Embracing Rejection: The Power of Asking and Listening in Sales

As humans, we naturally fear rejection and do everything possible to avoid it. We’re social creatures at our core, and being rejected feels like we’re being shunned, banished, or kicked out of the group. In fact, the two biggest human fears are rejection and death—and as strange as this may sound, in our hearts we fear rejection more than we fear death. This, by the way, is a huge problem in sales because, as a sales professional, it’s your job to go out into the world, find rejection, and bring it home. And even though objections are not really rejection, it can still feel that way. It’s the fear of rejection that makes selling so difficult for most people—and why most people will never do your job. Sales is such a lucrative career choice simply because it’s a rejection-dense job. Companies are willing to pay big bucks to rainmakers who can control their emotions, face rejection head-on, and find a way to win. Ask and You Shall Receive The good news is that if you fear rejection and want to avoid it at all costs, the easiest way to do so is to never ask for anything. Of course, if you don’t ask, you won’t get. You might steer clear of the pain of rejection for a while, but sooner or later it’ll catch up with you when you find yourself unable to provide for your family, missing your mortgage payment, or stuck in a dead-end job. These things, I’ve found, hurt far worse over the long run than rejection. There’s a verse in the Christian Bible, Matthew 7:7, that goes, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Now, I recognize that Jesus isn’t talking about sales in this verse, but he could be. You’ll often hear it expressed as, “Ask and you shall receive.” If you think about that for a moment, you’ll notice that asking comes before receiving. In other words, asking is the beginning of receiving. If you want something, you have to ask first. Ditch Your Wishbone Far too often, we become rain barrels. We sit and wait. We hesitate and hope. We wish our prospect or customer would do the job for us, but they don’t—because it doesn’t work that way. If you want to sell more and earn more, you need to ditch your wishbone and grow a backbone. It’s up to you to ask. Asking is the beginning of receiving, so you won’t get the appointment, the next step, the information, access to the decision-maker, or a buying commitment unless you ask. And the truth is, on the other side of asking, there’s always the potential for objections and rejection. There’s always the chance you won’t get what you asked for. That’s just how asking works. The Hardest Part of Asking: Learning to Shut Up This is why the hardest part of asking is learning how to shut up afterward. You need to allow space for silence to do its work and for objections or questions to be put on the table. It’s hard to shut up when you’ve put it all out there and left yourself vulnerable to rejection. That awkward moment after you ask can feel like an eternity as you brace for a “no.” To protect yourself from hearing a rejection, you might start talking, and talking, and talking—deluding yourself into believing that as long as you keep talking, your prospect can’t reject you. The problem is, in that moment of emotional weakness, you come across as insecure and untrustworthy. You introduce objections that didn’t previously exist. You start blabbing on and on about features and benefits, terms and conditions, your dog, or what you had for lunch—until your stakeholder, who was ready to say yes, gets talked into saying no by you. Your insecurity in that moment of vulnerability invited rejection. Why Silence Is Your Secret Weapon Here’s the most important rule of asking: After you ask, you must shut up. Despite the alarm bells going off in your adrenaline-soaked mind—despite your pounding heart, sweaty palms, and fear—you have to bite your tongue, sit on your hands, mute the phone,