Management Perspectives

You get rejected. That is just part of the job.Whether you feel like prospecting matters.When prospecting, your job is to sell. Your clients and customers know what your ideal prospect looks like. Once you hear “No,” the discussion is over. Salespeople are great at selling themselves; sometimes they sell themselves on beliefs that are untrue. In, perhaps, no other area of professional selling are there more enduring and destructive myths than in the realm of prospecting. Here are the five biggest myths we see salespeople buying into.

MYTH 1: You get rejected—that is just part of the job.

This is the big one.

If someone says “No” to you during a prospecting exchange, are they really rejecting you? Think carefully about that question before you try to answer it. A lot of us have built up big piles of head trash over time, disempowering beliefs that have convinced us that our identity, our validity as a person, our self, is what’s at stake when we talk to people about working with us. That head trash may get piled so high that we feel rejected personally when a discussion does not go the way we want.

But have we been rejected as people— really? The right answer there is, ‘Not unless we choose to be.’

We have noticed something interesting that can help us to process this. Have you ever watched a boxing match? What happens at the end of the fight? At the end, no matter who thinks they won or who thinks they lost, no matter how the fight went, the boxers stand in the middle of the ring, tap their gloves together again, and give each other a hug.

What happens before the final bell rings?Major competition! Fists are flying, they are trying to knock each other down, sometimes they do knock each other down. They are going after each other, and in a way that is a lot more intense than any prospecting discussion we have ever been involved in. No one has ever tried to put a fist in our face during a sales call, and I hope no one has ever tried to do that to you.

But here is the point. At the end of the fight, they hug it out. They do not take anything personally. What they just did is their job—their role. And yet, on a sales call, we can get hung up on whether somebody said something rude to us. Now, that is very far from having somebody put a fist in our face. And yet, somehow, we can take what they said personally. Why? Because we see ourselves as the ones being rejected. We lose sight of the fact that everything we are doing and hearing and experiencing is just part of the job. It is not us. Unless we choose to make it that way.

MYTH 2: Whether you feel like prospecting matters.

We share a saying with our clients: You don't have to like prospecting, you just have to do it.

The big difference between salespeople who are successful and salespeople who are not is: the successful ones are willing to do the things they know they need to do, in spite of how they feel about doing them. If you wait until you get comfortable with prospecting before you commit to executing a daily prospecting plan, you will never leave the gate. You will think about how you feel, and you will decide that it is not quite the right time, or that it is more important to clean the bathroom right now, or that you need to focus on some other distraction. None of those distractions matter. Whether you feel like it right now doesn’t matter. Doing it is what matters.

The superstar author Stephen King said something along these lines about the craft of writing, something that is just as important when it comes to the craft of prospecting. He said, “Amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals just get to work.” He was right. Do not distract yourself. Do not wait for inspiration. Just do it.

MYTH 3: When prospecting, your job is to sell.

Actually, your job when you are prospecting is to audition people for the role of your client or customer.

You are not trying to sell them on anything. You are trying to disqualify them, so you do not have to waste your time talking to someone who is not serious about working with you. Some people will qualify for the job you are hiring for. Some people will not.

This is a career-transforming, life-transforming idea. When you are talking to people about whether it makes sense to have an in-depth conversation about the value you deliver, you are qualifying them. You are not trying to convince this person about anything. You are not aiming to talk them into accepting the proposition that you are a good fit for them. You are trying to figure out whether they are a good fit for you!

We call this “Going for the no.” Whenever you are prospecting, go for the no! Think of yourself as confirming that the person you are talking to really does not match your criteria for a good client or customer. Once you get enough information to make a sound determination that they are not a good fit for you, it is time to move on politely. Do not try to sell them anything. That is not the goal here.

MYTH 4: Your clients and customers know what your ideal prospect looks like.

Here is how we typically ask clients and customers for referrals, “Hey, by the way, if you ever come across anybody who might be interested in what we do, please let me know.” Then what happens? Nothing!

If we are serious about generating quality introductions—and we should be—we will take a look at their LinkedIn connections (or review any other evidence we can track down about who is in their circle) and ask for an introduction to a specific person who matches our ideal prospect template. The research time we invest will be time well spent!

MYTH 5: Once you hear “No,” the discussion is over.

If a prospecting discussion does not result in a qualified lead, is the relationship you have just created dead? No! The relationship is just beginning. All you know is that they are not a good fit for you today. That does not mean you cannot stay in touch, and it certainly does not mean you cannot ask for a referral, right then and there.

Some of our biggest clients came to us via referrals from contacts who told us “Thanks, but no thanks.” This fact blows the minds of a lot of salespeople, but that is just because they have bought into the myth that says that once the contact is disqualified, there is no possibility of a business relationship. That is absurd.

This is not a binary world. There are other outcomes beyond “Yes, we should definitely talk more” and “No, we don’t see an opportunity right now.” When we are talking to contacts we have disqualified, we like to say, “Hey, maybe you can help me. If you were in my shoes, and you fixed these kinds of problems, who would you want to be speaking with?”

So, why not start asking that question? You might just be surprised at the answers that start coming your way.