The Tao of No

Having a problem with either hearing or saying “no” can lead to problems for your business. Blair has 12 statements about the word “no” that can help.

Sketchnote by Emily Mills

Transcript

David C. Baker: Okay, Blair. This is going to be a lot of fun because we're going to talk about no; being okay hearing no and then being okay saying no. I'm just going to use this as an opportunity to practice no a lot. Anytime I hear anything that sounds moderately suspicious, which applies to almost everything you say, I'm just going to-- Don't let it distract you. Just keep going when you hear me yelling no at certain points.

Blair Enns: I'm looking for you to be creative with your noes, so let's just see how this goes.

David: [chuckles] We have a grandkid who's two years old and the Great Dane, who's seven months old and 110 pounds, annoys him quite a bit. He's got this phrase, "No, Frida." Dog's name is-- We say that around the house. [chuckles] He's learned no. That's one of the first words he learned just to keep himself alive.

All right, so we usually start with these things by saying, what set the stage for this? This is something you and I have talked about off and on over many, many years, and I thought, even though I've heard this a lot, for some reason this feels like such a great opportunity to talk about it again. There are so many firms out there who are having trouble just managing the work that's coming their way and they're kind of, what should I do about this?

What spurred this in your mind? Oh, it was Twitter, right? You went nuts on Twitter and I thought this is going to be an episode someday.

Blair: Well, I did a dual threaded tweet, I think, if that's a thing. I had this entire notebook in Evernote called The Tao of No, and I remembered I've collected all of these things over the years because I had this idea that I was going to write a book on the word no. The working title was The Tao of No. I had an alternative title but it's got a big swear word in it so I'm going to say it. Now, cover your kids ears. It was Fuck Off Please and Thank You: The Art of The Polite No. That was before anybody had published a book with the F-bomb in it- now they're everywhere- so I couldn't use that title.

I'm looking through this material and I'm thinking, "This isn't a book. It's a tweet or it's a tweet thread." [chuckles]

David: Thank God it wasn't a book. It would have been a long, boring one. Now, it's a really concise, interesting one.

Blair: Yes, and I wonder how many of the possible books I have in me really are just tweet threads. I tweeted these to six tweet threads called The Tao of No. We were looking for a topic for this week and I suggested that there might be enough- there certainly isn't enough for a book but there might be enough for a podcast, so there's 12 points here we can talk about.

David: You know what really surprised me, I've heard so much and read so much about no and this concept, but I've never seen somebody tie- and leave it to you, the sales guy- I've never seen somebody tie these two components together. It really struck me as interesting because here you're talking about saying no and before you say that, you're wondering how it will be received and if you're going to offend somebody. You're flipping that around, essentially. We're going to talk about no from both directions.

Blair: Yes. If you're not good at hearing no, you're probably not going to be very good at saying no. There's just something about that word. Maybe there was a time in my career where I thought more deeply about it and got into kind of the psychology behind why it's so hard for some people to say it and hear it, but whatever I've learned, I've let go of. I just know it's a small word. It's a powerful word. It's a trigger word for a lot of people.

David: When you started talking about this, immediately I felt emotionally involved in the discussion as I read your notes. Start out with that. As somebody in sales, I'm trying to hear anything but no, and you're saying, "No, embrace that." That's kind of how it starts.

Blair: Yes. Under the subject on hearing no, there are six points. The first one is that you need to understand that no is the second best answer you can hear. Obviously, the best answer you can hear is yes, but the worst answer you can hear is somewhat conditional or soft. It's maybe, we'll get back to you; something other than no, where it's likely the answer is no but for whatever reason, the client or the person you're speaking to doesn't want to tell you no. That reason is usually you're over-invested in the sale. They see your sunk cost is so high that you can't bear hearing no, or it would be uncomfortable for you to say to speak the truth.

Just embrace the idea that it's the second best answer we can hear. It's not as good as yes, but it's better than maybe or we'll get back to you, because it lets you make decisions. You can make decisions from there. You can try to dig deeper around why it's no, of course that might make sense in a lot of cases, but you can also decide to cut your losses and move on. I hear you say no is the second best answer, I immediately go to the, "Okay, that's more efficient. I can go try to sell somebody else." You're also saying, the second point is that no is not always a final no. It points to some other possibility as well.

