TBBVA 004: Virtual Assistants: Getting Over The Fear Of Rejection

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Tweetables:

We’ve got to get over this fear of being rejected. #vatip Gotta Tweet!

Clients are buying who we are, not just services. #vatip Gotta Tweet!

Your response to getting rejected should be thank you. #vatip Gotta Tweet!

In Words:

Hello and welcome to episode number four. We are talking about The Rejection Workshop.

I saw an article on Facebook recently regarding rejection and how this guy got over rejection and improved his sales and improved his life as a result of getting over his fear of rejection. So I’m reading the article and it’s talking about he’s purposefully going out every single day and his goal is to get rejected.

Now, how many of you, like myself, have a fear of rejection?

It’s hard when someone tells us no or doesn’t respond in the way that we were hoping they would respond. It’s jarring. It throws you off. It’s scary. For me, it just makes me want to just, you know, okay, go back in my little hole and just retreat. I’m an introvert, so go back and retreat.

But after reading this article and thinking about what to share with you today. What can we talk about? I’m like, you know what, that is a piercing theme right now because it’s something that we’ve got to get over.

We’ve got to get over this fear of being rejected.

So I have an idea. You in? Okay. Now, your first task will be to read the rejection article and it’s going to be in the show notes.

Now, I realized on the previous episodes, I mentioned the show notes but didn’t tell you where to get the show notes: tiffanyparson.com. That’s the website. That’s where all the podcast episodes get uploaded, all the show notes.

Starting with this one, and I’ll have to go back and update the links, but what I’ll do is make sure if you go to tiffanyparson.com/four and that will get you to this episode so that you can get the show notes that will link to the get over the fear of being rejected article.

What we’re going to do together is get over this fear of rejection because it’s holding us back in a lot of ways.

This is our Rejection Workshop. Welcome. Thank you for listening.

Number one, we’ve got to get clients right? We’re in the business of being a virtual assistant and we have to get clients, and one of the reasons why getting clients may be difficult is because we haven’t put ourselves out there to be rejected so we can get to the clients who want us, deserve us, and enjoy working with us.

Number one for our action item is to put ourselves out there.

Specifically, if you are just getting started as a virtual assistant, or you’re changing skills or services that you’re offering and you want to test it out, or you just want to have a way to get out there, put yourself out there, the best way to do it, and you’ve heard me say this time and time again, elance.com.

Start writing proposals. Start putting yourself out there.

If your friends and family don’t know you have a virtual assistant business, start putting it out there. Be specific and tell them exactly what you do, and ask them if they know anyone who could use your services. So time to just put ourselves out there.

Like the guy in the article, we’re going to get over this fear of rejection and just jump out there and be ready for it. We are expecting it, right? We know everybody won’t need us right away. Everybody won’t be able to afford our pricing. We talked about rates last week, the client payment options. Everyone won’t be able to afford us, and it’s okay.

Guess what our response is to getting rejected? Thank you!

Thank you so much, because that’s what we need. If you want to have a tick sheet to create it so you can keep track of how many times you put yourself out there, create one.

In my course Writing Winning Proposals, I always recommend five proposals a day if you’re doing your VA business full-time. It’s a number to start with. You can do more. Totally up to you, but I like the number five, five for grace.

So five a day for those proposals. That’s the first thing.

The next thing, and this is something that I’ve been toying around with in my head, but haven’t fleshed it out to go do it because I know we’re going to encounter huge rejection with this.

Here it is, and this is fun, is calling small business owners in your area to find out how they could use an additional hand in their business that was not in their office. You’re really asking them how they could use a virtual assistant. You and I both know everyone doesn’t know what a virtual assistant is.

What you want to find out is how would they be able to use your services. Do they currently have an assistant? Is there anything in their office right now that they would love to hand off but they can’t because there isn’t anyone in the office to help them with it?

More than likely it’s related to something online if they’re an offline business like an accountant or a real estate agent. These are people just thinking off the top of my head. That is number two, sticking with the five a day. You can decide what you want to ask them. However you want to phrase it, it’s totally up to you.

So five a day on those calls.

That’s easy to research. You can go online and research it. If you still have the Yellow Pages, open that up and research it. If they’re still using the Yellow Pages, they don’t know about other avenues, more than likely, like social media and different things like that.

Let’s find out how we can help them based on the services we’re already providing. This is one way – remember the goal is to get over the fear of rejection.

I want to read a section from Barbara Corcoran’s book. I don’t know if you guys have heard of her book. It’s called If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails: And Other Lessons I Learned from My Mom. This is by Barbara Corcoran from the Shark Tank, and in the back there’s a section that goes over “the most amazing, extraordinary and distinguishing characteristics of great salespeople.” She got her start with real estate, so she worked with real estate agents and developed her company from there.

I want to read the first one because when I opened the book, I had already thought about talking to you about getting over the fear of rejection after reading that article, and the first thing I see is this: Number one, “Great salespeople fail well.”

I’m going to say it again. “Great salespeople fail well.”

