Raise your hand if you like rejection. I didn’t think so. Most people try to avoid rejection in their daily lives at all costs. If you decide to follow the path of an Inventor you better get some really thick skin because you will get your fair share and probably someone else’s fair share of rejection. The biggest hurdle you will have to contend with is what you do with that rejection. How you react to rejection can make the difference between a successful experience and a frustrating and unsuccessful experience.
During my career as a comic book/cartoon Writer I got so many rejection slips I felt that I could wallpaper my house with them. I had never known you could say “No” in so many different ways. That was one lesson I was not happy to learn. But it was a necessary lesson.
Most Inventors seem to have a severe negative response immediately after receiving any rejection letter or email. They get very irritated and vocal, even if no one else is in the room. The response I have heard most Inventors give goes a little like this “They are just plain stupid! They wouldn’t know a good idea if it was right in front of their face!!!” (That was the politically correct response.) I have heard many outbursts that can’t be repeated in public and would make many people blush. And it certainly wouldn’t increase their chances of success if the company it was directed at heard their response.
After getting a rejection, some Inventors just give up and shelve their idea forever. That is a shame. The only person that hurts is… you. If they had taken the time to learn something from the rejection instead of taking it so personally they may have made it to market with that idea or another idea they had in their mind. My goal is to convince you to work your way through the rejections so that you have a positive outcome and get on the road to success.
You need to look on the rejection and the person that sent it as a positive thing. Yes, I said look at it as a positive thing. They did you a favor by rejecting your idea. I know that sounds crazy, but it can very helpful if you think about it from this angle. Each time you get a rejection it is an opportunity to learn. If they didn’t put in a form rejection letter (I hate those just as much as you do) and gave you feedback on your submission, carefully read the reason it was rejected. Hopefully the explanation of your ideas benefits wasn’t clear, or you sent your idea to a company that isn’t interested in that market. This happens a lot. The Inventor is so focused on getting their idea in front of someone they don’t do the homework/research of knowing their market before sending it out. You don’t send a hydraulic wrench design to a toy company. Unfortunately, things like that happen more often than you would think.
The reason I am saying they did you a favor is that they stopped your idea from going to the next level. The next level would be to put it into production. Do you want your idea to hit the market if it has flaws in it or some other issue that could impede your sales? You want to work out any bugs in your product while it is in the developing stage, not the production stage. There are stories after stories of Inventors that sunk their life savings into a product that they insisted be built exactly the way they wanted only to find out it wasn’t the way the buying public wanted. Use the criticism you get to refine your product making it more marketable, so that by the time it hits the shelves it is a product consumer’s want.
If you seriously look at the rejection as a method of improving your idea or your presentation it can only increase your odds of getting a “Yes”. Use the comments/feedback to correct any deficiencies they point out. Look at your presentation material and see if it is too long. You want your presentation to get them interested and excited about your idea, not dread having to read through 25 pages of material just to see if your idea has any merit. Always think in terms of “Is there any way to condense this down? Is it concise and easy to read? Does the presentation look like I know what I’m doing or an amateur?”
One of the quickest killers for a submission is being too lengthy and no one has the time to decipher it. As I have said before “Would you rather read a pamphlet or a novel to understand someone’s idea?”
Remember rejections sent back without an explanation can be for a multitude of reasons. It could be they just didn’t like your idea. It could also have nothing to do with your submission. Reviewers are like anyone else they could be having a bad day. It can be one of those days when nothing seems good no matter what they saw. They could have seen so many similar things that day that you got rejected by association. You might have caught them at the end of their selling season and they don’t want to bring in anything new right now. It could also be the Monday/Friday rule. Mondays, they are just starting the week and Fridays they want to get out of there and go home.
When I was aggressively writing for the comic book and cartoon industry I would send out at least two submissions a week. So, I had a good flow of material going out and coming in at the same time. Rejections were a part of the game, but I was also getting plenty of sales to make it worth the time. One story I sent out I really liked and knew this would fit the particular character to a tee. I was extremely disappointed when I got a rejection letter from the Editor the next week saying it was “just not what he was looking for at the time.”
I was frustrated, but went ahead and put the story aside. Two weeks later I was looking through my pile of material deciding which ones to send out. I noticed the story that was rejected. I sent the same story back to the same editor. A week later I got a note back from the editor saying it was the best script he had seen from me in a while and loved it. I didn’t mention he had looked at 3 weeks earlier and canned it. I figured my timing was right and I caught him on a good day that he had time to really look at my script. The same applies to your submission. Sometimes it is just a matter of dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time. I would like to think that all my success has been due to hard work and a creative mind, but sometimes I am afraid to ask. : )
Your job as the Inventor, Salesperson, Pitch Person is to make sure your submission is the best it can be to make the reviewer’s job easier.