How Thick Is Your Skin?

One job I never wanted was any type of sales.  I don’t mean standing behind a counter at a retail store ringing up purchases for customers.  I mean the knocking- on-doors, making-hundreds-of cold-calls-a-day type of sales job.  Too much uncertainty.  Too much rejection.  No thanks.

Well, if you’ve been out of a job for awhile, your fear of rejection may be the cause.  Rejection is part of the game, and you’ll need to develop a thick skin if you want to win this one.  A job search is a sales campaign with you as the product the employer just can’t live without.  Your job is to promote the “product” in the best way you can.  Unfortunately, some of us just don’t have what it takes to keep getting up when we get knocked down.

No so with John Paul DeJoria, the president and CEO of Paul Mitchell Systems and Patron Tequila. According to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, this billionaire never finished college, but he was determined to make it big.  He slept in his car and went door to door hawking his line of hair care products.  He said he quickly learned you get 99 of those doors slammed in your face before you make a sale.

 Some job seekers want to throw in the towel when they get a few “no thanks” letters in the mail.  The difference between unemployment and a great new job may just be knocking on just one more door.  The trick is you never know which door is going to be the one that opens up with a warm welcome and an offer.  You just have to keep on going.

How thick is your skin?  I don’t mean literally, but how tough are you?  Are you tough enough to let rejection bounce off, or do you let every roadblock cut deep and leave a scar?  Like John Paul DeJoria, job seekers go door-to-door or website to website, filling in applications and sending out cover letters, only to get the virtual door slammed in their faces.  Here are some ways to grow a thicker skin and stay in the game.

• Read how successful people did it.   Check out the Forbes article above.  A lot of amazingly successful people didn’t have a college degree and failed miserably more than once.  Dave Ramsey, who wrote “The Total Money Makeover” and lectures all over the country on how to be debt-free, made and lost millions several times before he figured out the formula to successfully managing money. 

• Surround yourself with successful people.  Ditch the pity party partners.  It’s easy and strangely comforting to find people that are worse off than you.  All the time you spend complaining about how unfair life is can be spent figuring out why you’re striking out.  Successful people already did it.  Learn as much as you can and put some of their suggestions into practice.

• “Do Something!”   A very wise person said this years ago, and it’s the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten.  When I was trying to decide which course I should take with my business, and doing nothing in the meantime, she said, “Do Something.  And if that doesn’t work, do something else.”  The message was stop worrying about failing.  Don’t think about what people will say.  Just believe in yourself and take action.  Not every arrow hits the bull’s-eye. 

Keep trying.  Knock on one more door.   Sales is a game of numbers.  The more contacts you make, the more likely you are to find someone who is interested in your product.  The same goes for the job search.  Take aim and keep on firing.