How to Help Your Sales Team Overcome Rejection

Rejection is a part of business, especially sales. Your sales team's ability to bounce back from rejection will inevitably lead to them producing more. Here's how to help them learn to overcome rejection.

Key Takeaways: 

• Rejection is processed in the brain similarly to physical pain.
• Helping your team build resilience will help them bounce back from rejection.
• Create an environment that fosters productive failure.
• Sales is a numbers game, so teach them to play the odds in their favor.
• A sales operating system can give your sales team with scripts to overcome objections.

One of the hardest parts about sales is dealing with rejection. People who experience it actually undergo a response similar to processing physical pain on brain scans. The more emotionally invested they are, the more hearing “no” hurts. 

Thankfully, there are ways to help your sales team build resilience so they can bounce back from rejection. Here’s everything you need to know about helping your sales team improve that ability.

Why it’s important to expect rejection

Everyone would be in sales if all the leads were saying “yes” right away. The reality is that rejection is part of sales. A whopping 80% of leads require at least five follow up calls, for example, which is on par with statistics that 80% of prospects say “no” before saying yes. 

Unfortunately, 92% of salespeople quit trying after four “nos.” So it’s the fifth – not the third – time that’s the charm. By teaching your team to expect and embrace rejection, you can help them learn to persevere and close deals. 

Here are some tips to help your team build resilience so they can withstand rejections: 

Don’t take it personally

When people say “no,” it’s usually not about the sales rep but about their own needs as a consumer. There can be many reasons for rejection that have absolutely nothing to do with the salesperson, such as economic challenges or bad timing. Ensuring that your sales team understands that what happens in sales is not necessarily about them as people can help them push past rejection without hard feelings.

Set yourself up for rejection

Practice makes perfect, right? Bouncing back from rejection is a skill, meaning you’ll get better at it the more you practice it. Encourage your sales reps to do one small ask that’s likely to lead to rejection per day. It can be asking for a meeting with a public figure, requesting advice from an expert, or pitching themselves to a podcast or journalist. It might be something as simple as role playing among your team. Eventually the word “no” will become less emotionally charged, and your team learn to take it in stride.

Foster productive failure

It’s well-known that failure builds resilience because it can actually invite innovation, lead to deeper learning, and promote problem-solving skills. So can rejection. As a team, spend time digging into why something didn’t work out. What could have been done differently? What wording could they have used to explain something better? Which questions did the fail to ask? Learning to examine and question rejections can help your sales team gather the information they need to do better next time.

Play the odds in your favor

Sales is a numbers game, and helping to reinforce that notion can help reps learn to overcome rejection. Dr. Fredrick Neuman speaks to this in one article for Psychology Today about applying for jobs, advising people to play the odds. He reports that “approximately 2 percent [of those who send in a résumé] receive a response. That is not an argument for giving up. It means that even if you have been ignored, there need not be anything wrong with your résumé. It is a matter of the odds. Sending in a couple hundred résumés shifts the odds in your favor.”

The same is true in sales. Calling one person and not getting a “yes” might be disheartening, but there will be many other phone calls in which someone expresses interest in a product or service.

Have a plan in place to overcome objections

Top performers know how to overcome objections. They’re able to skillfully redirect the conversation and address consumer concerns, giving the consumer confidence in your product. They’re always ready with a response, and view objection as an opportunity for more education. Role play these situations on your team, having your sales reps address mock concerns or objections with data or offers that can put potential new customers’ minds at ease.

Adopt an efficient sales operating system

Having an efficient sales operating system that includes scripts on common objections can go a long way in helping your sales team push past rejection. Company-specific sales training videos and meticulously crafted scripts will help your reps know what to say, when to say it, and to whom in order to address potential objections. 

Get help building your own superstar sales team

It takes a rockstar sales team who can bounce back from rejection to make growth goals happen. If you’re looking to build a sales team, the team at MetaGrowth Ventures is here to help! Here’s how:

• We can support you in building a high-performing sales team with our rigorous five-step hiring process. 
• We help you memorialize and automate your training process through our proprietary MetaGrowth Founder Formula. 
• We create a digital library of training content that can be accessed by your team on demand. 
• We also train your team for you, providing high-level training in sales psychology. 

Your business isn’t going to scale itself. If you’re ready to ditch the daily grind of “founder selling” and have a team of top-performing sales professionals do your selling for you, contact MetaGrowth Ventures today. We’ll help you build your dream team.