Blair: Yes. That's the second statement in this Tao of No, specifically on hearing no, is no is not the end. It's merely the beginning of what happens next. Again, you can continue the conversation. You can endeavor to unearth why it's no, or you can accept it and move on and go looking for something that is a better fit.

I'm a very patient person, and I know this through objective measures as well as knowing myself. Another way of saying patient is I have a low-competitive drive, in some ways, in one key dimension. I have this long-term view on selling that not everybody shares. My point of view is everybody's buying. The only variable is time. When somebody says no now, honestly, 100%, I swear this, I hear, "Not now." I think if you are a high-competitive, if you have a high drive, and with that is you are impatient, you can be frustrated by hearing no, you think no means not ever, and I think, "Yes, it's just a matter of time."

As long as I see a fit or a potential fit, my point of view is this will happen, both of us need to live long enough. If that happens, we will do business together at some point.

David: There's all these little things that need to fit together well in my mind. You're respecting the buyer. Second, you're not trying to convince them of anything. When they say no, you could go down the path of, "All right, I'll take that as a no. We'll be kind. Maybe we'll connect later," or in your mind, you could say, "He or she thinks it's no because they don't understand what they need or what I offer. Let me make sure they understand clearly." That's why you would pick that up and not be disrespectful to the decision that you think they've made, right?

Blair: Yes, but that second one is tricky because if you see that somebody has a need and they don't see that they have a need, the likelihood of you being able to convert them is low because of your biased point of view. It's kind of beyond the remit of this topic here, but there are some subtle techniques that you can use to try to get them to see that they have a problem.

Really, if we're talking about outreach and you reach out to somebody and you find yourself in a conversation and you're saying, "Hey, here's what we do. Do you have any need in this area?" If the answer is no, maybe a follow-up question or two is appropriate, but just accept that it's no. Also knowing that it just means not right now.

Let's say you see that they have a problem that they should act on, that's in your wheelhouse, but they don't see that they have that problem. A high-competitive-drive person might get impatient and try to convert them, try to force them to see that they have a problem, but you're better off just taking a longer-term view and saying, "Okay. Well, at some point they will come around and see that they have a problem. I'm going to respect their no, give them some space, but at the same time, I'm not going to go too far. I'm going to check in from time to time to see if their point of view has come around."

David: Assuming that you've explained your situation well and that you understand how they understand their need, it's about respecting their no. The third thing is around how being willing to say no is tied to the level of investment that you made in the sale. You touched on this just a second ago, and we've actually done a whole episode on this. How is your investment in the sale related to your willingness to say no?

Blair: Yes, to hear no.

David: To hear no, I'm sorry. The second part of that question is, how is the client or the prospect across the table able to sense the degree of investment you've put in the sale?

Blair: The client can sense your need in this. They tell by the amount of work that you've put into this, by the amount of homework. They can tell by the eagerness in your voice. There are just so many cues or clues that we transmit to how badly we want this. Again, it's all tied back to being over-invested in the sale.

Again, it's a recurring theme across multiple episodes, but we want to be in this place in the sale where it's human beings having conversations, open conversations, where we can determine if there's a fit here between what you need and what I do suitable enough to take a next step. If there isn't, if either party sees that there isn't a good fit here, we'd like the dynamics of the conversation to be such that any party is comfortable saying, "Yes, I don't think there's a fit," and the other party will respect that and move on.

If we could just wave our magic wand and create those conditions across all the sales that we're involved in over the course of a year, our cost of sale would just plummet. Our cost of sale in part is really high because the way we behave signals to the client that we're not prepared to hear no and if you give us no, we will try to convince you that it should be a yes. That's just not conducive to conversation.

Your willingness to hear no is absolutely tied to how over-invested. Your sunk cost- and I've said this before- you want to get better at selling, no sunk costs. Three words; no sunk cost. Don't over-invest in the sale.

David: It's so interesting to me to think about-- This wouldn't be true for everybody but if somebody is already a little skeptical of the sales process- not of yours, specifically, but of the sales process in general- but they get a sense from how they interact with you, just through the stuff on your website or references, that you really invite human conversations and you're fine with whatever the outcome is, they're much more likely to be interested in a conversation with you.

