Regardless of their industry, salespeople are likely to be rejected more often than they are accepted. The key to success is the ability to let rejection roll off their backs and keep marching on.

When salespeople take rejection personally, they are hesitant to seek out new prospects due to fears of being rejected yet again.

Success takes persistence and the ability to leave rejection behind, and make new sales calls.

So how does the average salesperson react to rejection? Not very well, according to this recent survey:

• 44% give up after the first objection
• 22% give up after the second objection
• 16% give up after the third objection.
• 10% give up after the fourth objection.

That means 92% of salespeople give up after four objections, leaving only 8% of salespeople who are persistent enough to not let a potential sale slip away.

Discussion ideas: Ask your salespeople to give their definitions of the word persistence. Then ask for examples of how your folks used persistence to overcome rejection. Later, see if you can get examples of how salespeople lost accounts because they gave in to rejection.

Here are four barriers to persistence:

1. Failure to listen. Salespeople fail to learn about customer needs because they are too busy talking and not listening.
2. Attitude drop-off. Salespeople begin to think they’re more important than their customers.
3. Poor planning. Loss of persistence can usually be traced to a lack of planning. A common problem: Salespeople set goals that are so large and long range that after a short time they lose faith in their ability to achieve those goals.
4. Burnout. This comes from repetition, boredom, lack of challenges or a combo of the three.

Training tip: Try to get your salespeople to understand that rejection doesn’t have to be final. It can be used as a way to make improvements to their approaches and proposals. Give them examples of how you used persistence to open a new account or regain a lost customer.

Finally, remind them that top salespeople overcome rejection by:

• Developing good work habits and making them second nature. The better their work habits, the better they’ll handle rejection.
• Maintaining a positive mental attitude about being a professional salesperson. The stronger their belief in themselves, the more persistence they’ll develop.
• Learning all they can about their competition so they are able to provide customers with value-added benefits.
• Keeping up with changes in customers’ businesses so they can react quickly and correctly to those changes.

Tags: 20 Minute Sales Meeting, burnout, Overcoming rejection, planning, sales meeting, salespeople, success