“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat,” Sylvester Stallone once said. Rejection is never fun, but Stallone’s statement has power – instead of hiding in a corner to lick your wounds, change your mindset.

It’s something that Matt Dixon, the Global Head of Salesforce Effectiveness at Korn/Ferry agrees with wholeheartedly. As a sales trainer, he teaches the concept of embracing the “no”, removing the personal aspect and figuring out what can be learned from it, instead of losing sleep or shedding tears.

“… One of the things we’ve seen from great salespeople is that they are able to take rejection and kind of roll with the punches,” he says in a Big Think video. “They don’t take it personally. And that is a unique attribute of salespeople, but it is something that can be learned.”

But it’s not just applicable to those who sell for a living. After all, whether it’s a teacher trying to get students interested in a topic, or a parent convincing their kid to take out the garbage, it’s all the same – we’re selling others on our ideas and attempting to move them to action. And it often doesn’t go our way.

When rejection strikes, Dixon suggests we ask ourselves a number of questions to identify opportunity for improvement. Are we capturing the person’s attention? Are we accurately telling our story? Is what we’re “selling” something the person actually wants or needs? If so, how do we convince them of it?

“It’s great to hear no so we understand how to get better,” he explains.

To learn more, watch The Upside of Rejection.