If they're not going to feel any pressure, they're going to honestly hear from you a straight sense of how you can help, maybe somewhere else that that person should go to get more appropriate help and so on. It just frees it up, right?

Blair: Yes, we've all been on probably both sides of that conversation but with two different types of salespeople; where somebody was genuinely interested in helping us and kept it conversational, kept it about us; and somebody who wanted to sell us something. Somebody who wanted or needed to because of the pressure they were getting from elsewhere in the organization, or the way they were trained, or the way their compensation plan is structured, they need to sell to us. That feeling is really different from the feeling of talking to somebody who's just trying to keep it conversational; hey, there's two human beings trying to determine if there's a fit here suitable enough to take a next step. If there isn't, both of us are human beings have the authority, have the right to say, "I'm out."

David: I have spent my entire life trying to pave the road for your sales training practice.

Blair: And I appreciate that. [chuckles]

David: You would be nowhere without me.

Blair: [laughs] My wife says that all the time.

David: This is the moment where I'm coming out and telling you this because my goal is to help people have such healthily run businesses that they can put your sales practices into place and not feel panicked.

Blair: Yes. So often we come back to confidence, right?

David: Right.

Blair: If your business is well-run, you've got money in the bank, you've got options, you don't feel this unnecessary pressure to convince somebody. To be in a position where the worst thing that could happen is somebody says no to you.

David: Yes, right. [chuckles] If that's the worst that can happen, you're not looking for the right answer. You're looking for a specific answer.

Blair: You're looking for a victim.

David: The next point is around timing. If you're going to hear a no, what's the implication of hearing that no later, after a lot of explanation, or earlier? How does timing relate to this?

Blair: Yes, an early no is better than a late no. This is widely understood across selling. Again, this recurs to the sunk-cost bias. Once your costs are sunk, sinking, sinking, they're getting deeper and deeper, then it's harder to pull the pin. It's harder to correct. In this case, correcting would be simply just being open to hearing no.

The saying again is an early no is better than a late no. Objections early are your friends; they're your enemies late. It's the same idea in investing- sunk-cost bias- or hiring, correcting mistakes. You want to correct them early, even though it's painful because you look at how much time you've wasted, but the alternative is I'm going to waste even more time. Early no is better than late.

I think of so many situations I was in, in my agency, new business development career, where- say price as an example. I withhold price until the very last possible moment in the sale, when I was standing in front of the room with the PowerPoint deck, stayed up all night, et cetera, it's on the last page. We get there and I'm thinking, "Okay, here's where I close," and I hear, "Well, we can't afford that."

David: You just wasted, what, all night plus an hour. [chuckles]

Blair: If there's a no for budget reasons, or fit, or personality conflict, whatever it is, you want to hear that early. I've heard you talk about this before, too, this whack-a-mole idea. You should see opportunities as this game of whack-a-mole. An opportunity pops up and then you try to kill it, you try to beat it back down, and I've used that line a lot. What you mean by that is if there's a reason not to do business together with the client, you want to find it early before you're over-invested.

David: It's such a great statement but it's so backwards. It's just not the way we're trained. It's like, I don't want any objections. That'd be ideal. If there are any, wait until the very end while they're really hooked. You're saying, "No, let's do it sooner to the beginning."

Blair: There's a generation of people who don't even know what whack-a-mole is.

David: Yes, right.

[laughter]

David: The fifth one is how a no impacts the likelihood of having an actual conversation. I'll just confess before you explain this that I get a lot of emails from you that start with this phrase.

Blair: The phrase; feel free to say no, David, but-

David: Fell free to say not, but let me ask. My heart falls whenever that- because I know exactly what's-- [chuckles] I almost want to say no before I even read the request.

[laughter]

Blair: You want the two-word version of no. The idea is that inviting no improves the likelihood of having an actual conversation. That idea of prefacing a request with feel free to say no but allow me to ask, that's a really powerful preface. I'm pretty sure that line comes from Jim Camp's book on negotiating called Start with No, which I really like because it's quite contrarian. I wouldn't consider it to be one of the best books on negotiating out there, but it's got an interesting point of view that I really like.

