As an SDR, you’re well aware that not every cold call will lead to meaningful conversations or booked meetings.
Most prospects on your cold calling list won’t pick up your call. Out of those who do pick up the phone, some hang up on you, others pose myriad objections, and a select few tell you not to call them again.
And let's face it, facing such huge amounts of rejections daily can be exhausting. But taking them personally will not only hamper your sales performance but also take a toll on your mental health.
This is why it's important to adopt the right mindset to handle cold calling rejections the right way. Doing so helps you avoid burnout and actually smile and dial.
Here, we'll explain how to handle rejections in cold calling using practical, expert-approved steps and strategies, so you can build your resilience and boost your performance.
5 Immediate Steps To Deal with Cold Call Rejection
According to a Gartner study, an alarming 89% of B2B sellers feel burned out at work. This is due to multiple reasons, such as inadequate development opportunities, a heavy workload, and even rejection from prospects.
The repeated rejections, coupled with the pressure to meet targets, can lead to emotional exhaustion and a dip in productivity. If your cold call ends in a negative response, here are 5 immediate steps you can take to avoid burnout and maintain your well-being:
Step 1: Take a Break After a Bad Call
Facing a cold calling rejection can be disheartening, affecting your mood and sometimes, even the quality of the next call. To avoid this, top-performing SDR Manager, Ashley Dees suggests taking a break for 10-15 minutes.
"Not all calls are bound to go well. Spending time with your pets or taking a walk during this break will help you clear your mind and move on to the next call," she explains.
Pro Tip: Find something motivating that resonates with you, such as your favorite song, a podcast, an inspirational quote, or an exercise routine. When rejections bog you down, use these during your breaks and bounce back.
Step 2: Understand the Rejection Objectively
Approach cold call rejections as valuable learning opportunities and analyze them from a business perspective. Understand the prospect's reason behind the rejection - was it a budget constraint, bad timing, or simply because they didn't need your solution? This will allow you to look at the situation objectively, identify areas for improvement, and tailor your approach for subsequent interactions.
"I reframed sales rejection entirely. In my mind, it became market research – no more and no less. When people wouldn’t meet with me, it was simply data. And, when I analyzed it, I could see that there were many factors that could have caused this reaction," says sales expert Jill Konrath.
To have an objective view of the rejection, she recommends analyzing 5 things:
- Value propositions
- The time of day that you called
- The flow and structure of what you said
- The medium you used to get in touch with them
- Your reactions to their brush-offs
Step 3: Analyze the Call Recording to Spot Mistakes
Cold call rejections are inevitable. But they also present a valuable opportunity for growth and improvement. You can do this by listening to the recordings of your cold calls.
"The only way to get better is to review your calls by recording them. There is great technology available to do this today yet many still don't take it seriously,” says sales expert Collin Mitchell.
Here are the 3 things he suggests to analyze in your call recordings:
- The words you choose to use
- The tone you used in the call
- Did you happen to listen to what the prospect said?
This allows you to identify what went well and what didn't, helping you refine your approach.
Collin also suggests occasionally listening to calls that went well to appreciate improvements and celebrate small wins.
Step 4: Plan for Upcoming Calls Based on Your Analysis
Analyzing cold call recordings will help you identify if there's a pattern or common points at which prospective customers tend to lose interest. This will also allow you to see if there are common objections or concerns about the product. Armed with this information, you can effectively tailor your approach to future calls and better address prospects' concerns and pain points.
“Your prospect doesn’t care about you. What they care about is themselves. Is this conversation going to be worth my time? Will this solution solve a problem that I care about? When the prospects see that the conversation is about them, they’ll be more engaged,” explains leading sales strategist, Marc Wayshak.
Step 5: Practice, Practice, Practice
Now that you know what to say, it’s time to practice how you’ll say it. And while practicing doesn't guarantee zero rejections, it will help you improve your techniques and resilience to rejection.
"There's no way you're going to get better if you don't do it and practice and you learn more of what you're comfortable with and what you're not comfortable with,” says top-performing SDR, Nikita Solberg.
Here are some parts of your cold calling script you can practice before you call:
- Cold call opening line
- The flow of your pitch
- Objection handling
Pro Tip: You can also practice with a colleague to get real-time feedback on what’s working and what isn’t.
Bonus Step: Use Soft Rejections to Your Advantage
Not every prospect will give you a hard no and ask you never to contact them again. Most prospects give you Cold calling objections like:
- “I don’t have time.”
- “We’re using another tool.”
- “Send me an email.”
Don’t take these as outright rejections. Instead, see these objections as soft rejections that give you scope for follow-ups. Here’s how:
- Politely ask when might be a better time to call back or understand their specific needs and concerns.
- Send resources like success stories, cheat sheets, and links to free webinars that will prepare them for the future.
This helps you look genuine and you save both your and the prospect's time.
5 Cold Calling Mindsets for Overcoming Fear of Rejection in Cold Calling
Cold calling has a success rate of 2%. This means for every 100 calls you make, a whopping 98 calls will be rejected. That is a pretty high number of rejections to face daily.
But despite the low success rate, cold calling is still effective as a sales outreach method. It allows you to connect directly with prospective clients, understand their needs, and build relationships that can lead to sales opportunities.
