The Dumbest Piece of Sales Advice You're in Danger of Following

By Jill Konrath, Contributing Editor

Every once in a while, I read something a so-called sales expert says that really ticks me off. The other night it happened again.

I was scanning the latest issue of a popular magazine when suddenly I came across a whole slew of idiocy in just one article. Here's just a taste of it:

"In sales, the results are in the rejections."

"Every time a contact results in a rejection, your salespeople can view the rejection as making money."

"The secret is for each salesperson to realize how much rejection is necessary for success.'"

"Sales managers must coach their teams to embrace rejection."

This is the dumbest advice you could ever get. Think about it. Can you ever imagine yourself saying this:

"Hallelujah! I've made 66 calls today and actually connected with 24 people. But of that number, 23 of them were total failures. Those decision makers blew me off as fast as they could. But one person asked me to send a brochure, so it was really a great day. With all those rejections, I'm well on my way to success."

Don't Embrace Rejection

Let me tell you why it's even dumber than you might think.

Guess what happens if you embrace rejection as a part of the job and quickly move on to make the next call. You're doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

What do I recommend? In my opinion, a rejection is a failure. It's a sales call that did not result in a desirable outcome. If you want to get better at selling, it is imperative to analyze your failures to determine if a different approach could have yielded a better outcome.

There is no other way to improve in this profession.

To be successful, you must take a serious look at all aspects of the interaction that were within your control. This includes:

Your word choices.

How you positioned your company.

The sequence of what you said.

How much you said: too little, too much.

Your tone, pace and sound.

Each one of these can be changed and can potentially yield an improved outcome. So where do you start? I suggest you pay close attention to:

The specific obstacles you encounter: What are your prospects saying: too high price, too expensive, currently satisfied? All these are indicators that you need to rethink your approach.

When you encounter these obstacles: Take a look at what you said just prior to hearing the objection. Most likely the words preceding the client's comments are key offenders.

The key point is that rejection is data. Simply data. It can be analyzed to determine trends, frequency, and even specific sales behaviors. When you think about it this way, you can experiment with various approaches.

You can simulate conditions by listening to your phone calls from your buyer's perspective. You can get input from colleagues to see if what you say would sound interesting if they were your prospect. You can check with other sellers to see what strategies they use.

Stop listening to those sales gurus who tell you to "embrace rejection." They're spouting old-style selling techniques that won't get you in the door of major corporations. They don't have a clue what it takes to succeed in today's marketplace.

Get smart and start analyzing your rejection. Look at it as a puzzle that needs solving. You may not know what it takes right now to crack into those corporate accounts, but you certainly have the ability to figure it out.

Jill Konrath is a Contributing Editor for RainToday.com and is a recognized expert in complex sales strategies and creating business value for B2B sales organizations. She is also founder of SellingtoBigCompanies – a web resource that helps professional services providers, consultants and salespeople win big contracts in the corporate market. E-mail Jill at jill@sellingtobigcompanies.com.

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