Why rejection isn't personal, and how to learn from it

In this episode of the Luxury of Choice Podcast Steve Vaughan and Jayne Green and joined by Jonathan Slasinski for his first podcast with the team to discuss the inevitable aspect of rejection in sales. They explore how to cope with rejection, the importance of emotional intelligence, and the learning opportunities that arise from these experiences. A key takeaway that rejection is not personal but rather a part of the business process, and they share personal stories from their own sales career as examples. 

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche, Jayne Green and Jonathan Slasinski are Sales Trainers from george james ltd. You can email the show at: Podcast@georgejames-training.com

The trainers on LinkedIn:

Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/

Jonathan Slasinski https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-slasinski-449a655/

george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01)
Hello again and welcome to the Luxury of Choice, a B2B Sales and Business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan, I'm a trainer and director of George James and I'm also the host and producer of this podcast. Today I'm with two of my colleagues, Jane Green is a regular on the podcast. Great to have you back, Jane. How are you?

Jayne Green (00:18)
Yeah, very well, thank you, Steve.

Steve Vaughan (00:20)
Great to have you here. And for the first time with the rest of the team, we have Jonathan Slesinski from the stage. Jonathan, how are you?

Jonathan Slasinski (00:29)
fantastic, thrilled to be joining.

Steve Vaughan (00:31)
And of course it's nice and early for you in California, we should point out as well. So thank you for being up bright and early to record this podcast. And if you don't know who Jonathan is, of course we did do a little introduction to him a few weeks ago. So dig out that episode. So how are things? How's your week's been? Any exciting developments, any exciting news from what you've been up to the last couple of weeks, guys?

Jonathan Slasinski (00:34)
Yes.

Jayne Green (00:52)
It feels quite busy, isn't it? It's the time of year, Lots going on, lots of training to do, lots of different people that you see over a period of time, which is always, I find quite thrilling actually, sort of seeing lots of different personalities and yeah, I love that.

Steve Vaughan (00:54)
Yeah, it is,

Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, as you say, there's a lot going on at the moment. And Jonathan, you've been busy these last couple of weeks.

Jonathan Slasinski (01:12)
Yeah, same here. know,

pretty busy doing some trainings and then again, you know, practicing what we preach, just doing some funnel building, right? Going out, calling people, prospecting, getting meetings and trying to move that sale towards close. So just busy, busy doing that kind of stuff. But it's always fun because you're just thinking about, just, I just did a training on this and this is what I'm doing. So it's kind of nice to put that reality to work.

Steve Vaughan (01:19)
That's a really important point.

Yeah.

Jayne Green (01:32)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:33)
But

it's a really important point. Perhaps we don't make that point often enough actually on this podcast, but we have to practice what we preach. We have to go out and sell and find our customers and fill our funnel and prospect and all the stuff that we talk about really. you know, we're not just people that sit there and get called out, you know, when required, you know, we are selling ourselves as well. And it's great because it keeps us sharp and it's fun. It's the best part of the job as well. But what, course, we do have to face in any

Jayne Green (01:40)
Yeah, so true.

Steve Vaughan (02:01)
of our personal selling, in fact, anybody that's in sales, is sometimes we get some rejection. And that's what today's topic is all about, really, how we can cope with rejection, deal with rejection to salespeople and recognizing that rejection actually isn't personal, it's business. So let's just pick it up as a starting point, really. what first, what do we mean by rejection? Let's just it might be an obvious thing, but what do we what are we talking about?

when we say rejection in business, what are we talking about?

Jonathan Slasinski (02:33)
Yeah, I always think of it as that email you get, sorry, we're not moving forward with you, or the phone call, or, you know, when you follow up in a lab, we decided to move on with somebody else. That's to me, just not getting the PO or not getting the sale is my mind was what rejection always was as I was in the field.

Jayne Green (02:33)
And.

Steve Vaughan (02:48)
Yeah.

Yeah. Not nice, is it? No.

Jayne Green (02:50)
Hmm.

I think it can also mean, I think a lot of people that I've spoken to recently see rejection is when they've been not answered the telephone to, they've been, this word ghosted, know, people haven't got back to them. People sometimes see that as rejection too, I think.

Steve Vaughan (03:04)
Yeah.

