage the progress? We've talked about this in a few episodes before. What gets measured gets managed. If we can't measure it, we really can't manage it. And it makes it very difficult for us to change and approve it and adapt accordingly.

11:15 And I think that sometimes sales managers just want to, again, themselves keep managing to the same old things that they've done. So changing strategies means changing that performance management. Exactly. Moving on to chapter five, making and articulating strategic choices. So I've just broken this down into three topics on it. So are you reevaluating your strategy periodically? You will need to ask yourself, are the sales people selling, but are they selling across the product lines?

11:45 The way the strategy and the market realities require. If this is the case, you need to review your objectives. Very powerful. We have behaviors. We have objectives and we have results. So are we selling across all product lines? The way the strategy is designed? Or are we taking the ones that and directing our prospects to the products and services that are the cheapest, that are easiest to sell? And have the shortest sales cycle giving us revenue and in a commission sooner than later.

12:17 But that's all part of a compensation plan when it comes to strategy too. Yeah. I think that we have to also look at, are we changing the training? Are we training them to sell to new people with new ideas? Are we just assuming that they'll pick up the information and figure out how to sell to it? We're all creatures of habits. We like to do things that we're familiar with. When we change the strategy, we need to give people a new idea how to do it.

12:43 That workshop that we did a couple of weeks ago was specifically because the company was changing its strategy from something that was let's get all the revenue we can to let's start looking for good revenue where we're going to make money on it. And that's a big, I mean, when we had these conversations with the team, that was a big change for them. We can say no to a request that we know we're not going to win. Yes, we don't need to do all the quote and all the work for it. If we look at it, I mean, people have had 20 years of experience looking at quotes and you've got to have some feeling for whether it's going to be worth it or not.

13:19 Yeah, exactly. Number two is, are salespeople selling, but are they allocating their time and efforts to the right activities and the right proportions? Perhaps their activities need to be reconsidered. This is the question when some people are talking to a prospect. What is the goal of the conversation? When you achieve the goal, move on to the next step. Too often, I see salespeople staying in one step of the sales process when they've reached the goal, now they need to continue.

13:48 Right. We keep going discover, even though we've discovered everything we need to go. Yeah. Yeah. So let's get started going to the next step. Three things and move on. Right. But you know, the right proportions. Number three is, are salespeople selling, but do they have the skills, capability and motivation to sell on criteria other than price? Then additional training and reinforcement is going to be needed and prescribed and reinforced to be able to bring those skills and bring those capabilities up to selling on a criteria other than price. And too often we see it.

14:20 Yeah. All that training has to be part of the strategy. Otherwise, you just waste your time. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the chapters four and five. All right. The book. And before we move on to your topic, though, I'd like to share another announcement. Hiring a sales rep can be a daunting proposition. Some sales leaders put up with underperforming salespeople because they are afraid of the hiring risk. So what is the reasons that the process goes so badly? According to a number of studies, there are three main reasons why new sales reps fail. First is there's the misalignment of expectations.

14:55 Some people hope that selling will be easy and when they have the prospect and they face rejection, they end up caving in right away and they don't proceed with that sales process. Second is they fail to fill the funnel. This often happens when a salesperson believes that they will close at a higher percentage rate so that they'll need less prospects. Not sure if that's the right methodology. And third and finally, they're inconsistent on follow up, meaning that they give up too early and when they leave a message and don't follow up afterwards.

15:27 And then they start to hesitate when it comes to prospecting and starting new conversations. So wouldn't it be nice to know that when you're hiring a person, you're hiring them with passions and persistence and they can accomplish the sales process? So when you're using an assessment, you can measure a candidate's core competencies that have shown up in predictable past sales performance. And the William Selling Podcast has partnered with a group whose sales person's assessments will be measuring those competencies that are essential in establishing and reinforcing success.

16:01 So to learn more about the assessment, go to mnsales.com slash offer and that's going to be a page where we're going to start offering more services to our listeners. So mnsales.com slash offer. All right. Thanks for that notes, Scott. I think that's really important. We hear often so often. What can I do with the salesperson that's not able to work, you know, to have character flaws, as I call them? It's hard to train character and you can train competencies, but it's really hard to train character. Somebody is, you know, when they're 33 years old and they come into your office, they are what they are.

16:40 They can learn about your product. They can learn a new process, but they're not going to learn how to work. If they don't know how to work, something's going to have to a friend of mine once said that motivation begins when you're backbone and your stomach say hello. So hungry enough, maybe learn to work. Listen, if you're working sales though, and as Scott mentioned, that rejection, that inability to take rejection, that misaligned expectations rejection is part of the job, whether it's prospecting, whether they ghost your emails, they know show it a demo.

17:13 You hear we're going to go with another vendor. I mean, there's a lot of ways to get rejected in the sales trade, and it's just it's just always hanging over us. So, but here's the truth. Real top salespeople, they aren't immune to rejection. They just handle it better than the rest of us. You know, if I get rejected and it takes me five days to overcome it, that's five days lost, right? I can't. I'm going to feel bad at times, but the good ones get up and they get going. And so, so what is that mental toughness that we need to develop to avoid letting it go on too long or to let it affect the next deal?

