No matter your level of skill or experience, as a sales person, you will occasionally find yourself facing a tide of rejection. You can do every single thing right and still fail-when the cards fall the wrong way enough times in a row, it can seem overwhelming. In this article, we’ll discuss ways to deal with repeated sales rejection and how to determine whether you need to keep pushing forward as you have been until your fortunes turn or change your game to turn thing around. Whatever the answer, acting to investigate and solve the problem will help you maintain the motivation you need to keep at it.

Take a Step Back

Before all else, it’s important to approach sales rejection with a clinical eye. Any number of factors can cause repeated sales rejection and it will only hurt you if you allow a ‘downer’ mindset to poison your view of the situation. Once you decide to look over and work at your sales rejection rates, you might find that you’re been making mistakes, or that external factors have changed, or determine that your earlier expectations were simply too optimistic compared to the industry standard-whatever the answer, it does no good to come in with preconceptions and a biased eye.

So take a breath and put your sales rejection at a distance. You want a healthy distance where you don’t take things personally, but you maintain personal accountability.

Analyze the Situation

Once you have the space to look at things clearly, it’s time to figure out the root or roots of your sales rejection rates. Before anything else, make sure you’re not imagining an issue where one does not exist-speak with your peers in the industry and see what their sales rejection to success ratios look like. It’s not uncommon for the industry standard to be 30, 50, or 100 calls per successful sale. Even if your success numbers came down, it’s possible that they were at an unusually high number before.

Once you know where you stand against the industry, figure out why. Have there been any external events that might depress numbers and drive up sales rejection? Maybe a new product from a competitor launched, maybe some seasonal situation has changed. Understanding your industry and what drives your normal sales is paramount to this process.

Maybe you fell behind the curve, missing a change in the way consumers buy. Perhaps you’ve been stressed, or depressed, and your numbers have reflected your personal life. Objectively understanding the problem lets you address it.

Learn and Improve Yourself

No matter the cause of repeated sales rejection, improving your selling methods will be beneficial, so put your frustration to work for you as a driving force to improve. Even if the external factors have piled high and created a barrier you can’t get past, you’ll be positioning yourself for a comeback when the tides change.

Your morale will stay high, because even though you aren’t selling you’re accomplishing something valuable. Don’t get suckered into the sillier methods of improvement while you’re vulnerable, though. You want to improve yourself with motivation born from sales rejection, not let desperation put you into awkward situations.