Yeah,

true. We did a whole episode on ghosting, we? But yeah, it's a word that I hadn't heard of until recently, but it seems to be a word that's in vogue right now. So yeah, it's basically for whatever reason, customer not deciding to move things forward. could be very early, I guess, in the sales process. It could be right at the end, ⁓ Isn't it just part of the job, though? I mean, is it something we should just expect as part of the job? I mean, not everybody's going to say yes, are we? Or are they? ⁓

Jayne Green (03:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

I think it's

very much part of the job Steve. I think there's some things that we can do that maybe help reduce some of that but I think it's just part of what we're doing. We're looking to ⁓ create a lot of leads, that we ⁓ qualify, getting the right people, matching up our products with a great solution, a match and of course not everybody, we're not going to get there with everybody.

you know, and everybody is looking to buy in a very specific way or at a specific time, and we've got to get the timing right, we've got to be hitting the right person, you know, with our right product. So the chances of getting some rejection are very high, of course, depending on how we steer that, I guess.

Steve Vaughan (04:24)
Yeah, yeah. are your thoughts on this Jonathan?

Jonathan Slasinski (04:27)
Yeah, I think the tried and true salesperson is that door getting shut in their face, right? And what they do after that. ⁓ I think though it's like, how do you handle it, right? Because I know early on in my sales career how I handled it was much different as I grew and matured and learned kind of, hey, this is just part of the job, right? ⁓ And I think that personal aspect, because no one likes to being rejected regardless, you know?

Jayne Green (04:38)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (04:42)
Yeah, same here.

Jonathan Slasinski (04:53)
⁓ And again, what happened earlier on in my career versus later on in my career were two totally different ways to go about it.

Steve Vaughan (04:59)
So how did you change? What was the factor that changed and what do you do differently now then?

Jonathan Slasinski (05:05)
Yeah, I think the thing that changed was just understanding this is part of it, right? You know, I mean, when you're starting off as a sales rep and yeah, you get a door closed or you get told no, you know, I still remember that pit in my stomach from the email that says, I'm sorry, we're not moving forward with your product. And you're like, what did I do wrong? my gosh. What, know, what's going on here? And then as you grow, you just realize, Hey, this is, this is part of a natural sales cycle. Not everyone's going to say yes. You want them all to say yes. ⁓ and I think as I grew, was taking more of those steps to understand why.

Jayne Green (05:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (05:30)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:35)
Why

did I have some of those failures? So how am I getting better at that? And then as you grow as a sales rep, it's just making more of those connections where you kind of have rejection a little bit less because you've done the job, you put in the work to build these great relationships, provide value where you're in that kind of position where you probably are going to win. You don't win all the time, but it's kind of how my career evolved was just through going through those kind of motions.

Steve Vaughan (05:37)
Right.

Jayne Green (06:01)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (06:01)
So seeing

it not as personal, but seeing it as a learning opportunity as well. So you're nodding on that one, Jane.

Jayne Green (06:06)
Yeah, I

mean it is a learning opportunity but of course you can't help sometimes and especially in those earlier days but take it very personally. know that feeling, you're mortified because you've put a lot of effort in, you know, to pull a deal in or to reach out and you know that can be quite, it can be quite a blow. Particularly if you thought something was more of a certain and you felt like you'd done absolutely everything and it doesn't come through. But of course there's that

Steve Vaughan (06:13)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (06:35)
bit that you said, you know, that actually we can be down about that and, you we do take it personally as much as we know it isn't a personal ⁓ reflection on us. We are human beings, of course, but what can we learn from that actually? What can I take from that? Is there anything I could have done differently? And sometimes we can find those things and sometimes we have to really dig for them. If we're prepared to, if we're feeling a little bit hurt or, you know, it didn't happen. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (06:43)
Yeah, because we're humans. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, perhaps not straight away. I think you've got to

get the frustration out of your system a little bit and then think about what do you learn. If anybody's ever played sport with me, they'll know that my competitiveness is way above my ability and I'm not a very good loser. So I've offered a golf weekend after this call and I try not to chuck the old club around during the game. it's how do we, what can we learn, what can we have done differently, if anything really. And I guess...

Jayne Green (07:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (07:31)
One of the things I love in our personal training that we do, there are two kinds of no, aren't No, not now, in which case, when, and if not ever, well, at least we know, don't we? We can move on and learn from it really.

Jayne Green (07:36)
Mmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (07:39)
not ever.

Jayne Green (07:39)
Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah and it's quite nice that... sorry I'm drowning.

