“I’m very sorry. My boss just changed our budget allocations for next year. I did everything I could to push this through. We’re not going to be able to move forward, as originally planned.” The prospect drops this news after you’d been working the deal for 6 months. 

‘We’re not interested. Please unsubscribe me from your marketing list.’ This email response is commonplace if you’ve done outbound sales for any stretch of time.

“There’s no way I can justify this kind of expenditure. You guys are way out of our price range. We’re going to bite the bullet and go at it alone.” Despite your best efforts to sell value, the prospect tells you there’s no way you can do business. 

Rejection stings. There’s no question about it. It just hurts. No one wants to get rebuffed after having put themselves out there. But I’d invite you to consider the following. Without rejection, there would be no need for adaptation – of product or pitch. We wouldn’t need to sell. We’d just put a product out in the universe and all folks would buy it in droves. 

We all know these to be impossibly ideal conditions. In the real world, we need to — among other things — present our product, answer questions about it, surface and handle objections, and most importantly close. In early-stage startup sales, rejection is at its highest. A new product has been brought into the world, and it’s forcefully confronted with the market. As you try to find a place for it, you bump up against a multitude of roadblocks. Rejection is not only something to expect. It should be embraced. Because if you’re able to learn from it, most rejection is redirection. Only in a few instances is rejection a complete showstopper. Something that will have you close up shop, and start polishing your resume. In most cases, rejection is just a strong signal, that should be taken seriously.

To learn from being rejected, it’s important to both develop the emotional callouses necessary to endure a ton of “no’s”, and adopt an open disposition enabling us to receive whatever the market can offer us. Rejection has gifts. It’s our purpose, as early-stage go-to-market folks, to mine for those treasures.

One way to quickly develop these callouses is the rejection jar. I can’t take credit for inventing this brilliant technique. But, we did use it while at Whitetruffle – where I ran sales – before starting this coaching practice. I distinctly remember going to the bank to pick up 20 dollars worth of pennies, one morning before heading into the office. Carrying those coins into our small warm room, my first sales hire Chris must have wondered what I was doing. I grabbed an empty vase from the kitchen for us to use. The goal was set, “We each need to get 100 rejections today. From our cold calling blitz!” (I had hopes cold-calling would be a viable GTM tactic for us. It failed miserably; with connect rates around 1%). Fitz – as we affectionately call him – and I got to dialing for dollars. And a funny thing happened. With the goal now being rejection-based, we found some joy in putting a penny into the vase every time we got hung up on. It counterbalanced the emotional pain from yet another prospect who’d rudely dismissed us. Something else occurred. The more pennies filled that jar, the more rejection we were able to tolerate. We started feeling invincible; inoculated through repetition. You could knock us down countless times. But we were going to keep getting back up. 

Rejection is an intense emotional experience. Emotions like anger can flare up. Our inner critic can take over and put a dampener on our self-esteem. “How could you mishandle that objection, you idiot?!” We’re usually quick to blame the other person or ourselves too much. Or too little. How are you supposed to figure out what happened, if you’re a emotional mess? How can you weather this mental storm? The ideal disposition for receiving rejection is that of a completely open and calm mind. Easier said than done. But where a mindfulness practice can be a huge asset. With it, you can cultivate a mind that won’t get uprooted when you receive the initial rejection. Can you sit with the negative emotion, get closer to it, and let it go? Responding in the affirmative means you can return to a place of stillness. Open to receive whatever the market wants to tell you, largely undeterred by what just happened. 

Hey [FirstName],

Totally understand, thanks for your candid response. I just removed you from our marketing database. 

Just curious…what about what I sent wasn’t interesting to you?

As a founder, it’s super important for me to keep improving our go-to-market motion. Any feedback you might be able to give would be invaluable to us.

Thanks much in advance,

[FounderFirstName]

The beauty of this response lies in its humility. You’ve lowered the stakes, by admitting defeat. Without the pressure of booking a call, or making the sale, the prospect can open up. A business owner of any kind can relate to it. You’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position, and asking for the prospect’s help. This templated response doesn’t always get a response, but when it does, those replies can be invaluable. At times, they contain nuggets that alter how you attack the market. Remember: in all domains of life, much of what we put out there communication-wise gets lost in translation. We might think we communicate clearly in 5 to 8 sentences in our outbound emails. But chances are it lands differently with prospects. That delta is what we need to understand. And then minimize.

Here’s a final example of how you might handle rejection when a prospect tells you they can’t get your deal across the goal line with their colleagues:

Prospect: There’s no way we can move to buy your product. I’ve done everything I can internally. But I’m just not able to get everyone on the same page. I know how hard you’ve been working on this deal. I’m sorry.

Sales Rep: No problem. I appreciate you recognizing my hard work. I try to do that in every instance. Sometimes it pays off, other times it doesn’t. It’s all part of the game I chose to play years ago. And I understand that you guys are not moving forward. Now that I know we won’t be working together…is there any way I could get your feedback? What prevented us from getting this deal done in the end?

Notice a pattern?

You’ve reduced the temperature in the room by putting the outcome behind you. The deal is no longer hanging in the balance. You can now look under the hood by getting the prospect to open up to you. By humbly putting yourself in a vulnerable position and allowing them to take the role of the knowledgeable person dispensing advice, you’re likely to get valuable feedback. 

Rejection is always painful. But it’s only tragic if you’re not learning. Do your best to excavate underneath the rejection. More often than not, you’ll learn something that will materially impact the way you sell. Yes, you may have lost this one deal. But the golden lesson you’ve learned could enable you to close far more deals in the future.