This ^ is the feeling we often get from sales. Some mix between frustration and flat out disappointment.
I do not have a perfect formula for curbing disappointment—I try a bunch of new things and I feel disappointed quite a bit. But here are some steps I’ve found to be helpful in making it easier:
1. Do the thing a lot.
Whether it’s applying to internships, talking to people I don’t know well, or doing a presentation, the more I do each—whether I improve or not—the easier it is to handle rejection.
I think this happens because (a) there’s less time to think about the rejection (with all the things you’re doing), and (b) each item becomes less important as it becomes a lower percentage of the total attempts.
For example, when I started to apply to internships, I applied to about 4. I only got an interview from one, 2 of them didn’t respond to me, and 1 of them responded saying they’d found someone else.
I was super disappointed.
Then I started applying to more. A lot more. Once I had applied to about 50 different companies, the thought of rejection was completely off my mind. It was more of a game than a concern. I was just trying to see how many business I could be a good fit for at that point.
As a nice side benefit, the more I applied, the better I got at it, and I began getting interviews and offers.
2. With more rejection comes more acceptance.
Going along with the internship example, as I applied to more companies, I got rejected more, just because there were more people to reject me. Instead of a couple places ignoring me, dozens did.
But with more rejection came more opportunity, and knowing that made it hard to feel disappointed.
3. No one means to hurt you.
I have to remind myself of this soooo much. When people reject you in a sales setting, they don’t want to make you feel bad, and they don’t dislike you. In fact, they’re probably not thinking of you one way or another. People are just busy being busy—concerned with how they’re looking or feeling and the tasks they have to complete.
It takes a load off to remember. It’s easier to move on when you realize that most of the time, everyone else already has.
BoweryJE22
This definitely rang true in my search for summer internships in the past couple months. Applying for more jobs in a varying range of fields grew the number of acceptances and refusals, but i was not offended by the no’s anymore.