Jonathan Slasinski (07:48)
I think.

Steve Vaughan (07:50)
Yeah, no, go

ahead, Jane. Yeah. Okay, yeah, sure.

Jonathan Slasinski (07:51)
as you and Jane are talking about, it's about that learning experience. And I think, again, as

Jayne Green (07:55)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (07:56)
my career evolved, I took rejection as a learning experience to become better, right? So you're getting, so hopefully you get less rejection. ⁓ And a lot of it came down to just basics, right? Did I not qualify this person the right way? Maybe I didn't, you know.

Jayne Green (07:56)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (08:02)
Right.

Jayne Green (08:04)
Yes.

Steve Vaughan (08:10)
That's a super point. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (08:12)
maybe I present myself in the right way or handle a certain objection in the right way as I was younger. And then you just learn from that. I'll always ask, hey, why did you choose to go with this? That wasn't something I did right away. That was something I had to get comfortable with was instead of just saying, getting that no,

Jayne Green (08:15)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (08:29)
you know, why, right? Why did you choose not to go with us? And then you learn from that. And then you know on the next call what to do a little bit differently. ⁓ but Steve, you also ran out that point about the two nos no, not now, no, not ever. Right. And the no, not now is where I actually was able to get some really nice wins, you know, moving forward.

Jayne Green (08:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (08:48)
Sorry, Jane, you were about to say something as well. ⁓

Jayne Green (08:50)
Yeah, I think

there's a real clarity, there? think if we've got no not now, then we know we've still got some actions to take. If it's no never, then that's actually really good information for us. You know, we're going, OK, that's fine. My work stops on that particular project right now because that's not going anywhere. You know, and we might log that. Of course, we have to log that and understand.

what we could have done and maybe it's that sort of real searching to say, what didn't I uncover? What did I miss in that? But actually it's been very good. If I could do it again, but I now know I've got some clarity with this one rather than it just hanging there forever. mean, understanding whether it's going to happen or not. You've got the clarity that it's an actual no.

Steve Vaughan (09:27)
Yeah. If I could do it again. Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

Super point. Jonathan, know one of the things that you're very interested in is emotional intelligence in sales. And is there a part here or opportunity here to use some emotional intelligence in understanding the no or seeking more clarity or seeking more information around the no?

Jonathan Slasinski (10:00)
I think that there's just, there's two things that are here, right? First of all, it's a social awareness, right? Being able to kind of read what's going on in that, in that sale, right? Who are the people that are involved, what's going on? And then the bigger component to that is relationship management, right? know, relationship management is about your goals and their goals and combining those two together, right? So you have to understand kind of what's going on. So huge component to that, to understanding, you know, how this is going on, to hopefully reduce, you know, your, your rejection.

Steve Vaughan (10:15)
Right.

Jonathan Slasinski (10:30)
But again, you know, it is an emotion, right? You're going to feel an emotion when you get rejected, right? So then that becomes to, how do I self, how do I deal with that? Right? That's my self management, right? How do I kind of go, you know, get over that emotion that, that hurt or whatever it could be to move on to the next thing. ⁓ and just again, learn from it, right? Grow from it. If you've got that relationship in place, hopefully that's the no, not now, right? You know, where we can do some other things later on, but yeah, big, big kind of, you know, place where EQ

fits in here is about how do you understand your customers and then again, how do you deal with it yourself, right? When you get that rejection.

Jayne Green (11:07)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (11:07)
Yeah, that's

a super point because it's a business decision. It's not a personal one. I guess in some worlds it could be, but if you have a straight ad and that person had to clash with the customer, but I think in normal business situations, it's a business decision rather than a personal decision. So, it's important that we care. We care that we've got the no, but we don't take it personally, I think really. I think, sort of, bounce back from the defeat really.

Jayne Green (11:28)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a bit like riding a bike, isn't it? I was just thinking, you know, I can't actually remember riding a bike myself, but I think I had stabilizers and obviously at some point they came off. But I do remember very clearly, I have two sons helping them to learn to ride their bike and I hope they're not listening to this. Sorry boys, if you are. ⁓ But I remember with one of my sons.

Steve Vaughan (11:38)
Yeah, good one.

Please write it in if you are, boys.

