Guest Post: Turning “NO” Into a Powerful Positive

Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz of Go For No

The word ‘YES’ is so positive, encouraging… and it means we’re succeeding. ‘NO’ on the other hand, is bad, depressing… and it means we failed.  What if, starting today, the word ‘no’ didn’t stop you? What if every time you heard the word no, you became stronger, more powerful, and more resilient?  Well you can.

For most of us, we don’t like to hear the word “no” when it comes to selling our products and services. We fight our way through it every step of the way.  If you are working your business and when you get a “yes” you feel wonderful and when you get a ”no” you feel bad, then you are going to feel bad pretty often.  Because when you are in business, when you sell anything – especially today – the No’s are out there!  And if you are feeling bad about the “no’s” you get, you might slow down, get discouraged, avoid business building… you might even quit altogether.

Yet there is an irony about Yes and No (Failure and Success) and it is this: when you go out of your way to increase the number of “no’s” you get, the yeses will show up at your door in greater quantities than you ever could have imagined! This is the essence of the “Go for No!” philosophy.

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5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: Know When To Say “No”

So we’ve finally arrived at Step 5 in our Getting to “NO” series, and I hope you’re prepared; this is going to be the most difficult step of all.  This is where you learn to exercise your power to say “No” to the prospect.  Yes, you read that right.  Sometimes, when all other measures to get a “No” have failed, you have to take it upon yourself to say it.  Why would you ever need to tell a prospect “No”, though?

Sometimes you have to say “No” because the prospect refuses to do it for you.  You did everything right: you got agreement from the prospect that they would tell you “No” if it didn’t seem like a good fit.  You asked all the right questions.  It’s abvious to you that your offering doesn’t align with the values and goals your prospect identified as important to them.  And yet here the prospect is, asking you for a formal proposal so she can look it over and get back to you.

You know in your heart that it’s just a stall tactic, and that she’s just trying to dodge a sale that you aren’t even trying to make.  And yet you still feel that tug of excitement because it sounds like a “Maybe”, and “Maybe”, despite my best warnings, is still pretty tempting.  After all, sometimes “Maybe” becomes “Yes”.

Remember, though, that “Maybe” is the siren song of the salesperson.  It’s calling you to shipwreck on its rocky shores.  Don’t take the bait.  Resist the temptation to play the “Maybe” game.  As difficult as it may be, it’s time for you to walk away.

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5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: Ask Better Questions

What a great day!  I was spending some time on TweetDeck when one of the Tweets in the stream caught my eye.  It said, “I take pride in the ‘No’s’ that I get (means I am taking action!)”

What was this?  Another crusader for “No”?  I checked the Twitter profile and found not one but two advocates for our two-lettered friend.  What a great connection.  This is why I love social media!  So keep up the “No” campaign Andrea and Richard, and I’ll be cheering you along the way.

On with the series, then.  Today’s step offers you the keys to the kingdom when it comes to getting to “No”.  Asking better questions really is the best, fastest, most efficient way to get to the “No” you need to hear and avoid that “Maybe” trap.

Let’s start with the reason you’re asking questions to begin with.  First of all, lose the illusion that qualifying questions are supposed to help you close sales.  Not so, my friend.  Qualifying questions are meant to help you sift the wheat (potential buyers) from the chaff (friendly people who have trouble saying “No” and want to keep you in the “Maybe”-loop).  Great questions help prospects self-select so that you can find the ones who really want to work with you.

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5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: State Your Intention

I’d like to make a couple of clarifications before proceeding with the Getting to “No” series.  First, when I’m addressing salespeople, I’m including you business owners and entrepreneurs in the conversation.  If you’re not doing all the selling in your organization yourself, you’re likely the one managing the salespeople.  You need to pay attention to this stuff.

Second, this series is focusing on the importance of getting to “No” faster and more often in the early stages of the sales process, specifically when prospecting and qualifying.  In the latter half of the process (presentation and conversion), you’re definitely looking for a “Yes” (look for a follow-up series on getting to “Yes” next week).  And if you apply the principles in this series to get more “No”s, you’ll be more like to succed when it comes time to ask for a “Yes”.

That said, thanks for tuning in to part 3 of our 5-part series, “5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales”.  The third step in the process is simple: Clearly State Your Intention.

Like many of the suggestions you read in this blog, this is really just common sense.  The idea here is to get an agreement from the prospect regarding the outcome you’d like to acheive right at the beginning of your conversation.  If you state your intention right at the beginning of the conversation, your chances of getting the outcome you’re looking for go up pretty significantly, right?

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5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: Talk To More People

So here we are as promised, Step 2 of the “5 Steps To Get To “No” Faster and More Often”: Talk To More People.

No kidding, right?  In fact, I could literally end this post right now.  After all, you don’t need four or five more paragraphs to explain to you that if you want to hear “No” more often, the easiest way to accomplish it is to see more prospects.  Well, lucky for you I’m in a generous mood and you’re going to get those four or five (possibly six…we’ll see) paragraphs anyway.

It’s become popular lately to discount the idea that sales is a “numbers game”, and to some extent I agree; selling today is far more complex a matter than just who can make the most calls.  But at least during the prospecting and qualifying phases of the sales process, volume does count for something.  Look at a typical sales funnel report, and you can see that it never looks like a cylinder; they call it a “funnel” for a reason.  You have to see a lot of people in the initial stages to get down to those few who could truly become customers in the later stages.

In fact, if you consistenly track your numbers you’ll start to see ratios jumping off the page.  Maybe it’s 100 prospecting calls that lead to 25 qualifying appointments that result in 5 presentations that net you 1 new customer.  And what does that really mean?  It means that for every 1 new customer, you have to hear 99 “No”s.  Are you beginning to see why it’s so critical to get to “No” faster and more often?  Talking to more prospects and getting them to tell you “No” as early in the game as possible actually improves your ability to get to that coveted “Yes”.

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5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: Remember That “No” Doesn’t Really Mean “No”

I just finished a post over at the Sales Bloggers Union about the importance of getting to “No” faster and more frequently in order to be a successful salesperson.  You can read that post here.

As I was writing that post, though, I started thinking of some ways to help salespeople get better at eliciting those “No”s from their prospects more efficiently.  I decided to write a series here called “5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales”.

We’ll start with the most important step: getting your mindset properly aligned.

Step #1: Remember That “No” Really Means “Not Now”

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