How to grow a thicker hide?

That's a good question Marcus. After many years of facing rejections in sales jobs, and years of success in business, it still hurts when customers criticize... especially when I worked hard and gave them my best.

First, I think part of that is healthy. It means you care. Some marketers barely have a conscience, and that's not a good thing.

Second, I think part of it is rooted in our pride and ego, and that's something we can work on. I've found a few things that seem to help...

1) Try to really put yourself in their shoes. If the customer is merely frustrated, there's probably a good reason for it. And if they are spouting off venomously, you can be sure that your product is not the root cause of their anger. They probably have family problems, financial problems, and who knows what else that is causing those people to act the way they do. When I see comments from those kind of people I try to have compassion for them and also realize that it's not my fault that they're behaving that way. Be THANKFUL that you're not like that.

2) Take valid criticism as an opportunity to learn. Be honest with yourself and see if there is any legitimacy in their complaint. If there is, be THANKFUL for the opportunity to learn and grow, and to hopefully avoid a similar complaint in the future.

3) When you are able, hire someone to handle your customer service. Virtually every high level successful marketer that I know of does not handle the bulk of their support. In other words they do not even see the refund requests. This way you can free up your time and simply avoid the negative energy of the people in #1 above, and your support team can forward any valid concerns from people in category #2 so you can learn from it.

Hi Marcus,
get a telemarketing job and call people at 7-8pm promoting some overpriced worthless stuff. After 3 days - get back to read your negative emails. They all will sounds like xmas songs compare to what you'd hear get back on the phone

Seriously - just let them all go

Gleb

I feel your pain Marcus!

It's a psychological thing, we as humans can get 100 positive comments, and yet we'll focus on the single one that's bad.

Yes, besides viewing it as constructive criticism and seeing how you can grow from it, I think it is important to remind yourself of the positives.

Take a bunch of the positive comments and print them out and stick it on your wall. Next time you are feeling down in the dumps about a bad experience, just look at your wall! Sometimes we need a reminder that we do a lot of good stuff too

Matt

100 positive comments and only 1 negative one? That's consider good work in my standard, keep up the good work! Remember the web is a wild wild world, so you'll sure to get one or two nasty ones, don't let them pull you down.

DCB

My father is a well known journalist who is the head editor for the editorial section in one of the main newspapers in my state. (I live in the U.S.)

He get's lots of hate mail, one day he sat me down and explained to me how he handles it.

You see it used to bug him too. And fan mail comes a lot less to guys like him (if you agree to something in the paper, you don't generally send in a nice letter)

He told me you have to be confident with what you wrote or did. You can help the person understand your view, but you generally just need to understand that your work is good work.

People will always have differing opinions, so bro. Take it from me who learned from a great guy.

Just don't sweat it.