You may not consider yourself a salesperson, but we all have to sell ourselves because the clients are buying us. They could choose anyone to do their social media, but they are buying us, so we sell ourselves. We market ourselves.

Yes, we provide a service, but what differentiates all of us as individuals is our individuality, who we are. That is what separates us from each other.

It’s also the reason why it’s so important to be yourself. Be yourself.

With that number one, here’s more information on that from her book: “Great salespeople get knocked down like everyone else, but take a lot less time getting up. In fact, the lowest the rate of suicide is among commission salespeople because in the course of a normal day they field so many rejections that even when life strikes them some extra-difficult blows, they bounce back out of habit.”

Wouldn’t you like to be able to bounce back from feeling down or from feeling rejected?

Wouldn’t you like to be able to bounce back quickly, bounce back because you’re used to it, bounce back because it’s a habit. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I think it would be.

If one of your fears is the fear of rejection, it would help to be able to bounce back quickly because months could go by, years could go by, and you hold yourself back from the greatness that is inside of you because someone rejected you, or you think they might reject you.

I have a feeling if we get started with these action items, then yeah, we’re going to get rejected, but we’re also going to have some people who are intrigued, who are interested, who want to learn more about us and what we provide and what we can do, therefore building our client roster, building that pipeline because even if they don’t need you now, they certainly could use you later.

We’ve talking about sending out the proposals using job boards like Elance. You can also include in there letting everybody you know, family, friends, know that you are a virtual assistant and what you provide and if they know anyone who could use your service.

Then that person may be a local business owner, so you take them to action number two and call them, because they’re a local small business owner, to find out how they could use additional help in the office, something they don’t currently have, if there’s something they wish they had that they don’t.

Many small business owners aren’t able to update their websites. They aren’t able to post on social media as frequently as they like. They aren’t able to send out newsletters, write blog posts. Why? Because they’re servicing customers, but just like us as VAs where we have to service our clients and also keep the business going on the backend with sales and marketing, they have to do that same, and we can help them in that.

Number three. Now, we’re all virtual. We’re all behind our computers. Most of our clients, we communicate with them through email, Skype, on the phone, maybe on social media. The bulk of it is behind our screen. This is for all of us, me included. Let’s get out from behind the screen.

Number three, meeting five new people that you don’t know.

Now, I’m not going to say five new people every day. Pick the days that you’re going to go out on your fieldtrip to meet five new people that you don’t know.

I saw something a while back. I think it was Noah Kagan and he has like an inner circle, and they do something similar in helping people get over the fear of rejection. The goal was to do different things to where you’re trying to get rejected so you can get over this fear. I’ll see if I can find the link so that will be in the show notes as well.

One of the things is where he has people go out, the people that are in his membership program, go out and meet people and see if they’ll take a selfie with them. Then they hold up a little sign and I can’t remember exactly what the sign says, maybe like, “We don’t know each other,” or “We just met,” or something like that, to get a stranger to take a picture with you. Of course, some people are going to say yes, some people are going to say no. You might get crazy looks, but that’s the whole point.

It’s just like the article I read about getting over the fear of rejection. It’s that same thing, same concept. But this gets you out, out of your house, out from behind your computer. It gets you meeting people so we don’t lose that interaction because we do have a virtual business.

This will get us out in the open.

Those are three biggies! Did I just make you nervous? I just made myself really nervous. These are three biggies. The Rejection Workshop, three things, and I think it’ll be fun if we all do this together.

So how are we going to hold each other accountable for this because now you’ve listened to it, now you’ve heard it? There are very few people who are not afraid of being rejected. It’s just something that we have, and we have to work on. Let’s do this: if you’re in, get started.

You’ve got your three actions: the proposals, calling local business owners, and meeting five new people.

Let’s take week one. Take week one, go for it, I’m going to go for it, and email me. Let me know how it went. Or go to my contact page on the website: tiffanyparson.com. Go to the contact page and let me know how it went, and there’s some different options. You can come to Facebook. You can click on the SpeakPipe. You can record yourself telling me what happened.

But going through those three things. So you have to do the three things: proposal, call, meet in person. That pretty much covers all the bases as to how we would meet new people.

This is The Rejection Workshop. It’s voluntary, but this is going to help ALL of us get over our fear of rejection.

This is week one and what I’d love to do is catch back up with you, let you guys know how my week went. I want to share how your week went, those of you who send me an email, contact me, I’m going to share how yours went as a follow-up episode to this week’s episode four: The Rejection Workshop. Okay?

If you’re in, let me know you’re in. Hit me up on social media.

Remember to get the show notes at tiffanyparson.com/four.

Get out there. Let’s do this together. Have a fabulous week.

Thanks so much for tuning in. If you like what you heard, stay tuned. We’ll be back. Tell me what’s going on with you. Come on over the Facebook page: facebook.com/tiffanyparsonbiz, or if you prefer a little shorter message, come on over to Twitter: @tiffanydparson.

See you next time.

Image courtesy of Aweber, modifications courtesy of moi!