Cold Calling - Fear of Rejection

“A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success”. Bo Bennett

The main obstacle to making sales calls for oneself is fear. Fear of rejection. From the first school disco onwards, the thought of being left out and not wanted haunts all but the most self-assured amongst us. Do you remember how the school dances started? All the boys on one side of the hall, looking at their shoes or watches; all the girls on the other pretending not to look. Every one too scared to make the first move, for fear of being rejected.

It is exactly this fear that drives you away from the telephone and to clean behind the office fridge, (or whatever your favourite displacement activity is). It is not an easy thing to overcome. So how can we change how you look at rejection? How can we make it a good thing?

Bo Bennett has the right idea. Given that you cannot hope to make a hundred appointments from a hundred calls, you are going to have to accept more than a few rejections along the way. Turn it around, look at every rejection as one step nearer your goal. In the office, we have a game where you can’t have a cup of tea until you have had 5 rejections. By the time you get to the fifth ‘no’, you are delighted, as you can put the kettle on! It may sound trite, but it works. The way we build up relationships as we call makes it actually quite difficult to get an outright ‘no’, so 5 ‘no’s can be quite a challenge.

Nothing will have changed about the rejection, except the way you look at it. Perspective is everything. Yes, there will be times when people can be very rude, or even abusive, and it is hard not to take this personally. However horrible the person is, thank them politely for their time, hang up, take a deep breath and go and put the kettle on. You’ve earned it.