Jayne Green (12:00)
just thinking, you know, let's not bother with those stabilizers, let's just go for it. Well, of course, there was a lot of times that he was off the bike rather than on the bike, sometimes in a hedge, sometimes in a wall, but he eventually, you know, they look like failures when, you know, you're in the middle of a hedge when you're trying to ride your bike or you're on the pavement. You actually, you have to find a way of picking yourself back up and go, I want to do this.

You know, and it's, and I think it's a bit like that with selling, isn't it? We have some rejections, but it doesn't stop us doing our job. It doesn't stop us going, I'm going to get back onto that and I know that I'm going to find a win here. I know that I'm going to be able to, you know, to find my way forwards and navigate this. And eventually, of course, my boys learned how to ride a bike and they had some scratches along the way. And it's a bit like that with selling too. We pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off and we carry on and we, you know, we...

Steve Vaughan (12:54)
super.

Jayne Green (12:57)
We go on to that next opportunity, that next customer that we're dealing with, and we learn. We learn a little bit. We've got stronger from some of those past areas that felt like could have been rejection or it just didn't work for us.

Steve Vaughan (13:02)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

Jonathan won't know what I'm talking about now, but there used to be a football game called for kids called subito where the footballers were in like a like a semi-circled domed mold and you'd flick them and they'd fall over but they bounced back up again really. So it's like being a subito footballer. You're looking at me blank now, Google it. Oh yes, that as well. I remember that. Gosh, we're showing our age now guys.

Jayne Green (13:16)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yes.

Jonathan Slasinski (13:26)
That's cool.

Jayne Green (13:28)
or weebles wobble but they don't fall down.

Jonathan Slasinski (13:30)
I will. Yeah, but they don't fall down, right? Exactly.

But Shane, I love what you said because first of all, as ⁓ a ref, this is part of the job, right? And it's again, now it's how do you get back up, right? And I think as part of our job is it's not just one deal, we're working multiple deals, right? So if you don't get this one, okay, hopefully we've done enough work for the other ones. ⁓

Jayne Green (13:42)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (13:43)
Yeah,

it is,

Jayne Green (13:46)
Yeah.

Yes.

Steve Vaughan (13:51)
That's a good point.

Jayne Green (13:54)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (13:55)
And it's just funny because like the no, not now, right? Great. That's, that's going to be the key to kind of going through it. But I've worked with sales reps with the no, not ever became like their challenge. And they're like, I am going to sell that person something, you know, and it would be this kind of thing. Like, my gosh, I'm going to, you know, in, nice ways, you know, professional ways about just interacting with the lab, building a relationship around it to get that no, not ever to, okay, yeah, let's, let's do some business with you.

Steve Vaughan (14:09)
wow, really? Yeah?

Jayne Green (14:22)
Mmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (14:23)
You know, I personally took it as, okay, let's move on and figure out where else I can go. But I always loved seeing the reps that took that as, this is my challenge now. I'm gonna get that, I'm gonna get that person.

Steve Vaughan (14:23)
So seeing it as personal challenge, yeah.

Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Jayne Green (14:31)
I love that.

Steve Vaughan (14:31)
Love it. Yeah, me too.

Yeah, me too. Perhaps I wasn't as bold as that really, but yeah, no, I love that as a mindset, certainly. Does it matter when in the sales process we get the rejection? You mentioned qualification earlier, Jonathan, and you know, that's something we talk a lot about in our training, but does it matter when we get the rejection? Is there a factor there to think about?

Jonathan Slasinski (14:54)
definitely think that we always want to look at timing of everything. And I will say most of my rejection usually came at the end where it was a decision of me versus somebody else and you get that kind of note. ⁓ But the earlier the better, right? I mean, to me, if you can know that you're not going to be winning this earlier, that allows you to kind of move on, right? This lose fast, lose early type of thing.

Steve Vaughan (15:04)
Sure. Yeah.

Jayne Green (15:08)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (15:20)
⁓ But as I said, in my career, most of my rejection was basically at the end of the sale where it was between me and another competitor and maybe they went with the other one or they didn't get funding at the end, things like that, that falls through.

Steve Vaughan (15:33)
So I guess what we're saying there, Jane, is that we can be the one that gives the rejection. We can reject the opportunity. Yeah.

Jayne Green (15:38)
⁓ Yeah, absolutely. I think a qualification, as I said this

week to a group of people, it's possibly my favourite word right now. ⁓ You know, because it gives us, it puts us in a really interesting place to start, you know, to understand, have I got all the criteria that I really need to understand, you know, right from the get-go, from the very beginning, what these customers' needs are, what this is about.

