How Salespeople Handle Rejection
If you’ve been in sales long enough, you’ve felt it. The prospect who ghosts you. The deal that was a sure thing until it wasn’t. Any decent sales process has to include what we call a dose of mental shampoo — rinse out the negativity, condition your soul with a positive mindset, and get back on the phone. How It Looks Sometimes the customer just doesn’t pick up. That’s rejection by omission. Other times you do everything right and still need three more calls to get a “yes.” And sometimes, even after the yes, the deal falls apart. People will agree to things on a call just to hang up. We like to say yes is the hardest objection to overcome — but that’s a topic for another day. Accepting that rejection is real is one thing. Knowing what to do about it is something else entirely. Dealing With It There’s no trick that makes rejection stop hurting. But there are ways to keep it from knocking you off course. Have a system Good salespeople don’t just white-knuckle through a bad stretch. They have a reset process. Ours is simple: “Some will, Some won’t, So what, next!” Say it out loud if you have to. It works because it keeps you moving instead of sitting there replaying a lost deal in your head. Take a breath Losing a big one hurts. Give yourself a minute to absorb it. But don’t let that minute turn into an hour. The longer you sit with it, the harder it is to pick the phone back up. Momentum is everything in this line of work. Perspective Honestly, if every pitch turned into a deal, it would get boring fast. It’s the losing that makes the wins feel like something. Disappointment comes and goes, but the people who last in this business are the ones who get back on the horse every single time. Move on Next time a phone slams down or a deal goes sideways, shake it off. Move on to the next one. That’s the whole secret, and every salesperson worth their paycheck already knows it. If you’re in sales and the grind is getting to you, or you’re looking for a better fit somewhere else, we can help with that too. Check out Find Your Dream Job or just give us a call. We also wrote about sales movies if you want something lighter.
What Sales Movies Get Right (And Mostly Wrong)
There are some great films about salespeople out there. There’s just one problem. Almost all of them are about criminals. Spoiler alert. The Bad Ones Hollywood can’t seem to tell a sales story without somebody committing a felony. Here are the biggest offenders. Glengarry Glen Ross Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin. This cast alone is worth the ticket. You get a classic late-night sales meeting, the best “go to lunch” moment in movie history, and a great scene where a salesman finally tells off his manager. But the actual plot? A sales team so beaten down and desperate that somebody breaks into the office and steals the leads. Fun to watch. Not a management playbook. Wolf of Wall Street The Jordan Belfort story. “Sell me this pen.” Sure, there’s some great phone work in here, and some of the sales scenes are genuinely electric. But the guy was making jerk-off motions at his clients while taking their money, and that’s before you get to the fraud. Don’t be like this. Boiler Room Giovanni Ribisi shuts down his illegal basement casino to go sell fake stocks. The best scene is when a newspaper telemarketer cold-calls him, and he coaches the guy into actually making a pitch. Doesn’t work though — Giovanni reads the Times. Good lesson in rejection. Sometimes you lose even when you say the right things. It ends badly for everyone in the boiler room. Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller wrote it. Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich performed it on film. A man who spent his whole life valuing sales relationships over his real ones, only to realize at the end that he’s worth more dead than alive. He pays off the mortgage — by dying in an insurance fraud scheme. Bleak. The Good One If you want a sales movie that doesn’t end in handcuffs, watch Tommy Boy. Tommy is a good person. He doesn’t cheat. He grinds, he learns from the people around him, he follows up with old customers. He earns every sale the hard way. That’s what real selling looks like. Chris Farley and David Spade at their best. They filmed this during downtime from SNL — a show already famous for having zero downtime. Come for the movie review, stay for the trivia. The Takeaway The movies that get remembered are the scam stories. But the salespeople who last are the ones doing honest work and building actual relationships. That’s always been true and it’s not going to change. If you’re trying to build a sales career the right way, or you need to hire sales talent you can trust, that’s what we do. Talk to us or check the job board.