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In his book, 17 Secrets of the Master Prospectors, John Kalench titled the fourth secret, “Master Prospectors know what to marry.”

After careful consideration, I suppose a descriptive title for this secret could be, How Master Prospectors avoid rejection.

Practical recap of the Master Prospector’s Secrets so far:

Secret #1: Master Prospectors get into motion with massive action and correct and adjust along the way.

Secret #2: Master Prospectors are consistently consistent by working on raising their belief levels to meet their enthusiasm level.

Secret #3: Master Prospectors know that their job is to “shuck oysters” for pearls, not convince oysters to make pearls.

Master Prospectors know how to avoid rejection

Master Prospector Secret #4 is a follow on to secret #3, which deals with knowing your job description and focusing on it. Secret #4 is all about how you deal with negative reactions to your presentations.

In his public speaking career, John discovered that no matter how good and compelling his presentation, there are always three groups of people making up the audience.

The first group are those people who really enjoyed the presentation and who got tremendous value from it. Some of them would even thank John in person after the meeting. “Thanks a million, John. You’ve really made a difference for me. Keep up the good work.”

Now when someone acknowledges you for your contribution, it makes you feel pretty good and makes all the hard work and sacrifice up to that point, worth it.

The second group are those seem to be perplexed and confused after the presentation. They don’t quite know what to make of it. Their belief systems have been challenged and they are still processing the information. You can literally see their mental wheels spinning. It’s not as if they didn’t like the presentation; they are merely mulling it over, trying to decide if and how it can work for them.

You see, new hopes and promises, and with this group doubts and fears, had just entered their mind and they are forced to deal with them.

All these guys need is a little time and encouragement to hear more – and to hear it more often. The more they hear it, the more the message grows on them.

The third group are those who are not ready for what is being shared at all. You can tell by the way they look that they are reacting unfavorably to your message. These are the people who would leave the meeting and say stuff like, “I’ve heard all that before. It doesn’t work. It’s only fancy talk from a fancy talker. He’s just getting rich selling everyone his books and tapes.”

How to avoid rejection

It is the people in this group that got under John’s skin. So he decided to research the matter to try and understand why it is that there always these three groups and how he can avoid rejection from this group.

So, he consulted other professional speakers and trainers in all different fields and disciplines. And what do you know; they experienced the same. The same three groups.

John was still not satisfied; he wanted to please everyone and thereby avoid rejection from the third group.

One night, one special friend and mentor of his put it all in perspective for John. He said, “John, for you to think that negative people would do anything else other than to think and react negatively, is pretty foolish of you, wouldn’t you agree?” As a matter of fact, it’s their job to be negative. And those people will stay in that job; in that attitude of being negative, until they are good and ready to change. Nothing you do or say, will change that. You cannot avoid rejection from them; but you can change your own attitude towards their rejection by understanding why it is that they react that way.

Knowing this, you can stop worrying about these people who reject your offer. Not only are they not saying politely “no”to your offer, but they go out of their way to try and put you down personally. You cannot avoid rejection in this form, but at least you can have empathy for them, knowing they cannot help it. It’s their nature.

It’s just the way it is. Learn to accept it. The world is filled with negative people and you will encounter them. You cannot avoid rejection from them; learn to accept it and move on. Gently place them back into the sea of future pearls. Don’t hold your breath. They will either change or they won’t. That’s part of their job for themselves. You have done your bit. You have presented them with your special gift. If they want to throw it back into your face, it reflects on who they are, not who you are.

The serenity prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr comes to mind:

God, grant me the serenity to accept

the things that cannot be changed,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

A negative person’s response says nothing about you, but it says a lot about them. For example, to change takes courage. To change your current situation takes a lot of courage. If you lack that courage, you are going to look for excuses to not embrace a gift that can help you bring about that change. Unless you are open minded, you are going to do what you do best: criticize and attack. The alternative would require courage and unless he or she is ready for change, chances are they are going to go to their fall back position. Remember: liars lie. Positive people react positively. Negative people react negatively. Not to think so, is naive.

So what do the Master Prospector marry?

You marry that which you have complete control over. Your presentation.

Your job is to deliver your gift in the form of a presentation. Work on your presentation. Make sure your presentation is short, relevant and effective and deliver it to the best of your ability.

You have complete control over what you say.
You have complete control over how you say it.
You have complete control over how often you say it.

You have complete control over the quality and frequency of your message. Take every opportunity to work on your presentation. Fall in love with it. Polish it. Improve it. Make it smell good. Tailor it to your audience. Avoid “danger words” like “sign-up”, “buy”, “cost”, “sell” and rather replace it with words like “join”, “invest in”, “retail” etc.

Your Action Steps:

What are some of the things you can do to continually improve the quality of your presentation?
How many times each week do you commit to present your presentation about your products and business opportunity to others?
- 1 – 3
- 4 – 6
- 7 – 10
- 11 +
What will you need to do to put these appointments to present in motion each week?