The word no

Many people in our industry wonder how best to deal with rejection. Many times they feel frustrated when they don’t see the fruits of their labors. Let’s take a closer look at the word no.

You call a friend and ask him to go out for lunch with you and he says, “No.” Has she rejected YOU or has she rejected your OFFER? What has changed in your life? Did you have someone to go out to eat with before you called him? No. Do you have someone to go out to eat with after you called her? No. Absolutely nothing in your life has changed.

What is your reaction to your friend saying no going to be? Are you going to cry? Are you going to not eat? Are you never going to talk to him again? Of course not! You know your friend didn’t reject you – he rejected the offer to go out for lunch.

This example is so obvious to everyone, and most people even chuckle when they hear it. Everyone knows it’s true – nothing has changed in their life and their friend was rejecting the offer.

But it seems to be difficult for many of us to pick up the phone and make business calls and hear no, no, no, no, no, no, and no. We start personalizing it. We start feeling rejected. We start feeling like failures. It’s sometimes hard to remember they haven’t rejected us – they are rejecting what we are offering them.

The issue is – how can we change it? How can we change our thinking around hearing no when we are doing business calls? Might I suggest that instead of fearing the no you welcome it? You do that by purposely looking for no - collecting them if you will. Yes, that’s right – collect no’s. When you need to get on the phone, what would happen to your business if you collected no’s? Could you collect 2, 3, 5. or even 10 no’s? In other words, you’re going to make calls until you hear your magic number of no’s. So if you decide to collect 5 no’s you’re going to be calling people to talk to you about your business, or try a new product and you’re going to stop when 5 people have said no to you. What will happen is, along the way you are also going to be hearing yes.

What would happen in your business if you did this for a week, two weeks, or even for a month? You would have all the recruits and sales you want.