Rejection & Fear
Rejection
Turn rejection into research. It is important that you track all of your initial sales asks (or donation asks) rejections and failures and learn from them in a strategic way. Later in this book I will provide some specific ways to use a Customer Relationship Management tool or CRM to help you track all potential client interactions and learn from each interaction, including rejections, and missed sales. All of this information is valuable research and prepares you to improve the quality of your seed. When someone says no... that’s fine... Look at it as an opportunity to learn why? To improve your price point, offering, format, etc.
Ask: What would you imagine as the best solution?
The other important actions to do after rejection, and revision, is re-seeding. Its ok to fail. Some plants will die. You can overcome this by planting a lot of seeds or developing a “better” drought resistant seed high quality (modified gift offering).
Fear is the Enemy of your Seed
Remember fear is always the enemy of the sale. It is the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, and the fear for one’s livelihood, safety, and provision. Fear can push you into a wrong sale, fear can shift your mind off your purpose, and onto money. Fear can mis-align your priorities.
How to overcome fear.
Fear and doubt can be crippling. It is important to understand that fear will arise and how to shift your mind emotions to embrace fear as real and move forward past fear with the recognition that “love” is real also. Develop a deep love for your purpose, your customers and your mission. Acknowledge the fear is sitting where your faith should be, and then play musical chairs. Really…play music and move your body.
Find a song that gets your business swagger going and play the song a lot, until it helps you to realize what’s really important and how you were born for this. For me when I was starting my business the song was “Started from the Bottom” by Drake. Now my song is “Entrepreneur” by Pharrell Williams.
After you dance away your fear you are ready to embrace the most difficult and most fearful part of the sales process… The “ask”.
The key making a good ask is understanding that seeds take time to grow. Likewise, “the ask” is often not a one conversation or one day appeal but a result on an intentional sales process that doesn’t push for a quick sale but allows it to grow organically over time. This is not easy, it can be counter-intuitive, and it is hard when you are broke, which I was when starting my business, from the unemployment line. Nevertheless… time makes the sale