You remove the emotional weight from the decision that you're asking somebody to make when you preface the ask with the words, feel free to say no. I've used that line- as you've spoken to- I've used that line hundreds of times in my life and very often, I hear somebody say, "Oh, thank you for saying I could say no because the answer is really no, but I wouldn't have wanted to tell you."

I hear versions of that from time to time and it's a little bit alarming but then you think, "Well, what's the alternative? They were just going to politely drag me along for a while until they finally had to say no and wasted both of our time?"

David: This last one is about efficiency.

Blair: The sixth point under this heading of on hearing no is experts create the conditions where the client can easily say no if this is indeed the answer; thus, allowing both parties to remain ruthlessly efficient. I think of that even from your positioning standpoint, and I think we'll talk about that a little bit when we get into on saying no, but just this idea of you inviting no if the answer is no sends a signal that you respect the other party's time and that you are not interested in wasting your time or their time.

There's something really, I guess I would say professional- clinical and professional about that, that I think attracts people to you. Whereas the neediness and the not being able to hear no repels people from you.

David: When I hear people talk about efficiency, I usually hear just half of that, where I'm trying to be efficient-

Blair: With my time.

David: -yes, with my time. It's a selfish thing. It's not a bad thing, but it's purely a self-interested thing. Maybe even saying that in a conversation, I think that's really powerful. These six, before we get to the other half of this conversation around hearing no, is it's the second best answer you can hear. It's not the worst. Yes is obviously the best. Second is no is not the end. It's just the beginning of a different conversation that you might be able to have, or just the beginning of a period of waiting.

Third, there's a pretty significant tie between your willingness to say no and how much you've invested in the sale. Fourth, an early no is better than a late no. Fifth is saying no for the right reasons at the right time can invite more actual conversations. Sixth, there's this element of ruthless efficiency on both parts, which is very powerful.

Now on all of that, I think people get-- There's some nuance that's new to them, for sure, but the idea of saying no, flipping this around, is going to strike people as a little bit more odd than the first one, I think.

Blair: As we talked about at the top, hearing no, getting better at hearing no conditions you to be better at saying no. You had asked at the top what was the impetus for this. The impetus for just collecting thoughts and sayings on the topic of no was I hear so often when I'm in a training moment, the light goes on and they say, "None of this-" and by this, I mean everything we're teaching them about how to sell- "none of this means anything if you're not willing to walk away, if you're not willing to say no." [mimics game show winner bell] That's exactly right.

You can't fake- like suppose you can fake it for awhile- but you really do want to get to this place where you are- to that last point- you are seeking to be efficient for the sake of both parties and really willing to hear no; and willing to say no, that's the other side of the coin.

David: When you talk about saying no, are you thinking about the big business decisions and even sort of over into the personal life stuff, or are you tying this still to sales?

Blair: Oh, everything. I mean, most of these examples are kind of specific to sales, but you can easily extrapolate them out to your personal setting. I've thrown this Warren Buffett quote around lots of times on this podcast, I'll say it again. In the words of Warren Buffett, "The difference between successful people and really successful people is really successful people say no to almost everything."

David: That leads into the first point out of, again, six, that we're making around why we need to say no. If we flip that around a little bit, what does saying yes consistently imply about us, and how can that send the wrong signal to the people that we're talking with?

Blair: It's an unfortunate trait of human beings that we're repulsed by neediness. I don't remember the first place I read that. It just really struck me. I'm a little embarrassed that I, personally, am repulsed by somebody who is needy, but I have to admit that that is the effect. There are times in my life when I'm able to overcome that but in a professional context, when you are considering buying something from somebody and they come across as needy, you really do not want to do business with that person, so we need to be careful.

The way I was taught to do agency, new business development was to lean on passion and enthusiasm. "We're really, really passionate about your brand." To somebody like me, who I seem to have a hair-trigger around neediness, that just reeks of neediness. I find myself backing away. I suppose the right person could deliver those words in the right way, in a manner that does not make me feel needy, but I think the average person who thinks that that is a strength or a tool that they should use or a tactic that they should employ in the sale, probably doesn't come close to appreciating the neediness that it transmits and will be perceived by some people more than others.

