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On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast,  Jeb Blount’s (Virtual Selling) and Alex Goldfayn (5 Minute Selling) offer a simple strategy for overcoming your natural fear of rejection by breaking it into doable doses.

Jeb On Breaking the Fear of Rejection Into Doable Doses

Human beings fear rejection. We hate and avoid rejection at all costs. But, in Sales, your job is to go out and find rejection and bring it home.  

However, when you break your fear of rejection into doable doses, it gets easier to handle because, over time, when you face a fear repeatedly, you gain obstacle immunity.  

Alex On Using the Phone

Yesterday I had a video call set up with prospect. It was at the end of a long day of video calls. You know, where everybody is a little box on the screen, right? My brain was tired of being on camera, I just wanted to walk around with my phone – just put my feet up and not be on a camera.  

In some cases, I feel like there’s more dimension and depth to a phone call as compared to a video call. 

If you can get good at the telephone you will put so much distance between yourself and the 95% of sales people who don’t do well on the telephone, that they will never be able to catch up with you.  

That’s how important the telephone is right now. 

Jeb On Blending

It’s about blending. Salespeople need to get used to the word blending because, blending is how we will be selling going forward. With Virtual Selling, it is about meeting the buyer where they are. You should use the communication channel that is right for the moment.  

But salespeople are not having synchronous conversations – especially by phone – because they are afraid of being rejected.  

This is exactly why I think your 5 Minute Selling System is powerful.

If you just do it a little bit every day – even five outbound calls per day – you reduce these fears to a small part of your day. But, as you start facing that fear, a little bit every day, it will get easier for you to handle the rejection. 

And basically, what you start doing, is building a chain of days in a row where you’re investing in conversations with customers. 

Think about it, 30-days of five minutes a day talking to your customers. What happens to your pipeline? Your business? Your income?

What happens inside of you?  

Alex On Asking More Often

In baseball, if you fail 70% of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame. For salespeople, if you’re failing 80 to 90% of the time, you’re doing damn good! 

So, when we try to avoid every single no, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to get the yeses that make us successful. 

The salespeople who get the most no’s, the ones who get the most rejection, are the ones who are most successful. Because, they’re the ones who are asking the most. 

It’s simple. If you get the most no’s you get the most yeses.  

Thomas Edison said that many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. 

So, if you’ve already been rejected eight times by this prospect, the ninth rejection is literally no worse. It’s the same. There is no difference. 

Jeb on High-Intensity Prospecting Sprints

I’m working with a group right now and we are running high-intensity prospecting sprints. We’re doing 10-minute phone blocks.

It’s a simple cadence: 10-minutes, 10 dials, with a goal to set one appointment.  

It’s just so easy for people to rip off 10 dials. Leveraging this methodology allows them to get a whole lot prospecting done in a short period time with better outcomes.

Because we break rejection into doable doses (10-minutes at a time) it’s easier for them to remain motivated and focused.  

On Accomplishment in Small Doses

And it makes you feel more confident and accomplished because you’re having positive interactions! You’re going to feel better about yourself.  

You connected with someone. You feel positive and that’s a much better feeling than avoiding the phone and procrastinating. 

That bit of success is going to make you want to do it again. If you get focused on talking to people 5 minutes a day you can grow your sales tremendously. But, you’re going to want to do more than that. And, you will.