17:54 It's all about how we respond and rejections either going to deflate you or it's going to define you. So let's explore how to build some mental muscle and going to separate the pros from the also rans, right? There's a lot of mediocre salespeople out there. A lot of them are kind of going through those. A lot of really crappy ones that top 10% is tough to get into. And so we all have these weaknesses. So here's number one, reframe rejection. It's not personal.

18:26 You know, you got to change how you interpret it. It often feels personal. I had a sales leader. I once heard he said, he said, you know, you go to a restaurant and the waitress, you get some french fries and the waitress says, do you want ketchup? And you say, no, I don't want ketchup. She doesn't go into the back room and cry that you didn't want ketchup. So when they say, I don't want what you're selling. I don't want to talk to you right now. I don't want to answer your email. I'm not going to go any further with this. It's not about you.

19:03 It's budget. It's whatever. Think about the people that rejected you last week. Do you know who they are? Think about the people that you rejected last week. Do you know who they are? The sting is right now. Don't let it go on forever. Sometimes also another thing is we have to remember the winds instead of thinking about the losses all the time. And so do you have a file where you put in the cards that a customer sent you? Do you send out the do you print out that email and put it somewhere that says, hey, Bill, you did a great job. I really enjoyed working with you.

19:40 I got your really terrific. It's easy for us to focus on the negative. Any other thoughts on that? Oh, I totally agree with you. Having that file with all those kind letters and notes that you received. I'm grateful for my testimonial videos. Thank you for everybody that has said something nice about a program I did in a testimonial video because when I watch my own testimonial videos, I feel better. That's what we need. All right. Number two, develop a short memory, but long vision. So you've got to move on quickly. That's kind of what I was talking about that five days thing. Right? Now, there's, I don't think you can ignore rejection and just say, all that happens or he's a dirty SOB, right? Sometimes you're rejected because you do something wrong or you hit the wrong steps in the process or you didn't go through the process. So there's nothing wrong with going back and looking at what happened. Why we lost.

20:30 I wouldn't look at every phone call I made, but if I've gone through part, almost all the way through a sales process to a proposal and they said, no, I would start to examine what happened with that deal. Why did we lose the deal? Right? Oh, so powerful. De-briefing, always asking yourself after a situation like that. My question is, dear Lord, what am I to learn from this? And when you ask that question and you're open to the different possibilities, it's amazing what comes to mind.

20:57 Pick out one or two things. Don't try and look at the whole mess that you made of it. Did I not call back soon enough? Did I call back too many times? What do I think I did and then change your behavior to say, okay, this might be a better way to behave. I need to learn from this book. So once you've thought about that, move on. Don't dwell on it. And I think that's what's good about the debrief is it gives you a time to say, okay, this is over.

21:20 I'm moving on. I've got my lesson. Now I'm moving on. So, all right, number three, build daily resilience habits. And I think this is one of the problems with most salespeople, especially with phone call rejection. They do it once every three weeks. They never get good enough at it to develop a thick skin and a process to go through that. So what are some things you can do to kind of get your mind right? It's such a mind game, isn't it, Scott? It's such a mind game.

21:51 We're going to have in a few weeks a friend of mine, a friend of ours, Paul Banke, who's going to talk about procrastination and other things people do to fail. Salespeople do to fail. So failing is part of it. So a couple of ideas, a morning mindset reset. How do you start your morning? Do you wake up slow? It's going to be a terrible day. Or do you pop out of bed and have an intention? Where am I going to start? What am I going to do that's positive to start my day?

22:19 What is your daily wins list? I like making a list because when I made a list, then I know what I checked off and did. And everything I checked off is a win. So that's good. Physical movement, don't get caught in your chair too long. We're doing a lot more stuff online. I like my watch beeps at 10 minutes till I get up. I do a little bit of exercise, a little bit of stretching. Reminds me, don't sit on my butt too long doing nothing.

22:45 And then what are your recovery rituals? If you have a bad deal, bad loss, what do you do to recover and put that line? So as Scott mentioned, that debrief is something that you can do to put that line in the sand. When I was in retail, we had a scream room. So you had a bad customer. We had a little alcove out the back door where it was kind of for winter. You know, had two doors on it and a little four by four square that you could walk out of.

23:09 That was our scream room. We had a really particularly bad deal. Go just go back there and scream and get it out. So you don't take it out on the next customer. You can't let it go to the next customer. So thoughts? In the restaurant business, we call that the walk-in freezer or the walk-in cooler. Depending on how bad your shift is, if it's real bad, go into the freezer and start throwing some boxes around yelling. And you're going to probably be in there for about seven seconds and go, okay, I'm done. Let's get back on the floor again.