Steve Vaughan (15:47)
I love qualification. Yeah.

Jayne Green (16:06)
actually what that means commercially to them to make a decision, you know, through that is actually are they, is this customer going to be really good business for us as well as us being, you know, providing something, a great solution for them. You know, is that going to be really kind of worth the best use of my time as a salesperson? And so, you know, if we realise it isn't or it's going to cost us an incredible amount as a company and the return on investment for all of that.

Steve Vaughan (16:26)
super point.

Jayne Green (16:35)
resource and time isn't going to come back to that, then we do have a time to say, no, this isn't the opportunity that we need to be spending our time on right now. So, you know, we can have that opportunity to say no, I think. I think so, yeah. I hope people don't, I hope customers then don't feel rejected.

Steve Vaughan (16:43)
Mm.

Great point.

So rejection works both ways. You've

got to prove yourself to be my customer. Jonathan, I know you live on the West Coast, but think originally you're an East Coast guy. Many years ago, when I lived in America, I think I've told this story before in this podcast, but anyway, 20 plus years ago, I went to a one-day sales workshop somewhere in New York and the guy running it, ⁓

told a story of his first sales job, which was selling door to door insurance in the five boroughs in the eighties, which yeah, exactly. New York was quite a violent place in those days. And his job was to go and bang on doors, trying to convince people to buy life insurance. And his boss gave him a card and on that card, the word no was written 50 times. And every time he got the door slammed in his face or, you know, perhaps something a bit stronger, ⁓ he was told to cross off a no.

Jonathan Slasinski (17:24)
ECH

Steve Vaughan (17:45)
And if he came back at the end of the week with 50 no's on that card, he got a thousand bucks, which was a lot of money then, a lot of money now. ⁓ And of course the reason these boss did that, he reckoned, he knew that out of those 50 no's he'd get at least one yes. So the reason I, yeah, and the reason I tell that story is, know, it is a numbers game to some degree, isn't it really? Yeah. So recognizing that every time you get a no, you're one step closer to a yes.

Jayne Green (17:51)
Bye.

Jonathan Slasinski (17:52)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (18:00)
That's an incentive, isn't it?

Jonathan Slasinski (18:02)
Yeah, that really

is.

Jayne Green (18:07)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (18:14)
I'm not trying to make it into life insurance guys, by the way, for listening to us, but it's an example. Yeah.

Jayne Green (18:17)
You

Jonathan Slasinski (18:18)
No, but I...

very applicable to cold calling, right? You know, so again, you know, what James talked about is qualifying, right? We want to have these opportunities that are really well qualified. We know whether we're going to win or we know if it's not the right fit and then kind of that's where we reject them. But cold calling. Yeah, I love that. You should have a cart with 50 nos because you know, when you go cold call, you go to different labs or you, you know, you, don't get, you know, you don't hear back from somebody that that's exactly where rejection and that no plays in for the cold calling aspect of it.

Jayne Green (18:21)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (18:21)
Yeah, it is.

Jayne Green (18:28)
Yeah.

Yes.

Steve Vaughan (18:32)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (18:34)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (18:38)
You

Yeah,

perhaps we could do a branded George James no card, but no, that's another topic for another day. But yeah, go on Jane, yeah, sorry, yeah. Okay.

Jayne Green (18:51)
⁓ don't, yeah, I sort of have another take on that, which is possibly

avoiding the noise, the no's happen, but I'm so keen on the yes. So I reward myself. Most people I've trained probably, I've talked about this, I like Maltesers, just saying Christmas is coming up, so I line them up on my desk.

Steve Vaughan (19:05)
Yeah, I that.

⁓ and they talking. ⁓

Jonathan Slasinski (19:18)
Thanks.

Jayne Green (19:19)
So I have this little row

of Maltesers and

Steve Vaughan (19:22)
Do you get more

teasers of the states Jonathan? No, we'll explain what they are in a second then. Carry on, Jamie. They're my favourite. They're my favourite. they're great.

Jonathan Slasinski (19:24)
No.

Jayne Green (19:25)
⁓ it's great. It's like a honeycombed chocolate covered round delight, basically. And I

Jonathan Slasinski (19:30)
That was delicious.

