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Customer Rejection

Emotional Intelligence

What to do when the customer feels that you don't have 'enough' experience to work on their accounts?

Losing an account, or failing at landing one as a new (graduate) employee is disappointing. But if you want to succeed in this business, you can’t take it personally. As a quick reminder, rather than pushing yourself against the other person's beliefs with facts (which creates resistance) you show the other person how their beliefs actually support your viewpoint, rather than the viewpoint they currently support.


During my research on this topic, I read an article by Geoffrey James, editor at Inc Magazine, for changing another person’s mind. This column provides an example of this process: changing the mind of a reluctant customer.

This is a three-step process:

1. Validate the beliefs 
The opposite of "pressure creates resistance" is that "acceptance creates flexibility." Showing that you understand the other person's beliefs and accept them as valid (even if you don't 100% agree with them) causes the other person to relax, especially true if they were expecting you to attack them directly.

2. Weaken the connections
Lead the other person to see flaws in the logic that connects their belief to the conclusion or opinion that you'd like to change. This is best done through questions rather than statements, because questions lead the other person to hold forth from "center stage," while statements are likely to feel like an attack.

3. Reconnect the beliefs
Show how the other person's beliefs--when taken in total--more naturally lead to different conclusions or opinions than the ones they've previously reached. In other words, you never attempt to change the other person's beliefs; you merely show how a different conclusion better reflects those beliefs.

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