I Adopted Grant Cardone’s Mindset Towards Overcoming Sales Rejections. Here’s What I Learned.
GC’s work proves instrumental to 1-Man consultants too
I know you hate rejections. So do I.
But that is not the point.
Grant Cardone is right. Life is littered with rejections. This is what he wrote on LinkedIn.
Life is filled with rejections, the promotion you missed, the girl that said no, the test you failed, the job you didn’t land, rejection is everywhere. So you need to learn how to deal with it.
And we must. Because rejections come whether we like them or not.
This is true for anyone running a 1-Man consulting practice. We must deal with it surgically.
My preferred approach is to strengthen the sales rejection muscle through deliberate practice.
Our Ideas Get Dismissed 90% of the Time, Even Outside of Consulting Sales
We don’t have to sell to get rejected. Consider the following.
- Asking an ex-colleague for a LinkedIn recommendation
- Requesting for a Letter of Service
- Inviting clients for a coffee chat
These requests do not involve dollars and cents. Yet, it does not make us feel any better when we hear a No.
The better approach is to take the bull by the horns.
It is to understand how we can overcome them and get what we want. From this perspective, Grant Cardone is right.
Nothing happens to you. It happens because of you!
The 3 Weird Ways to Strengthen Our Sales Rejection Muscle
Have you heard of the Principle of Specificity? Healthline explains.
Simply put, the principle of specificity states that how you train should mimic the skills, movements, and actions required to perform and excel in the game, activity, or event you’re participating in.
In short, we get better at what we repeatedly and routinely do.
It works for marathon training and overcoming sales rejection. Okay, got that. So how can we get more practice?
I offer the following ways.
1. Selling Other People’s Products and Services
Start with a lower hurdle, mate.
We do not feel as bad when we get rejected for selling other people’s products and services. Trust me. The feeling of psychological discomfort magnifies 10-fold when clients say No to the products we create.
We will get personal because our products may take months or years to perfect and complete. Avoid that deep dark Black Hole.
You want to focus on pitching and overcoming sales rejections professionally as a 1-Man consultant. Stay on course.
There are benefits to this approach.
Firstly, you accumulate sales exposure. You start to see patterns over a long time period. There are (only) that many principal rejections when you ask for a sale.
Secondly, you get to overcome rejections at the point of occurrence.
Imagine hearing this is too expensive for the 100th time. I guarantee one thing. You can overcome this rejection 100 times faster than when you first heard it.
And you will become a sales guru when you finally start selling the products and services you create.
2. Write. Pitch Your Articles to Harvard Business Review.
Writing and selling share one thing in common. Rejections are rampant.
Established publications and journals come a long way. They have a reputation to protect.
And they know many contributors want their work to be associated with a branded publication. One where readers trust.
Therefore, standards are high.
I encourage you to submit work to branded publications such as Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. You learn to sharpen your writing skills and construct better arguments.
Also, you will come to grips that rejections happen 90% of the time.
3. Ask for a Pay Raise in Your Day Job
Negotiating for a higher salary is tough even after 13 years of working experience.
But hey. No one owes us a living. We owe ourselves a living.
Asking for a salary increment is analogous to asking for a deal from our consulting prospects. We must present our case eloquently.
Preparation for the discussion is paramount. This is what I mean.
- We take stock of our successes for the year
- We use metrics to quantify what we did well
- We present how we can contribute more to the company in the upcoming year
Think about our sales pitch as a 1-Man consultant. There are overlaps, is that not?
And the best part? Yeah. You are not going to get what you want all the time.
But we learn. Next year, we negotiate better.
Parting Keynotes
Running a 1-Man consulting practice is not easy. Headaches compound when we must sell.
This is because we do not want to encounter sales rejections. We hate it.
It makes us feel like losers. Our life energy gets sucked away. I understand that.
But there is no escape. We encounter rejections in our daily life all the time.
Never ever asked a question ever?
Instead, the better mindset as a 1-Man consultant is to learn to overcome. I offer 3 methods to strengthen our rejection muscle.
- Selling other people’s products and services (and get rejected)
- Pitching our articles to Harvard Business Review (and getting rejected)
- Asking for a Pay Raise in Your Day Job (and get rejected)
And just like training for a marathon, we get better at what we repeatedly do.
Given time.
And then, we will eventually get to profit from our rejections. Trust your commitment.
Trust your future.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
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