I've worked with alongside cold-call sales people - not as a sales person myself.
Largely, my observation of them wasn't that they're particularly thick skinned, nor were they particularly desensitized to rejection. The thing that most of them had in common was that they weren't emotionally bound to the outcome. They didn't care if the person said yes or no - except for the endorphin kick they got when they saw their pay cheque get bigger. For most of them, it was a game they played against each other - in the same way you might enjoy a board game and you strive to win, but the real fun is the camaraderie of the players.
A rejection got a shoulder shrug and a "whatever, next" or a few choice curse words and the finger when the sales person wasted more time than necessary for a sale that never came before quickly moving on to the next call - the previous call forgotten as quickly as the next, unless the conversation was particularly humorous or worth sharing with their compatriots.
Those with no scruples learned to manipulate people really well and got the sales by whatever means necessary. Those that cared got sales by listening to the customer and understanding the customer's needs. Mostly though, almost without exception, those with the most sales were those that got through the highest volume phone calls in a day. The success rate could be skewed to have a higher ratio of sales to calls, but at the end of the day, that took emotional effort and didn't really yield any extra benefit to the sales person - of course, this potentially had a huge negative affect on the reputation of the company. I see the same thing with all the utility companies. Their sales teams are often the first point of contact for a customer. But the sales guys don't care about that, all they care about are the numbers. The rest is for customer service to figure out.
The lesson I learned from watching the sales guys in action is that all things considered equal, the greater the volume of calls, the greater your success. Don't be emotionally involved in the outcome before it's necessary to do so - at the end of the day, you're just asking her to come for coffee with you, you're not asking her to marry you. The more people you ask to go for coffee, the more chance you'll find someone that's got nothing better to do than go for coffee with you - even if you do think they're out of your league (that's another concept I don't believe in, but that's for another day and another post).
People are certainly "out of each other's league," at least in the sense that some people do not measure up to others' desires.
Of course, you can't really know what their qualifications are. Only they know, and they're going to run deeper than first impressions. So no, they're not out of your league yet!
Yes, but the whole concept of being out of someone's league has the underlying implication that the person you're considering is better than you somehow.
Just because they're not your cup of tea, or vice versa doesn't make them out of your league, they just make that person different than you. People are people, we all eat, drink, shit and do what we have to do to survive. Even the most "successful" CEO, the Queen of England and the person living on the street has the same basic needs. Everything else is a by-product of our circumstance and the way we choose to live our lives.
You're digging at that "everyone is unique" vibe, or "everybody wins." I don't really think it's relevant.
I think when people say that, it's typically along the lines of "that person is very [attractive|smart|rich|combo] and could have any of millions of partners at will. I'm unremarkable in all [perceivable|probably-important-to-them] ways, so it's an extreme longshot to pursue them."
Doesn't mean they're not wrong. Everyone has a chance, sure--Beauty and the Beast, right? But they might want to optimize for "people in their league," especially if the fear of rejection is in them like the guy in OP.
> do people with such jobs deal exceptionally well with rejection?
Yes. Martin Seligman has done research (or at least reported the reasearch) on this and there is a full chapter about people doing cold calls in his "Learned Optimism" book.
No. :) From my experience, working such jobs, you put on a "diaper selling mask" to shield yourself from the blows. Some people get really angry when you call. Unless you're a total sociopath it's a job that gets you depressed if you do it for to long.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they do, but then I wouldn't be if they were more than averagely depressed, either.
Surely someone must have looked into this.