Jayne Green (19:32)
just, I mean, they're tiny. It's like what I keep telling myself. So I take yes as even being a phone answered. But, you know, they've picked up. That's great. After that, I'll have a Malteser. But basically a good conversation that's going somewhere. I reward myself with a Malteser at the end of it.

Steve Vaughan (19:35)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Jonathan Slasinski (19:41)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (19:43)
Yeah. Okay.

Jayne Green (19:51)
So it's a bit, it's just the opposite. It's the flip side, isn't it, of the nose. And it takes, I might have five calls, 10 calls, nothing happens. 15 calls, nothing happens. I've still got my 10 Maltesers out there expecting I'm going to be eating them. And I carry on until I do.

Steve Vaughan (19:55)
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:09)
your rewards.

Steve Vaughan (20:09)
I

should just point out this show isn't sponsored by Maltesers, there are other forms of confectionery available.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:14)
you

Jayne Green (20:15)
I won't mention the word again, I'm sorry.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:18)
But Shane, I love

how you're talking about it now from the flip side of rejection, right? Which is that yes, right? Because I was thinking exactly as Steve was talking about, the gentleman with the card with the 50 nos, no, no, no, no, no. How good does it feel when you get that yes, right?

Jayne Green (20:23)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (20:24)
Yeah, brilliant.

Absolutely.

Jayne Green (20:33)
That's

great.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:34)
And

that's the emotion that you really want to focus on because that's what you want to get out of your next opportunity or the opportunity after that. And I love setting up your little reward system. It's fantastic. I got an email back. I get to get my little reward, which is great. Because rejection does stink, but the winds are great too, right? So I love it. You flip it and you see what that wind feels like.

Jayne Green (20:38)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I can have one of those rewards now, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (20:50)
If you close this out, you have the whole bag.

Jayne Green (20:57)
Absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (20:58)
Super,

super great. So rejection is part of sales. It's normal. It's something we need to understand. It's not personal. you got either you got an example of where sort of rejection or you bounce back from a rejection that came around into something more, more positive at the end. you think of an example of your own personal selling career or something that you've seen happen? Put you both on the spot there. hopefully you've got one.

Jayne Green (21:24)
I've got several, ⁓ which is quite interesting. mean, so one of the ones that was kind of a real biggie for me in my early days of selling, it was actually a, ⁓ can I say the brand? It was a MetaTilito Balance, Steve. It was one of those with the automated sliding doors, the ultra microbalance, yes. And I remember taking this, I think you probably trained me how to sell them to be fair.

Steve Vaughan (21:25)
great, great.

Yeah, of course you yeah.

yeah. Yes. I sold those as well. Yeah.

Gosh. ⁓

Jayne Green (21:53)
⁓ Eventually, eventually, but it took some time. I remember taking this piece of equipment here and got to demo stage and taking it in to see the customer. And I don't know what it was. The customer was not in the best mood. And I was then thinking, was I not in a good mood? Is he reflecting my behavior? And did the demo and it all seemed to go great. And other people were really fantastic about it. But the guy that was making the decision.

Steve Vaughan (21:55)
By the you got the order.

Jayne Green (22:23)
was not impressed and I could not work out why and I just remember having to take this machine back down six flights of stairs because the lift wasn't working. So by the time I got back down I felt really low. It was fairly early days and I'm like, is just not good. I remember reaching out to him and he didn't seem to want to talk to me. And I remember taking it really badly thinking, I failed, this is something I've missed.

you know, there's something gone wrong. Anyway, it turns out it wasn't that at all. The customer had got a whole load of other stuff going on in his work, in his private life. And we don't hear about that, do we? We don't quite know what we see or what's actually going on on the other side of the door or the other side of the telephone. And it took, you know, it took a couple of months to get resolved. And then the guy came back very apologetic for having, you know, not kept in touch and not been very positive.

Steve Vaughan (23:05)
And that's a point.

Jayne Green (23:22)
but it took a lot longer for that order to come out. But I remember feeling the pain of that for quite a bit of time, but it took two or three months to resolve with very little we could do apart from being really patient and not write it off.

