How to get over the fear of rejection, and up your negotiation game!
If you are just starting out one of the biggest hurdles and maybe the hardest things to overcome is the fear of rejection. Its human nature that we want to be accepted, in life and in business, this drives how we negotiate in both arenas. This fear of rejection often holds us back from realizing our full potential, weather that’s by not approaching a prospective love interest, client or deal. The advice we often get on how to overcome this is by simply putting yourself out there, swallowing your pride and taking the shot, this is more often easier said then done especially in the beginning, they say you need to get 100 “no’s” to get to the yes. This logic I have found is sound in theory but not so much in practice as in order to get to 100 no’s you have to get passed the first one, then the first 10 and its that first one and the nine that follow that are the most difficult after all.
So lets back up a bit, I am admittedly not the most outgoing guy, I traditionally don’t strike up conversations with those I don’t know. This served me well for the most part until I decided to take the plunge into real estate, first as an agent then as an investor. Both of these roles require constant communication, networking and the hardest thing for me negotiation. Negotiations where something that I despised, I viewed as a waste of time, if you wanted X amount of dollars, and what you had was worth that amount and I had it then why bother, just pay the money and move on. This is how I lived my life and this is how I went about buying things, cars, my first home everything. In fact I bought my first home for 1K over asking just to be done with it. I first got my Real Estate License simply to gain knowledge but more importantly to take action, to take the first step towards investing, at the time I didn’t have the capital to start investing (or so I thought) and I had no network (also a fallacy my mind created). Once I had my license I jumped straight in, I still had no clue what I was doing and my first deal was a disaster mainly because I did not know how to negotiate and my fear of rejection held me back from even giving it a go and it fell apart rather quickly.
So I did what any one on this journey does and started reading books, blogs, forums and listening to the pod casts. One book in particular I found extremely helpful was Chris Voss’s “Never Split The Difference” although not at all real estate related it did offer great insight to the world of negotiation and rejection. So now armed with the tools to fight the negotiation battle I felt I was in a much better position, and I was however the fear of rejection and the relative inexperience in actually negotiating was now a hurdle I couldn’t quite crack. I continued to work as a REALTOR and gain this experience but its not every day you negotiate a deal, the client from my first deal that fell apart did however stick with me (a debt I am still trying to repay) and we did wind up getting a deal done, this one worked out much better and we were able to get a lot more of what we needed from the seller. I still however lacked experience and desperately sought it out, while working full time in the military and part time as a Realtor.
The day it all came together was like any other, I had just gotten off of work and was heading home, sitting in traffic bored out of my mind. I was expecting a call from a prospective client, so when my phone rang without hesitation I answered, “Good Afternoon, Douglas McQueen with XXX realty how can I help you today” fully expecting to hear the prospect on the other end of the phone. Instead I got the voice of a man named Aaron, he was calling about my cars warranty and the upcoming expiration….. I immediately hung up the phone frustrated that I had wasted my time and just generally annoyed by the interruption. The prospect however never called that day, as I sat there in traffic though my mind began to spin, Aaron wanted to sell me a warranty, one I had no intention of buying (and one he probably had no intention of ever delivering). That’s when it occurred to me, what I had considered a waste of time and an annoying interruption was actually an opportunity to practice negotiations, and although most likely I would be rejected and never actually succeed it didn’t matter it was free live practice that had no risk, if I failed I didn’t lose anything and if I succeeded I wouldn’t have to dedicate anything.
From this point on I welcomed the telemarketing calls, whenever they called if I wasn’t actually busy I would answer. In the beginning my objective was simply to keep them on the line as long as I could, listen to the pitch and try to drag the conversation out, practice the art of keeping the lines of communication open. Then I started actually negotiating with them, the car warranty often starts at 1000 dollars or so, I would negotiate back and forth and see how low I could get them to go. On the first couple of attempts I failed miserably and they would simply hang up, after a while though as my skill set improved and I learned what worked and what didn’t things would start moving. I found myself getting down a hundred, two hundred sometimes even 5 hundred, as I continued I could get an extended warranty for as low as $250 with an added incentive of 10% for a referral. I end each call the same way, thanking them for their time and the opportunity to speak with them and simply hang up. I receive a lot of unsolicited sales calls about all kinds of things, Lead generation, advertising, car warranty’s, cable subscriptions, news paper subscriptions etc…. I now view all of these as opportunities to exercise my negotiation tactics, to try new approaches and to hone my skills.
What I first viewed as an annoying inconvenience has proved to be beneficial to me, it just took a mind-set shift to see it. It has made me a better negotiator and vastly improved my communication skills but most importantly it got me over my fear of rejection and served as a proof of concept to the skills I had read about cementing their legitimacy as well as some of the illegitimacy I have come across. I still take a lot of the calls and my new aim is to see how far up the tree I can go, as one contact passes me on to their “manager” or their superior I know I am getting closer to the actual deal with each step up the ladder the price always gets lower and lower and my skill set gets that much sharper.
One word of caution if you decide to try this approach out, you have to be careful not to share any personal information, as many of these calls are for nefarious purposes and an attempt to commit fraud. There are also some ethical issues that you are at some point not negotiating in good faith as you have no intention of actually making a deal, but I can look past this most times since at the end of the day the calls are unsolicited.
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