My 6-year-old son spent the weekend preparing a gift for his first crush, a girl in his first-grade class. He took special care while wrapping the present, drawing a nice card and writing a wonderfully sweet message on the inside.

When he came home from school on Monday, he looked crushed. The girl opened his present, read his card and gave it back to him, saying she didn’t want it. My son did not know how to respond to such blatant rejection.

Even though it is hard to see your children get rejected in life, feelings of rejection and failure are around us every day. How we choose to deal with these emotions shapes how we perform and how we form relationships with others.

Any way you look at it, words such as rejection and failure are not words that we typically wish to hear. The emotions behind these words are even more powerful. However, these are the types of emotions that carry with them powerful potential to transform.

Looking at rejection from the vantage point of a salesperson, there are old-school people who would say that rejection makes you tougher and that you’ll grow immune to it as long as you don’t let it get to you. Those of the next generation will say that rejection, when digested properly, makes you smarter. While there is certainly value in being tough, there is more value in going one more step.

The difference between toughness and intelligence is all in how you digest rejection. You should use the rejection to make you tougher, letting it propel you toward intelligence.

The difference between the two is not necessarily what happens to you; it is how you handle what happens to you. It is completely up to you how you use the transforming power of rejection.  It can either heighten your emotional capabilities or deaden your emotional sensitivities.

While many say that the easiest way to avoid the harm created by getting rejected is to distance yourself from your products, this actually is not true. To become a great salesperson, you must identify yourself with the things that you are representing. When a person becomes emotionally entangled with their product and their company, every word in the sales pitch will drip with confidence and passion. Doing so will enable you to make sales in places where others have failed.

Therefore, you must not allow emotional deadening to take place. If you do, you are sacrificing your biggest asset as a salesperson. Instead of distancing yourself from your products, you need to understand that rejection is merely incongruence between your offer and what the client is looking for at the time. There is no shame in discovering that there isn’t a good fit. You should be proud that you were able to help the customer figure out exactly what he or she was looking for.

As you progress, you’ll recognize that rejection really is just a figment of your imagination. You’ll be able to relish the fact that, through skillful communication, you were able to arrive at a place where it became apparent that your offer would not be a good fit.

Rejection cannot exist if you are able to clearly communicate everything that you intend to offer. If the prospect clearly understands your offer, and you feel comfortable in that fact, then you can also take solace in the decision. There is no shame in that.

Therefore, it becomes your job to be able to clearly communicate your unique value proposition. Once you do, you have eliminated the possibility of getting rejected. You won’t win every sale, but you will not get discouraged. You can keep your sharp emotional quivers intact and ready for your next opportunity. So sharpen yourself by rising above the old, tired definitions of rejection and allowing yourself to become the best version of yourself that you can be.

Tom Richard is a Toledo-based sales trainer, gives seminars, runs sales meetings and provides coaching for salespeople. For more information, visit www.TomRichard.com, call (419) 441-1005 or e-mail tom@tomrichard.com.