Steve Vaughan (23:28)
That's a great example though,

Yeah, no, super example. And then she'd make a great point. You sometimes there's stuff going on in the background in the customer's world that whatever reason we're not party to. So again, it's not, it's not personal guys. It's business, it's life, isn't it? Really? So Jonathan, you got anything you can think of as well? ⁓

Jayne Green (23:45)
Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:52)
I always think back to kind of my BioRide days when it was really, I mean, just everything we sold, was two or three other competitors around, right? So was always like, all right, am I doing the best I can? Am I showing them the value I can? And I was selling a BioPlex product, the things that Walter Reed at the Army at the time. And it was a very, very large sale for beads. unfortunately at the end of it, where I thought we had a pretty good proposal put together,

Steve Vaughan (24:00)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:20)
It just didn't fall our way. And I mean, I was gutted because I was like, oh, this is going to be a good sale. This is a lad that we didn't have a foothold in. But the best part about it was that was a no, not now. And I was working with her.

Steve Vaughan (24:32)
Okay.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:35)
and just talking about different ways we can help. And one of the things was software, right? I was like, hey, look, I think the BioPlex software is much better suited to what you're, know, the kind of work you're doing. And we started solely from that, you know, so, you know, it was no for the beads, but it was a yes, eventually on the software. Then they got to see how well the software worked.

then they wanted to see us for another instrument. Then they wanted to see us for beads, right? And it was taking that no, but really kind of slowly building it up to where can we provide the most value, where can we fit, and where can we win. It was really cool. Yeah, again, but that was a no, now, right? And again, I loved the fact that I had that opportunity to still go in and provide value.

Jayne Green (25:05)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (25:06)
Great example. Yeah.

Mmm.

Jayne Green (25:10)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, keeping contact and just recognize if, okay, we can't get in with this particular route, really. We can get in through another way, really. So one of the things I've always thought about, salespeople don't understand sometimes, is that they are like market research, as well as salespeople. They can feed the voice back of the customer back to their own organization. So is there something here that if we are getting a lot of rejection, that possibly there's something we need to think about in terms of the product or the price or the market or...

Jayne Green (25:16)
Yeah, yeah, very good.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:45)
or the way position the product, you know, is that something that comes into this as well here? We might be getting a lot of rejection because frankly, we need to do something about the product or the price or something. Would that be the situation?

Jayne Green (25:55)
Yeah,

yeah, I mean, it certainly can be, can't it? I think, you know, if we see that there's a gap maybe that we're not quite filling or there's something that we're not quite meeting when, you know, we're talking about this particular product range or a specific product, you know, we're not fulfilling it. Feeding that backup into the organisation is fantastic, you know, product information, know, market insight.

That's valuable information to know and to have, isn't it, back up because we have to then analyze, you know, why aren't we winning the business? You know, and we have to look at that on multiple levels, isn't it? Could I personally do anything differently? Is that something that we need to look at within product development or, you know, sort of what are we looking at or have we priced ourselves out of the marketplace? Can we do anything with that?

Steve Vaughan (26:26)
It is, yeah.

Yeah.

So the learning that we can get from rejection isn't just from our own selling style or our own approach, it's also learning for the business and the product as well, Jonathan, perhaps. ⁓

Jayne Green (26:49)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (26:57)
Yeah. I mean, Steve, I love that you kind of were thinking now from our side and what the company is able to do. Right. But again, I think this all falls into this thing of rejection is not personal, right? It's, it's, it's part of a business. And again, if you don't have a product that's meeting needs or doing something, I know I used to remember, you know, with our CRM, it was always the wind loss reports, right? So marketing would constantly run these wind loss reports and why are we losing? if price was the biggest thing, okay, well maybe they need to figure out that this is, you

Steve Vaughan (27:02)
Mm. Mm.

Jayne Green (27:08)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (27:27)
we're not priced, Jane, as you were talking, we're not priced appropriately in the market. Or if it was a feature that people are really kind of hung up on, do we have to change that? Do we have to come out with a V2 or V3 of this? But I love that, again, rejection is not personal, but it's also not always on the sales rep, right? It could be the foundational stuff that they're selling that has some things that are not ideal in the market.

Jayne Green (27:36)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (27:38)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (27:47)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (27:50)
Yeah, absolutely.

You just reminded me actually, Jonathan, it's a slight tangent, but when I came back from living in the States, this is Scott 2003 now, gosh, ⁓ and this is all in my LinkedIn career history, so there's nothing confidential here. I joined Shimadzu as a sales manager for the UK and Ireland. And one of the first things I told the sales team was that they didn't lose enough orders and they all thought I was bonkers when I said that.

