“I can’t wait to hear no!” Said no sales person ever.
Well after re-reading this classic, that is exactly what I’m saying to myself. Why?
Because when I stopped connecting no with negative thoughts and failure – I was able to replace it with a connection to opportunity and curiosity.
If you stop and think about it, without a no answer – the answer is yes or maybe. The only way to navigate to a yes is though the no’s.
As the book‘s subtitle phrases it… “Yes is the destination and no is how you get there.” If you are not ready to hear no, then you are not ready for what it takes to get to a yes… or multiple yes’s. As the book puts it, “learning to hear no over and over again and to never quit… now that builds character and self-esteem. That’s empowering!”
As a business coach, this is one of my go-to books for sales managers, sales teams, and key sales people, like the business owner, to read because it is short (less than 100 pages) and is told in story format which makes it easy to read. It also effectively helps you to switch your perspective on what you can do to get to the yes’s and overshoot your past results through a new lens. And anyone who knows me, knows I love to break previous records!
When you start to realize that by setting your sights on the finish line, you are most likely starting to slow to stop right at the line rather than finishing strong and running past the finish line.
Rather than setting your goals based on how many yes answers you want to achieve like closed business, sales revenue, or new customers, number of customers up sold – set your goals based on how many no answers you want to achieve. The book makes the point over and over that the more you go for no – the more business you go for – and the more you receive than ever before.
“Rather than setting goals for the number of yes’s you are planning to get each week, you set goals for the number of no’s you’re going to collect.”
The other advantage of going for no is that no most often means no not now or no not yet… it doesn’t hardly ever mean no not ever. When you see no as a failure you are missing the opportunity for more no (not now) and you are definitely missing out on the eventual yes, I’m ready now. The book references the statistic that on average people say no 4 times before they will say yes. I’ve seen study after study backing up this very same concept. Now ask yourself what it would be like if you knew how many of your leads have said no 3 times and if you went back to them one more time after reading this book, 100% or even 50% of them said yes! What kind of results would that add to your bottom line?
If you want to find out the difference between an average sales person and an extraordinary sales person, go pick up this book. If nothing else, it will help you see that “failure is the halfway mark on the way to success” and it should be sought after rather than feared and avoided.
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Book Reviewed by…
Juliet Kyes of ActionCOACH Tampa Bay