The Ugly Truth About Sales Rejection

I want to talk to you about the brutal honesty about rejection, the ugly truth about rejection. Especially when it comes to growing your coaching business.

And before I do, I want to tell you this all stems from the other day when I cooked dinner for my two boys. I have two teenage boys and I cooked dinner and…. I made this cheesecake!

For those of you who know me, I cycle on and off on the ketogenic diet, a couple of weeks on a couple of weeks off.  And so I made this ketogenic cheesecake, and I was super, super proud of it. It was one of my prouder moments in the kitchen

…and it was delicious by the way.

So we’re sitting at the table, and my boys hadn’t seen this cheesecake yet.

We finished dinner and I brought out this cheesecake and I was like….voila!

….and they looked at me like, where did this come from? I said, I made it. And they asked, “Oh, you made it?”

I responded “Yeah… I made it. what’s the matter with that??”

I quickly realized that was a unique type of rejection.  And I began to ask myself why that type of rejection feels different.  And so I started to think about, of course YOU…and what that might mean to you as you are out there selling your coaching program.

And it’s amazing how much this type of rejection is also part of our sales process when we’re selling our coaching services.

First and foremost, If you fear rejection in your sales process….

I want you to own that.

I want you to acknowledge that and say it.

“I have a fear of rejection in sales.”

There’s nothing wrong with saying out loud.

As a matter of fact, it’s good that you own it because once you own it, you can come to understand the reason you’re not selling.

Then you can come to grips with the idea that the reason why you’re not converting discovery calls into more coaching clients, isn’t because you’re no good at it. 

It Isn’t because you’re just not born to sell.  

It isn’t because it’s just not your DNA.

It’s because you have a fear of rejection. Right. And the good news is we can get passed that!

I want you to think about it this way….

Imagine that I’m sitting down with my boys.  And instead of asking if they want some cheesecake that I made…I ask them if they want any salt…if they want me to pass them the salt shaker. 

So what if I said, Hey, you guys need some salt…and they replied “no thanks”.

How would I feel then?

Would I have felt bad?

Not likely. 

Or what about a different scenario….

Imagine you’re driving down the road and you see someone you know…

…maybe a good friend walking down the side of the road… and you pull over and say…

“Hey, do you need a ride?”  And they say…

“Nope, I’m just not getting some exercise. Thank you”.

Would you feel bad about it?

Would you feel bad because they rejected your offer for ride?

No, of course not.

So what’s the difference between a salt shaker rejection, a ride rejection… and that cheese cake rejection?

The difference is that I made the cheesecake…we created it.

When, when you’re coaching, your selling a piece of yourself, right.

You developed a coaching business. It’s your expertise. It’s your skillset.

So when someone says they don’t want it right on some level, you probably think that they don’t want YOU. Right?

On an other than conscious level, we can make these things about ourselves. Right?

When we ask someone if they want salt, it is obvious…they just don’t need that right now.

If we offer someone a ride and they say no, we know it’s not about us. It’s about them and what they’re ready for right now.  If they don’t want it, they’re just going to tell us no.

But when it comes to something that we’ve created, we tend to internalize that and we make it about us.

And that is the ugly truth about the fear of rejection.

The good news is you can get over that…rather quickly.

You CAN get over it.

How? You have to make sure that you don’t turn that switch.

You make sure you don’t make it about YOU.

Separate you as a person from your product.

I want you to think of this next time you’re on a discovery call or a sales call.

When someone says no, It’s the same as them saying “no, thank you. I don’t want the salt” or…

“I don’t want to ride”

Don’t make it about yourself.

There are certain common objections, and certainly you want to understand what they’re saying about those objections and, and respond accordingly (another post forthcoming on that issue).

But remember, it’s not about you at all.

You have everything that it takes to be a good sales person.

The skills that you have as a coach are the exact same skills that you need to be good at converting discovery calls into clients.

So if fear rejection is what’s holding you back, remember it’s not about you at all.

I love to hear what you think.

What are your biggest keys to success about getting over the fear of rejection?

Do you have the fear of rejection?

Is there any questions you may have for me about how to get past the fear of rejection?

Any of those things are fair game. Leave them in the comments below.