By Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz
How
to deal with rejection
"What
did the customer say no to? – Nothing? – then how did you know he was done (had
bought all he was going to)?"
The story-line of Richard Fenton and Andrea
Waltz’s Go for No is genius. It’s something we all wish was
possible: get a glimpse now of what will happen in our future. We learn all of
the concepts of Going for No by hearing “successful Eric”
talking to “not-so-successful Eric” of 10 years ago. Despite the fact
that Eric is a salesperson, the concepts from Go for No are
universally applicable. Since the risk of rejection is what stops
most of us from trying things, we all need to learn to re-frame the word “No”.
I really loved the reminders from the book
about the jobs where failing is a common occurrence – baseball players getting
back up to bat, doctors serving the next patient after one died, an
entrepreneur starting a restaurant, inventors. There are also examples of
people in jobs who kept going after failures – Abraham Lincoln, Babe Ruth,
Colonel Sanders, Thomas Edison, to name a few. In all these cases, it’s
often the successes we focus on and remember, sometimes forgetting about the
“failures” altogether. It’s so important that we are reminded that the
failures are a part of the path to success.
The steps for implementing the concepts
of Go for No is so succinct that after reading the book’s
seventy-four, large print, lots-of-white space pages, I find I don’t even have
to look at my notes to rewrite them:
1.
Most people are
looking for a Yes, so they stop when
they get one and limit their success by taking themselves out of the game (set daily or weekly goals for how many No’s
you’ll get, not how many Yes’s).
2.
When looking for
people who’ll say Yes you need to fail
faster so you can get on to the next person who may be the Yes (start by asking for the sale so you can move
on to the next person if they say No).
3.
No just means not yet (people
say No 4 times before they say Yes so keep track of the number of No’s per
person and plan to go back).
4.
Next after hearing No,
a failure, go onto the next person. (Of
course think about and learn from what happened, but go on to the next person
quickly.)
5.
You need to want to fail, not just be
willing to (believing this will make you
keep trying to fail and eventually, you’ll not fear it/dislike it as you see
that it will get you to more successes).
The Big Idea
The Virtues of Failing
"Failure
is the halfway mark on the way to success."- Go for No, page 29
How many
sales have I happily made (ideas to my boss/staff/co-workers and
products/services to customers) thinking that
I got exactly what I wanted, a Yes? Now I wonder, was
I thinking too small in my ask? Had I gotten some No’s (4 of them) on the way
to Yes I’d know for sure
I’d done my best.
Insight #1
Fail Eagerly
"Set
goals for the number of No’s you’re going to get each week."- Go for
No, page 46
Being
innately competitive as a species, we have a natural desire to reach any goals
we set for ourselves (or are set for us). Setting failure goals is a way to be excited about failing/hearing the word No.
Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully
found 10,000 ways that will not work.” So go out and try, even if you may hear
the word No!
And
crucially important for managers/companies – to help staff succeed, we need to
reward failure – recognize it as an essential part of getting to yes – or no
matter what, people will still work for Yes and therefore avoid No. We
work for what we get rewarded for!
Insight #2
Next – The Magic Word
"Failure
Quotient – how many times is a person willing to fail before succeeding?"-
Go for No, page 50
As I was reading I was
thinking – what could make me want to implement this concept? What makes people
be able to overcome decades of not wanting to hear no, to now embracing it? And
then I realized that the people the authors use as examples have something in
common (Colonel Sanders, Babe Ruth, Allen Breed – who? Read the book and
you’ll see), they have passion for what they’re doing.
If you don’t have passion, Go for No will be harder to
implement because your only reward will be hitting your No goals – likely not
enough to make it worth it to fail and fail and fail and fail (that was 4
times!).
When I first started reading Go for No,
the story-line felt a little hokey. But seriously, stick with it. It’s a short
book so it’s only a few pages before you get to the concept of Go for
No – a concept that is so clearly what you need to be doing that
you’ll forget that it was a hard start.
The authors and the reviewers promised a book
with a concept that will change your life and if you apply it, it will! Heard
that before and found yourself not applying? The couple of things the author
says to do to apply Go for No are so succinct that it’s easy
to get started failing!
“Yes is the destination – No is how you get
there.”
Credit: Carolyn B. Thompson
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