Brendan Burchard gives great advice in this blog post about rejection. He basically says that for every person who really rejects you there are hundreds and even thousands who don’t reject you. He is one hundred percent accurate in what he says. The problem is that though he is right and most people will agree with his point, my hunch is that it will not have a very big effect on people’s behavior. The reason is that fear of rejection is an emotional response and you cannot overcome an emotion with a logical argument. If you don’t believe me just try to talk your spouse out of being mad at you by giving her/him three logical reasons why they should not be upset. I made a similar argument to Brendan’s in my blog post last year. Both appeal to logic. But the only way to actually overcome the fear of rejection is to face the fear and really deal with the issue. The reason rejection is so difficult to deal with is that rejection is a primal fear related to an “abandonment fear” developed in early childhood. How to address it and overcome it is too complex to deal with in this blog post but it will be the subject of an upcoming white paper.
Archives for April 2014
The Mathematics of Rejection
Avoid eye contact with the prospect
An optimal salesperson does not look a prospect straight in the eye. What? Not look the prospect straight in the eye? Doesn’t that send all kinds of bad signals? Of course, eye to eye contact is essential for building trust and generating sales. However, there are certain situations when eye-to-eye contact could be bad as a sales technique. It is at those moments when you should not look the prospect in the eye. For example, if you know you are going to ask a question that will be difficult for the prospect to answer, looking him or her straight in the eye can put more pressure on them and even intimidate them. By looking elsewhere when you ask the prospect a challenging question, you are basically saying – “Hey, I know this question is difficult. I’m respecting your struggle with it and I’m reducing the pressure on you.” You can actually be helping your prospect feel more at ease and that is good when you are seeking to close the deal.
