Face it selling is hard work. On a good day you are plowing through lots of No’s to get to a Yes or two. How do you stay motivated and fight through all these sales rejections.

Learning to Process Rejection

The first thing that will help you to stay motivated and focused on selling is learning to process rejections.

In the case of email campaigns you can simply have an assistant process these responses, keeping these rejections (maybe even complaints) completely out of your head. It might even make sense to do the same with initial phone calls. If you have a brand new list of leads you might want to have an assistant pre-qualify each of them for you.

These initial contacts are likely to be you largest concentration of rejections. Sparing yourself all these No’s can be a big motivational boost.

Learning from Customers Saying No

When the customer says, “no” it is rarely about you personally. It means there is something about the sales process, the product, or the pitch that is not giving them the confidence to buy.

Try asking these questions on each rejection:

• What was the objection?
• Was it valid or just a brush-off?
• Was I prepared to overcome the objection?
• Could I have overcome it better?
• How could I have pivoted better?

Chances are that you will see a No like this again. Going through this quick checklist will teach you something and better prepare you for the next call.

Failing Faster

Ultimately, you know that you are going to hear more No’s than Yes’s. Therefore, the best advice I have ever heard came from Jeffrey Gitomer when he said, “fail faster.”

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Your sales process should be a living and breathing thing. You should be constantly looking for feedback and sources of inspiration. As a sales person you are faced with the negative everyday–rejections, hang-ups, the crushing weight of caring a sale quota.

Here are a few suggestions to make sure your sales process is improving, daily.

1. Measure it.

Few things are more important than making your sales process consistent and disciplined enough to measure it. You need to break your process down it to manageable points of measurement.

• How many calls do you make?
• How many did you try script A, B, or C on?
• How many contacts did you make?
• How many appointments did you make?
• How many objections?
• What were they?
• Which did you overcome, which do you need to practice?
• What is you close ratio?
• What adjustments do you need to make?

2. Learn from others.

The Internet and bookstores are literally overflowing with great sales mentors. Spend at least 50% of you time learning. Here are a few that I spend time with on a regular basis:

• Jeffrey Gitomer
• Harvey MacKay
• Zig Ziglar
• Neil Rackham

3. Inspire it.

Inspiration can come from a lot of places. If you are athletic it might come from your heroes on the field and their stories of challenge and success. There might be business leaders that you aspire to rise to their level. Or it might be a philosophy like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

Find something or someone and then put that inspiration in front of you. Go get it!

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Jeffrey Gitomer tells us in his Little Red Book of Selling that “You” is one of the most important words in sales. This may sound surprising when we always talk about “customers first,” “the customer is always right,” and “customer-centric.”

His point is very important. Customers don’t buy products, services, or unique value propositions first-they buy “You!”

That obviously means you need to get this part right. Here are a few suggestions:

• Always be polite and courteous
• Have a good attitude
• Listen and be willing to help
• Avoid industry jargon
• Be knowledgeable about the market
• Be knowledgeable about the product
• Ask them questions and gauge understanding
• Make it easy for them to contact you

Remember it is important to sell yourself and your willingness to help them before you even mention a product.

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The number one killer of good ides, effective tactics, game-changing strategies is execution. I would prefer the ability to effectively lead tactical execution repeatedly over being a master strategist any day.

A lot of very profitable businesses have been launched, sold, and grown without a single McKinsey consultant. Many battles and wars have been won without a defining General Washington or Patton–in fact many would argue it was tactical execution, not master strategies that gave them legendary successes.

The point of this is that simple constant improvement, trumps perfection every time.

Training

The most elite special forces teams in the military easily spend 90% of their time training to ensure flawless execution on those rare occasions when they fight. Your sales training may not be that heavily weighted to training versus trench time, but you need to be constantly learning.

Drilling

No drill team learns their precision without hours of drilling. Their very muscles learn to react and the brain ceases to think. You have the same opportunity with sales. The more leads you engage the more your mind disengages and begins to effectively react, not think.

Jeffrey Gitomer is famous for saying, “to achieve sales success, fail faster.” This is what drilling through aged leads will help you to achieve at a much lower monetary risk

Execute

Of course, none of this works without execution. You have to continually do something, even if it is wrong. Sitting around and thinking about your next move is worthless.

Execute, measure, improve–then do it again–perfection will show up when you least expect it.

Perfection

Like I said, perfection is a result, an outcome–not an objective. If you set your vision at perfection you will never arrive. However, if you set your goals on recurring execution–perfection will arrive much sooner than you expect.

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There are literally hundreds of sales books, but what books should be in your library? A good sales person is someone who is constantly seeking to learn–about their craft, how customers think, and the world around them. Here are a few books that should be in every great sales persons’ library:

• Little Red Book of Selling (Jeffrey Gitomer)
• Selling 101 (Zig Ziglar)
• Spin Selling (Neil Rackham)

There are certainly more, but these are foundational sales techniques and philosophies that will get you started. From these you can start to build your own strategies, techniques, and philosophies that work.

Keeping yourself inquisitive and learning is the key to positioning yourself for big numbers. Some additional resources that can add to your skills:

• Sign-up for Gitomer’s Sales Caffeine eZine
• The Sales Blog
• Sales Web Blog
• The Brooks Group
• Sales Lead Management Association

Are there other resources, books, websites that you like to read to keep your sale skills sharp? What are they?

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Hard work is the root of all perfection, whether you are an Olympic gold medalist or a top 10 mortgage loan officer. Samuel Goldwyn, an early Hollywood producer, said it best: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” We all want success and luck, but are you willing to put in the effort?

Here are a few of my favorite tips for “kicking your own ass”:

1. Start every day, yesterday. Whether it is a task list, lead sheet, or voice mail. Get your day planned in the closing minutes of the previous day.

2. Work in short, 30 minute bursts. This is scientifically proved to be about the limit of most people’s attention span. Leverage that in scheduling your day.

3. Do the work. Many spend all day planning and organizing the work. Just grab a task and do it to completion. If your projects are too large, break them into smaller tasks. Remember 30 minute executions.

4. Have goals. These goals should be short and long-term goals. Short goals should help support bigger ones. Knowing where you are going is critical to getting there.

5. Give yourself a little peace. Create a specific time each day to re-center yourself and relieve any stress you are holding. Don’t neglect this. It is critical to you running at peak performance.

Stop whining and “kick you own ass.” Want to hit the golf ball like Tiger Woods? Easy, hit 500 a day. Get the picture? Start working your sales plan now!

As my fellow Austinite Lance Armstrong puts so well “People ask me all the time what I’m on. I’m on my bike 6 hours per day. What are you on?” And yes  … he will win the next Tour De Lance. We expect to have our best year ever in 2009 by helping so many of you elevate your game. Let’s roll!

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