Move over fear of rejection – nothing personal!

Countless successful people all have a common link: they had to battle personal fears. While all of us may fear something, there is a common thread that tends to bind all of us, and that common thread is the fear of rejection.  Wow – rejection!

Who likes to feel unwanted, dismissed, not a part of, not accepted? If you’ve lived longer than a few years, then at some point you’ve likely experienced rejection in some aspect of your life. While the lingering effects of rejection are different for all us based on the degree to which we experienced this emotion, not dealing with this fear head on can hinder our success and our ability to create awesome relationships with others. 

My first memorable experience of rejection was on the school playground. As a military dependent, my family and I moved often. Dad was career-Navy, and the longest duty station we ever lived was about 18 months in Norfolk, VA. Having attended six – yes six – elementary schools, my siblings and I were always leaving and meeting new friends each school year. At my last elementary school, I was not “allowed” to play with the cool girls because the leader of that group didn’t believe I belonged – she didn’t like me. Oh my gosh! I was always a part of the “cool” group, so this new rejection stung a bit.

While it didn’t last long, I was hurt by it. Of course, I made other friends, but I longed to be a part of the “cool” playground group. Before the school year was over, I had made many friends and this “cool” group was now insignificant and no longer “cool” to me. Yet, the rejection that I felt at that time caused me to lose a little confidence in making friends. I never had a problem making new friends before, so this rejection took a little time for me to pass through.

Now, to my rejections in network marketing - too many to count!

My first MLM opportunity was with an insurance company called A.L.Williams – now Primerica. (Though some may claim it isn't an MLM, I’m here to tell you that the steps to great financial success were (and are) in “recruiting.”)   Naïve about network marketing, I was enrolled by a sponsor who provided an insignificant, one-time only training session, went with me to meet my first prospect, and then left me to the wolves – never to see him again! Ouch! Well, you can imagine that with no training, no up-line support, and no education in customer sales or even the product I was selling, I didn’t last long with A.L. Williams. I made one insurance sale – maybe two – but received countless rejections!

At that time (and for many years later in the various MLM’s I enrolled), rejections were painful – I took them very personal. What I initially didn’t understand was that a rejection usually meant one of two things: #1. I hadn’t sufficiently conveyed how the benefits of the product could meet the customer’s needs, or #2. I simply didn’t understand the customer’s needs. It wasn’t me they were rejecting – it was my lack of meeting their needs.

After many years of trials and errors, I began to be mentored by my martial art instructor. Already successful in his martial art career and business, I had no idea that he also loved the opportunity for financial success that MLM’s offered. He exposed me to my first books on network marketing like Your First Year in Network Marketing (by Mark Yarnell – a great book for newcomers), the rejection fear-factor, customer sales, and more. To my instructor, MLM’s were just another successful stream of income but it took a certain savviness and knowledge of the industry to make it work. More importantly, everyone had to deal with rejection – everyone!

So, for me to face this fear of rejection, I had to not only educate myself on network marketing and all the aspects that makes one successful in it, I had to face the fearless giant - rejection - from a different standpoint. I had to slay him with a new knowledge and understanding. Yet, the only way to do this was to talk to folks and lots of them. I had to keep talking and to keep getting rejected. Ouch!

Conquering our fears is something that we regularly talk about in the martial arts, so I had to walk the talk. I had to place myself in situations where I was forced to talk to my cold market - strangers - and to make a connection and then ask for the sale. Rejected or not, I simply had to do it. After several organizations later, my “rejection” confidence increased, and I began to make a game of it. I began to challenge myself just to talk to everyone and count the rejections. The more rejections I got, the better I vetted out the folks that I likely didn’t want in my organization anyway. With even more rejections, I learned to listen more and to listen more intently to folks (and became better at reading body language). The more rejections I got, the more practice I got in better articulating the benefits of doing business with me.

Slaying the fear of rejection is not an overnight process because I’m still working on it. Yet, the way to effectively work through it is to remember this: #1 that it’s not personal, and #2 that an aspect of you still needs some grooming (i.e., body language, verbal communication, conveying the benefits of the product, etc.).