Kevin “KD” Dorsey explains why rejection physically hurts—activating pain receptors and releasing cortisol due to humans’ tribal biology—and gives short, practical (5–7 minute) tactics for salespeople to offset that negative chemistry and reduce burnout. He emphasizes acceptance that rejection will occur, having a brief pre-planned recovery routine, and using movement, music, social connection, humor, sunlight/grounding, and breath work to restore positive neurotransmitters and return to action quickly.
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Foreign. Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how.
To book more meetings, close more deals.
Faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head over to patreon.com inside sales excellence. Now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff.
What up, y'? All? KD here. Time for one on one with kd. And today we're talking about rejection. Talking about rejection today because this is something that is very, very prevalent in sales. It happens often. It's something that we all fear, but we've never really been taught how to handle it. How do you handle rejection? Because more often than not, the advice that is given is absolute garbage. And it sounds something like this. Don't take it personal. Let it just run off your back. When you get rejected, the best thing you can do is just make another call. All of those are actually completely wrong because they do not take into account our biology. Yep, we're going to a science lesson today, y'. All. This is to the core of what we're going to address is because rejection hurts physically. So quite literally, y', all, the pain receptors in our brain light up when we are rejected, when we get told no. When there's something we really want and we are told no, we don't get it. And then we are attacked. You are bad. You are worthless. How dare you. The pain receptors in our brain light up, meaning it does not know the difference between the physical pain or the verbal. Like, you know, call it garbage that we just had to deal with. And so when you're rejected and the pain receptors are lighting up in your brain, your body's also releasing a massive amount of cortisol into your bloodstream, into your system, right? So cortisol is the stress hormone. That's what causes your heart rate to go up. That's what causes like the sweatiness. That's what causes kind of like that gut ache, right? This cortisol is released, your breathing increases. And so knowing this is actually very, very important on how to actually deal with rejection, right? Because if you think about it, so this is going way, way back in terms of why. Why does rejection hurt the way that it does? It shouldn't. It's just words. Just saying no should not hurt as an individual, but it does. The reason why is we are tribal creatures as a species, right? Human beings, we are very tribal. Being rejected, being rejected for many a many years would have meant being banned from the tribe, right? Being banned from our community. And that meant death if we didn't have a tribe. If we didn't have a community, we were less likely to survive. That is actually why we try to avoid embarrassment. It's why we try to avoid upsetting people. So why we try to avoid conflict more often than not. Because for thousands of years, that could have got us kicked out of the tribe. And so that's why we always try to fit in and why we always try to avoid rejection. And so we're going to talk about here real quick how to deal with rejection when it occurs. Now, the first step in this is actually knowing that it is going to occur, right? It's going to happen. And just accepting that is a big step because so often we're actually hoping it doesn't happen, which makes it even worse when it does versus the acceptance of I'm going to get rejected, I'm going to be told no helps ease it when it does happen because your brain has already had some time to process it, versus when we're always thinking like, I hope I don't get rejected. I hope I don't get this, you know, objection. I hope I don't get yelled at on the phone like whatever else. It's actually setting us up for more pain when it does. So the first step for rejection is accepting it is going to occur. But then the second step is having a plan in place on what you're going to do when it happens, because otherwise you're just completely caught off guard. So now if we go back to the biology we were covering before, knowing that the body is releasing a lot of cortisol into the system and is feeling pain, we need to offset that with positive body chemistry, with positive brain chemicals. Things like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, norepinephrine, right? Things that are good when they are released. You need to have a plan in place to release those when you get rejected. But my salespeople and my sales leaders, we need to have good things that release those chemicals into the body. Sales also has a bad rap for substance abuse, right? We chase these chemicals through bad means, drugs, alcohol, crazy activities, right? Where we're chasing it from somewhere else. That's not what I'm talking About today, I'm talking about having positive ways to offset the negative chemistry that's occurring in our body after rejection. So things that are good for us that release those chemicals, movement, get up and move, get some exercise. Doesn't mean you got to go sweat it out at, you know, like an Orange theory or a CrossFit gym. But get up and move, go for a short walk, do some jumping jacks, grab the jump rope, right? Do some stretches. But movement releases positive chemicals. Music. Listen to positive music and just take a second to listen to it. Really be there, sing along with it, dance while no one's watching, right? Like, releasing that through music is great. Friends and family, right? Give the hug, give the kiss, make the phone call, right? Talking with friends or family also, too. This is one of the big. A big thing for people remotely is you used to be able to talk to people more when you got rejected in the office. Now you can't make that phone call. Hey, just need to chat with you real quick. I just got ripped apart. I just lost a deal. I thought for sure was coming in. Just need to talk with you here real quick, right? So that connection with people, funny videos, this is when you pull up YouTube, this is when you pull up TikTok or whatever else, right? Watching something funny right after you get rejected is important because what we're trying to do right now, right. Is offset that cortisol release. We're trying to offset that. The chemicals being released into the body, getting outside, get some air, get some sun. Just pause for a second. Ground yourself, stand in the dirt, the mud, the sand with no shoes on, right? All of these things are how you deal with rejection and breath work. Forgot to mention breath work. Box breathing. Take a deep breath. Hold it, exhale slowly. Hold it in again. Hold it, exhale, hold it, Breath work. Right now I want to be very clear on what I'm saying. Every time you get a no, you may not need to do this. Right? And there's still. There's so much old school pushback of like, what? No, rejection is just a part of. You just got to deal with it. How's that working out for us, y'?
All?
It's not working. We have people burning out. We have people leaving the industry, right? The vast majority of salespeople aren't even getting to gold. So we have to be able to say, hey, maybe what was taught is not the right way. Because maybe as a leader, you don't feel it that way. Maybe as a leader, rejection didn't bother you. That's not for most people. So having a plan in place of when this happens, this is how I'm going to handle it is the key. Right? So what you want to do for this next week is write down, what's your plan? What is your plan? What is my rejection plan? When I get rejected, here's what I'm going to do. And by the way, we're talking about no more than five minutes. This is not like, okay, I need to go take an hour to meditate, breath work, visualize, journal, talk about my feelings. No, no, no. This is five to seven minutes to quickly count our act, right? The cortisol being released is all it takes. And then you get right back to action. Then you go through it. Because the advice of just make another call is actually really bad advice. Because you're already in a state of pain. You're already in a state of panic, right? Panic creates the three Fs. Fight, Flight, or freeze. That's why more often that we don't do anything after we get rejected. We need to offset that with the positive body chemistry. So create your plan. Accept it's going to happen. Rejection is going to happen. Have a plan in place for when it does. You can get back on track faster. So hope this helped y'.
