Sales Consultant Shares Advice to Gen Z on Overcoming Rejection

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara Uy, a 28-year-old founder of sales-training program SellingSara who is based in New York. Her identification and employment has been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I got recruited right out of college to work at a sales company called Pareto USA. I started on the recruitment team and seven months later I got promoted to the sales team. Then I took the traditional sales path from senior all the way to manager and then sales director five years later.

COVID hit nine months into my role and I was cold calling in my childhood bedroom all alone without any support. That’s when I started sharing sales tips and videos of me live cold calling on TikTok. Very quickly, I realized there was a whole lot of other people in the same boat as me.

By the end of my time at Pareto, I had clients who were asking, “Can you train my sales team? We love your videos. Can we have you in as a guest speaker or motivational speaker or to do a little bit of a sales training on cold calling?”

So, I launched SellingSara about 11 months ago. My company is focused on providing practical tips to reps across industries.

The majority of my clients are C-suite executives who hire me to train their sales teams. Within those teams, there’s a ton of Gen Zs because sales reps are typically entry-level positions. Usually, sales companies hire straight out of college or five years out of college.

My workshops are 60 minutes and they’re less methodology, more of ‘this is what works; go and do it.’ Sometimes all it takes is for you to tell someone, especially Gen Z, “Hey, pick up that phone that you’re scrolling on, and just type a phone number in to that C-suite level executive that you’ve been trying to get a hold of.” Chances are if you get them on the phone, you can book the meeting.

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As someone who’s on the cusp of Gen Z, I feel like our generation can be a little soft when it comes to facing rejection — and in sales you could face rejection day-in and day-out for three weeks in a row. Even if you’re the best salesperson in the world, you are bound to have weeks like that.

That’s how sales is. It’s an emotional roller coaster. I see a lot of Gen Z salespeople quit when they’re in that low period — and they’re missing out on an opportunity to make probably triple what they were making if they were to stay in the role and give it another six months.

So, I think the fear of rejection over and over again is probably the biggest challenge that they face. These are my suggestions for overcoming that.

Have a routine

Last week, I was just sitting, doomscrolling, and I was like “how am I going to get back into the right mindset of doing really well?”

When I have these moments, I try to stick to a routine and a structure. For me, that’s my morning workout and making coffee at home or going to get a coffee. That gets me out of bed and automatically makes me feel like the daunting tasks that I had when I first woke up aren’t as daunting anymore.

So, I recommend finding a really good morning routine.

Create separation from your job

Recently I’ve been getting into reading on my Kindle. That may sound very basic to a lot of people who read, but as someone who has never been a huge reader, it’s been amazing because I can’t go to social media from my Kindle.

Being able to clear my mind off work and social media has been a really good brain relaxation strategy for me. So, I would recommend finding something that can absolutely completely separate you from the thought of work.

Find a mentor

You’ll be able to determine if you’re not doing well real quick because everything in sales is so based on numbers. There are sales offices that literally have a leaderboard live on a TV screen in the office. So if you’re walking in every day and seeing yourself at the bottom, that can suck.

My biggest tip to anyone going through something like that is find the top sales rep that month, that quarter, or that year, and just ask them for advice and listen to them on the phone.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Go to the top salesperson, put your ego aside and say, “Hey, I’m sucking this month. “What are you doing that I’m not?” Go to your VP of sales and ask for training. There are also so many sales books out there. There are LinkedIn influencers out there now — and I’m one of them where I constantly put out sales tips and advice on how to get out of these ruts. There are so many resources out there.

Although sales teams sound really cutthroat, when you’re on the right sales team, they want to support you. It’s an individual game, but you have a team target, so everyone wants to win. Because when everyone wins, everyone takes home a fat commission check. So it’s competitive, but it’s a team sport at the end of the day.