Therefore, the best way to deal with rejection is by adopting the right mindset. Here are 6 mindset tips from top experts to help you navigate cold calling rejections with confidence:
Sales Mindset #1: Detach from Call Outcomes with a Surfer's Mindset
"Surfers don’t feel rejected when they crash into a wave. Crashing and riding waves are all part of the same experience," explains sales expert Josh Braun. "Surfers ride waves, they don’t try to control waves. They go where the wave takes them."
Just like surfers embrace both the excitement of riding a wave and the inevitability of crashing into one, you too must look at cold calling success and rejection as two sides of the same coin.
The key to moving on in your cold calling journey is to maintain equanimity. Don't celebrate too much after a successful call, and don't sulk when a call goes bad.
Remember: You don’t control the outcome of your cold calls. So, like a surfer who looks forward to riding the next wave, look forward to making your next call.
Sales Mindset #2: Help First, Sell Next
Approach cold calling as helping the prospect solve a pain point instead of making a sale. Prioritize providing genuine value and assistance to potential customers before initiating a sales pitch. This will help you build trust and rapport and position you as a problem-solver rather than just a salesperson.
“When you're honest with them, they get honest with you. And once they get honest with you, you know how to respond to their obstacles and concerns,” says Sam Holeman, an SDR who makes 100 cold calls a day and has hit his 150% quota.
Sales Mindset #3: Cultivate Empathy for Prospects
Mostcold calling rejections can’t be attributed to your pitch or product. It might be due to a multitude of factors outside your control. You see, every person on the other end of the line has their own challenges, responsibilities, and pressures.
Therefore, it's important to empathize with them and not view rejection as a reflection of your worth or ability. This will enable more meaningful interactions and pave the way for long-term relationships. But how do you do this? Sales expert Tom Slocum suggests a 4-step strategy:
- Active listening: Taking the time to understand your prospect's needs
- Putting yourself in their shoes: Empathizing with their professional challenges
- Finding solutions together: Collaboratively working towards their goals
- Building genuine relationships: Beyond transactions, it's about people
Sales Mindset #4: Adopt a 'One More Call' Attitude
Getting rejected over and over again during a cold calling block can drain the motivation out of you.
In such moments, when you're feeling overwhelmed by rejections and want to give up, tell yourself that you'll make just one more call before taking a break or calling it a day. Don't worry too much about how the call goes. Think of each call you make as a reward in itself.
This approach has 2 big perks:
- You'll build mental toughness by pushing yourself to take action in the face of adversity.
- The 'one more call' you make might turn out better than you'd expect. It could get connected, and you might have a good conversation with the prospect. Who knows, you might end up finding your cold calling mojo back.
Jeb Blount, sales acceleration specialist and renowned author, recommends making one more call when it's time to go home. "So many of my 'one more calls' turned into sales," he says. "When it is time to go home, make one more call,” kept me going for one more call (and sometimes two, three, or four). It kept me focused on paying for my success, in advance, with hard work.”
He gives an example of how these calls he made boosted his cold calling performance: "Five more calls a week resulted in 20 additional calls a month, resulting in 240 additional calls a year. At a 34% closing rate that produced an additional 82 deals a year, almost $2 million in incremental revenue, and, an extra $100k in my pocket."
Sales Mindset #5: See Every Rejection as a Redirection
While you can't avoid rejections altogether, you can, in fact, look at it as a redirection. You see, every 'no' is your chance to gather valuable insights. It can:
- Highlight areas for improvement
- Reveal a mismatch between the prospect's requirements and your product, or
- Indicate that the timing isn't right.
This can help you refine your sales strategies and adjust your approach.
"We can remind ourselves that rejection is often subjective and influenced by various factors beyond our control. With this shift in perspective, we can approach rejection as a valuable learning experience, an opportunity to grow and improve rather than a definitive judgment of our worth," says co-author of Go for No, Andrea Waltz.
Most importantly, seeing rejection as redirection builds resilience. Instead of thinking of it as a dead end, you try exploring new avenues that might lead to success.
Make Every Cold Call Successful With the Right Tool
When it comes to handling cold calling rejections the right way, there's no one-size-fits-all approach. But creating a routine to cope with it and adopting some mindset shifts can help you embrace it as a chance to refine your pitch, improve your approach, and boost your cold calling success.
Another simple way to improve your cold calling success rate is by automating dialing with a sales engagement platform like Klenty. Klenty's sales dialer helps you make bulk calls in a single click and automatically stores all prospect data, scripts, and notes in CRM.
Here are other features of the sales dialer that can help you enhance your cold calling success:
- Parallel dialer. It helps you call up to 5 prospects at the same time, scaling your cold calling efforts and enhancing call productivity by reducing time spent on unproductive calls.
- Time Zone Detection. This lets you batch prospects based on timezone and call them during prime business hours.
- Local numbers. Sales dialer allows you to call prospects from numbers in their area code to increase your chances of connecting.
- One-click voicemail. Send personalized, pre-recorded voicemails in a single click.
- AI-powered call notes. Klenty’s conversation intelligence platform, Call IQ, helps you record calls, take notes, and log these notes in your CRM without any manual effort.
- Review calls with ease: Call IQ arms you with instant transcripts of your cold calls. This lets you analyze what openers worked and how to deliver value prop without sitting through hours of call recordings. Improve your call scripts with ease and book more meetings.
Book a demo now to see how Klenty can help take your cold calling performance to the next level!
