To succeed as a financial advisor, you have to prospect, get referrals, and open accounts. Getting your foot in the door with affluent investors and business people can often feel disruptive and demoralizing, especially when your offers get rejected.
But no matter who you are, rejection is an occupational risk that you will have to hazard. The best thing to do is to learn to embrace rejection. Although easier said than done, letting the fear of rejection dictate your work means that the odds will be against you, especially because rejection in this business is a given. It is also key to your business’ growth.
Fear of rejection is perfectly normal and will likely never go away for most financial advisors. Even though there is no single way of overcoming the fear of rejection that works for everyone, the following are some tried and true methods to take the sting out of the inevitable rejection.
Take inspiration through example: Consider some of the most successful people that you look up to and consider the failures and rejections that they experienced on the way to their success. This could be anybody from Henry Ford or Michael Jordan, to a parent or friend.
Don’t take rejection personally: Make a point of separating yourself from your services, and keep in mind that your offer is risking rejection–not you. If you take it that way, then you can utilize the rejection to help you understand what you might adjust in your offer.
Being liked is important, especially in business relationships. But it isn’t everything, and it’s not usually the reason that people reject your offer.
Maintain a reasonable perspective: Don’t get overly sensitive about being rejected. If you are smarting from being on the receiving end of rejection, consider the situation from a different point of view.
Haven’t you rejected people before? Consider the last time you received a cold call and you said “no”. Did you spend a lot of time afterward thinking about that person and how annoying or terrible it was that they offered you a business proposition? Of course not. Likely you moved on shortly after. Most people act and think as if they are the center of their worlds, so if someone rejects you, remind yourself that it is not that big of a deal. They’ll move on from your offer, and by the same token, you should move on from their rejection, too.
Remember that rejection is perfectly normal: There isn’t a single financial advisor with a perfect rate of conversion. You may have bad days where you feel like a failure, but a bad day once in a while won’t lead to total failure. Keep your failures in perspective and embrace your successes. Set daily and weekly goals that you can hit to keep proactive, and to help you feel successful when you hit them. This can help you maintain a balanced perspective.
A slightly different approach, if you like, is to make rejection a goal. Instead of focusing on a handful of successful appointments, consider incorporating a rejection goal into your daily or weekly goals. This could be another way to stay proactive in terms of one of those planned rejections turning into success instead. This could also be a way to put a positive spin on your rejection.
Remember that rejection is just one part of the learning process: Especially if you are just starting out, keep in mind that rejection is a key component to learn from as you go. Although not the most comforting thing to hear, rejection is a great way to gather insights about your approach and what you offer. Learn to brush it off when somebody tells you “no” so you can sharpen your skills and tweak your approach. Use rejection as an opportunity instead of allowing it to intimidate you from achieving your goals.
Remember that there is no use in blaming yourself for the occasional mistake. Remember that you don’t have control over how others react to you, but you do have control over how you react to receiving rejection.
How bad can it be? What could be the worst thing to happen when you get rejected? This can be a helpful question. Basically, all that will happen is that your offer will be declined, and probably politely at that. So what’s so awful about that? Prior to rejecting your offer, the prospect was not your client. Now that they have rejected your offer, they are still not a client. Nothing has changed! You survived before, you can survive now.
Use rejections to steer you towards an evolving and improved prospecting approach. Don’t let fear overtake your work, stay optimistic, and remember that success won’t come if you don’t ask first.
Utilizing years of success in the multifamily development space, I’m offering my experience as a coach for wealth managers. Offering a one-a-kind independent financial advisor coaching experience, I’ll help you learn how to market yourself as a financial advisor and build a thriving business and growing clientele.
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