Dealing with NO

By Ralph Marston
rmarston@greatday.com

Ask yourself this question:

How many people will you talk to about your product(s) who will turn you down. . . before you quit?

For most people who get into network marketing the number is between 3 and 10. And therein lies the difference between a world-class network marketer and your average mediocre distributor -- the ability to deal with rejection.

There are basically two ways to avoid rejection. First, you can simply not ever try anything, and you are guaranteed never to be rejected. That works real well but it gets you absolutely nowhere in life or in your business. In order to have anything in life, you must ask for it. And when you ask for things, people are going to turn you down, probably more times than not. And that leads to the second way of avoiding rejection. And that is to set yourself up properly from the start so that you can approach people without ever feeling that you've been rejected.

To do this, you need to first re-program your mind. Yes, that's right, re-program your mind. Try it! Close your eyes and think about the experience of presenting your product to someone and having them say "no." Visualize it in your mind. Hear the words being said. Think of how you would feel. Now, take that image in your mind and move it up and down in front of you. Experience yourself moving it around. Now, in your mind, take the image and shrink it very, very small. Then move it off to the side of you. Now take the image and move it way, way back behind you. Visualize yourself on an interstate highway, and move the image of your negative experience way back down the road behind you. Move it about five miles back and speed away from it. How does that feel? Does it bother you a lot less now? Now it's not rejection, it's just a meaningless event, that you've put far behind you. Knowing that you can do this with any unpleasant event causes your self-confidence to truly increase.

The next step is to re-evaluate your approach. If you never push anything on anyone they can't possibly reject you or your product. What you need to do is set yourself up from the start so that your prospect is actively asking you for the product if he/she is interested. If you structure your approach so that you never give people the opportunity to reject you, then guess what? You'll never be rejected.

For example, suppose your product is a nutritional supplement. Instead of calling your friend Dan and saying, "Dan, would you be interested in trying my 'Maxi-Vita-Min' powder? It's only $24.95 and is guaranteed or your money back!" Dan will probably say, "No, I don't think so" and you'll get that rejected feeling.

But suppose you changed your approach. Call Dan, and talk about something else for a while. Then . . .

"Dan, I was wondering, do you take any kind of vitamins or nutritional supplement?"

"No."

"No? I didn't either until about 3 months ago I started taking this stuff called Maxi-Vita-Min. I was real skeptical because I didn't think it would really do much, but my brother-in-law just kept pestering me 'til I tried it. You know how that goes, right? I just tried it to get him off my back. But I'll tell you something, I've really been feeling great the past couple of months, and I'm starting to think that there might be something to this stuff. I know a bunch of people who have tried it and I've heard some pretty amazing stories. I just wondered if you had ever heard of it."

STOP STOP STOP. Don't say another word. If Dan is interested, he'll ask you more about it. Probably something like this:

"Uh, no. Do you think you could get me some to try?"

Or, if Dan is not interested, he'll say something like:

"Uh, no, never have. Hey, how 'bout those Cowboys. Did you see the game Monday night?"

Now is that a rejection? No, of course not. He's just not interested. He hasn't rejected you because you haven't really asked him for anything. He has simply failed to express an interest. So you just move on to something else and continue on like nothing happened, because nothing did happen. You just had a normal, stress-free conversation. You offered him a chance to express an interest. You told him your story, you connected yourself with the product (in case he decides later that he wants it), but you did it in a way in which it was impossible for you to be rejected.

No one likes rejection. But rejection does NOT have to be a part of your network marketing business. If you set it up right in your own mind and in the mind of your prospect, you never have to fear being rejected.