Anyone who has worked in sales will have encountered a manager who tries to drill in the message to you that the word ‘fail’ does not exist in a sales environment. They will state that as soon as you start introducing even very minor negative terms into sales processes, then you are not cut out to be in sales. Sales people CANNOT fail.

Well, actually, yes they can. If the above was true, then everyone would have hundreds of mobile phones, hundreds of credit cards and their houses would be built solely of double-glazing. It is a fact of life; people fail at things and the sales environment mimics this.
How you handle the failure and rejection is what determines you. In life, if you cannot do something you either do it until you can do it or you do something else. Again, the sales environment mimics this.

The easiest way to handle rejection is to accept early on that it is going to happen at some point, realise why it has happened and learn from it to reduce the chance of it happening again.

Another thing to realise about rejection is that it happens for many reasons; many of them are nothing to do with you. If you are a double-glazing sales person, there is no way you can sell to someone who is in rented housing. Factors such as the customer, the situation and the timing (amongst others) are all crucial and all pose their own different types of rejection. Sometimes there is nothing you can do but leave the customer on friendly terms and, in a best case scenario, with your details in case the reason you were rejected disappears and the customer would suddenly need what you are selling.

If you are in sales, are getting the rejections and taking it personally to a point where it is genuinely making you sad, sales is not for you. It is not for you in the same way that being a professional cage-fighter is not for most models. Instead of seeing it as failing in sales, see it as a narrowing of the scope for your career.

Recognising early on that failure is a natural part of life is the easiest way to plan for how to overcome it. Once you master the art of quickly overcoming any rejections that may sit in your path, sales will become a natural process and at the end of the day you will have the results to show for all of the hard work you have put in to not only selling what it is you sell, but overcoming the rejections which go hand-in-hand with what it is you sell.

Jenna James shares her interest on employment rejection on behalf of MTD Sales Training