But the reason I said that was basically they were living within their own bubble of customers they knew they weren't knocking on doors and getting rejected. Because when you do move away from your existing customer base into your competitors ideal customers, you're going to get rejection, aren't you? Because they're using your competition. But that's what salespeople have to do. And I think if we live within our own bubble of the market we know and the customers we know and know us, we're never going to get rejected.

Jayne Green (28:19)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (28:44)
But we're never going to grow our business, we?

Jayne Green (28:46)
Yeah, I love that.

Jonathan Slasinski (28:46)
No, you speak,

yeah, I sort of why, because you speak to, think, a trap that a lot of reps fall into is like, hey, I'm going to my core customers and I'm going to grow them or, know, again, at Bioware, very competitive, everything we were selling. But one of my favorite things would be going into an in vitrogen lab and trying to sell them our gels, right? You know, and sure, you get a lot of no's about that because they were, they're set, you know, they've got, they've got their own system. But when you got that demo down and you got that win, you know, that's that yes. But it comes to those other

Steve Vaughan (29:05)
Mm.

Of you do, yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (29:16)
skills, about prospecting. Where are you really looking to go get your business? And I love kind of what you said. If you're not getting enough nos, you in the right pool? Are we really doing the right things to kind of grow our business? I love looking at it from that perspective.

Jayne Green (29:20)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (29:27)
Absolutely.

Thank you. Any final thoughts from you, Jane, on rejection and nose?

Jayne Green (29:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, sort of on the back of what both of you have just said, I kind of feel that, you we have to, maybe we don't like nos because in our comfort zone, we feel really, you know, we want to be safe and that no challenges us. So I've just been thinking about, you know, if we're going to get some more nos and being comfortable with it, let's be, because we're outside of our comfort zone and we're trying some new areas, we're making some new, you know, steps.

Steve Vaughan (29:51)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Jayne Green (30:06)
You know, we're being entrepreneurs in the way that we actually think, you know, and strive for me. Yeah, look for new business. And that will inform us a little bit more about where we're going or how we need to modify what we do. And it gives us a really good chance to look at, you know, the way we do things again and, you know, how do I handle that? I think it's a good reminder for all of us. So, reminder for me, it's not personal, but what can I do about it? Can anything be done about it? You know, how do I look for the next yes?

Steve Vaughan (30:09)
Yeah, yeah, Street Fighters. Yeah.

Yeah.

Great stuff. And a final thought from you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Slasinski (30:38)
Yeah, I just think the first thing is just it's not personal, right? And you have to understand that even though again, that's that raw emotion, just no one likes it, be told no, but it's what can we do? How do we learn from that no, right? And I think it's asking a few more questions, learning why that no was given. And then again, hoping it's a no, not now, right? And how do we keep building and showing value to be able to win something?

Jayne Green (30:55)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (30:58)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (30:59)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (31:02)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (31:02)
But

you know, it's, it's, it's, it's one of those raw things. I know, you know, it's the nose still the note, right? But again, I also like what we were talking about that flip side of remember how good a yes feels, right? So you're going to get to a yes eventually.

Steve Vaughan (31:06)
part of job.

Jayne Green (31:12)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (31:13)
Yeah, a whole bag

of Maltesers. ⁓ Friday evening, yes. I'll come round to you. to be some Maltesers later, Dear ⁓ Listen, I hope you've found this episode useful. If you've got any suggestions for future topics for the Luxury Choice podcast, we would love to hear from you. You can contact the show through email address is just podcast at georgejames-training.com.

Jayne Green (31:16)
Yeah, hold back your... yes! Friday evening. ⁓ They're all mine. Steve, no!

Jonathan Slasinski (31:17)
Hahaha ⁓

Steve Vaughan (31:42)
at podcast at georgejames-training.com or of course, if you know any of us personally, you can drop us an email or finance on LinkedIn as well. One thing we are interested in looking at in more detail in the future episode is AI and how much salespeople are using AI more and more in their business. And we'd love to hear some examples or some questions or even some concerns about using AI. We are planning to do a special episode around the whole topic of AI.

in sales, once we know a more about it ourselves, perhaps. But, you know, in all seriousness, you know, if you've got a particular interest in the power of AI in selling, we would love to hear from you and explore that more and perhaps even have you as a guest on the show. Don't forget, if you've enjoyed this episode, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. does help the show in lots of weird and wonderful ways. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks time. Until then, happy selling out there and we'll talk to you soon.