23:35 I got it out. Let's move on, right? All right. Number four, use rejection as a diagnostic tool. I think we covered this a little bit in the debrief. Every nose, an opportunity to gather intelligence. I think every nose is also an opportunity to gather a little bit of resilience, a little bit of grit. I'm reading the book grit right now. So that's on my mind, right? But I think also in addition to us looking at what went wrong in a big deal, let's go back to that prospect. If they're willing to talk to us and just say, can you tell me what led to your decision? What could we have done better with our offer or approach?

24:12 Is there anything that we could have done differently to win this deal? So they won't always give you that opportunity because sometimes they're more afraid of rejection than you are. But if you can, having that conversation is good. Yeah, man, but you have to ask. Yeah, and again, I think I say those people sometimes, I want to put that in the past. Well, you can't learn from it if you just put it in the past too fast.

24:35 All right, number five, stay detached, but not disengaged. So what's the difference of being detached? I can't get emotional about everything that happens, but I can stay engaged. I can do everything I can to serve them, to follow my process, to do what's right. And sometimes I do everything right and I still lose the deal. Maybe I'm not, well, maybe they're a price customer and I'm not a price company. Well, I'm going to lose that. Maybe to somebody who just wants the cheapest thing out there. They don't care about quality. Well, then, you know, we've talked to many people that don't care about any value proposition.

25:12 Some some key signs of detachment. You're not afraid to walk away when the fit isn't right. Right. So if it's not ours, if you win a customer who doesn't value what you value, you just hired a mess. So if you're honest about what you were offering and your solution still didn't fit, you know, that's a good time to walk away. And then you don't have to chase everybody. You have to develop some chops. I've been thinking over the weekend. I need to develop more coolness. I'm 67 years old. I'm not a baby anymore. Right.

25:48 Develop, develop an attitude that you know who you are and you're confident who you are and take me or leave me. This is what you're going to get. And you got to be cool about that. And it's kind of like, you know, you're the, I'm the elder statesman now, Scott. You are. Right. So, so stay cool about that. Yeah. Yeah. I think this reinforces what we talked about in the book is what is your unique selling proposition? What is your ideal customer profile? And, you know, why do they buy from you?

26:16 And when the strategy and the activities align, wow, amazing. You know, you got to got a rocket there. That's right. That's right. It's amazing how things align. Our books aligning with our conversation. Right. Number six, the final one, rejection is part of the price of entry. That's what we, we have taken on. If you're going to go and sales, this is why when you ask the people who are mad at you that are in, you know, delivery and they say, well, those sales people get paid a lot more than we do.

26:44 And then I ask them, well, do you want to go out and do what the sales person has? Do you want to make 20 phone calls every day? Do you want to go meet people who don't know you and sometimes tell you know, well, I don't want to do all that. That is what we're paid for. We're paid to take rejection and keep moving because otherwise we're going to stop. And if you're just waiting for the phone to ring, you know, if you've got 90% close rate, you're not trying hard enough.

27:12 Right. Well, maybe your prices are too low, right? You found that out with a client. They were having a 70, 80% close rate and they decided, Oh, heck, we're selling it for less than cost. Right. So you don't become great by avoiding rejection. You become great because of this. You can't take a no or a yes that push you off of your plane. I'm positive all the time. No. Okay, good. Great. You want to buy it. Great. Let's move on. It's the same. It's a your wavelength is not moving whether it's a no or a yes too high. If your yeses are too high, then your nose are going to be too low.

27:50 Wow. Good point. So it's what we have. All right. So here's my thought. Mantle toughness is a choice. You've got to get back on that horse and start riding again. You can't just say this is going to kill me for the rest of the day. And I'm going to do. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do executive tasks. Rejection is part of it. If you're not taking enough rejection, you're sitting and waiting for somebody to call and waiting for the easy one. So get out there. Get focus and be tougher than ever.

28:21 Wow. Great advice. Great direction, Bill. Let's not forget our resources, our new offer with a great assessment tool. Go to mnsales.com slash offers. Our golden nugget today is success is walking from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. Winnie. Winston Churchill. I love that. That's a great quote. And that really ties into what we're talking about. Failure to failure without with no loss of enthusiasm. You know, the best sales people in the world have just failed more often than you and I have. True. Yeah. I've got to be willing to fail.

28:57 For all the information, all the show notes, the links to mnsales.offer and to the Keystone Club are all on winning at selling.com. So you can find and click on there. This is episode 689. Next week, we're going to have a guest, Bob Frightag is going to be talking about launching best practices. What do you mean by launching Scott? Launching is a lot different than releasing. I think releasing is a little passive. And after knowing Bob for as many years as I do, I know that's going to be a fun conversation.

29:32 And after you listen to it, you're going to know the difference between releasing and launching. The launch is like launching a new product or launching a new idea. So when we're talking about strategy, you have to know how to launch a strategy, right? Exactly. So timing is just perfect. And then after that, we're going to be covering chapter six in the book. So you got two weeks to read chapter six. So please subscribe and show this podcast with your colleagues and on your social media networks.

29:56 We'd be grateful for a five star review and post a favorable comment. If not favorable, please tell us directly. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.