David: You want your nurse to be drawn to neediness but not your tax advisor.

[laughter]

Blair: Oh my God, tweet that. That's great.

David: I'm going to get my Twitter card pulled pretty soon. I need to quit experimenting with my pretend personalities on there. All right, so what about credibility and no? I'll just let you state that. It's short but it's very powerful.

Blair: This is why I dug up all this stuff from this notebook in Evernote is because I tweeted this line. It's short and pithy; if we don't say no, our yes is meaningless. Our credibility is diminished. I just tweeted that, "If you don't say no, your yes is meaningless," and then it kind of caught fire as I suspected it would, and I have to confess here. I didn't write that line. I heard somebody say it once and I thought that's brilliant, and I don't remember who so the author can claim it and I'll give credit, but it's such a powerful line.

It's like, yes, if all you're doing is saying yes all the time, then what's the value of saying yes? What's the value of your yes? You're not discerning.

You'll say yes to anybody.

David: Yes, I don't know if you really mean it because I've never heard you say anything but yes.

Blair: Yes, you'd say that to anybody about anything, wouldn't you?

David: [chuckles] Right. That's so powerful. I feel like there's much more to talk about there, but I think it's pretty clear. That's the second one. The third is delayed gratification. I just love this one, thinking about how great dogs are, but I was thinking about this the other day. Dogs, they don't understand delayed gratification, do they? Even cats are better than that. Cats will leave a little bit of food for the next day. Dogs will just devour it.

Blair: I always admired when somebody puts the little treat on the dog's nose, and the dog waits until the person says, "Okay," and you just feel so sorry for that dog because you can tell it's really hard for them to wait, wait, wait. The point here is we measure maturity in children by their ability to delay gratification, which is to say no for now, so what does it say about our own maturity if we don't have the ability to say no.

David: The gratification is what we think will happen if we say yes. We'll please somebody and we're willing to delay that.

Blair: Well, and also creative people are a bit of a special breed- I mean, to go back to dogs. Creative people are motivated by the possibilities. When a potential project is put in front of us and we think of doing this, I am sure that we get more excited about the work and the possibilities that we might help to achieve than, say, an accountant, or a lawyer, or other professionals.

I'm not saying that those other professionals don't get excited about the work, but there's just something in the nature, the personality of creative people, where we are completely driven by the vision of novel possibilities, of us arriving at a novel solution. If you showed me data to support I was wrong, I wouldn't believe it. I'm convinced that creative people are- it's harder to delay gratification because we get more excited about the possibilities, but we do have to ask ourselves, "Well, what does that say about our maturity if we're constantly compromising our principles, or our strategy, our positioning because we can't say no?"

David: All of you listeners are such losers. You cannot delay your gratification, your immature, but we look forward to seeing you next week.

[laughter]

David: Oh, God. How do we even have an audience?

Blair: It's amazing we still have a podcast. [chuckles]

David: All right, so the fourth one is around crafting or putting together the right claim of expertise. I don't understand this one yet so talk about it.

Blair: I'm going to read it here because maybe I don't understand it either. Now, you got me worried. Saying no begins with the proper crafting of our claim of expertise; one that allows clients, in a brief moment, to opt in or out, to make a quick judgment of how relevant our expertise is to their needs. When our claim is devoid of no, we lose credibility.

What I mean by that is- back to that person who always says yes- when the language on your website that reflects what you do and for whom you do it encompasses everything and everybody, when there's no, no, there's no implied, "No, we don't work for these types of companies. No, we don't solve those types of problems," when there is no, no, in that language, you lose credibility.

We really are drawn to those claims of expertise that are quite narrow. We read them, "We do X for Y. We do this discipline for that market. If you don't need this discipline or you're not in that market, see you later."

David: I've heard you say in other settings that positioning is an exercise in exclusion, so figuring out who you're not going to work for. Because you're already working for the people that you might declare as your expertise, because you're not just manufacturing expertise. It's a process of exclusion. When you picture somebody trying to figure out what their positioning should be and they have all these options, they're trying to draw a circle around as many of those things as possible. They don't want to exclude them.

What you're saying is if you draw the circle too big, then you've not demonstrated the ability to say no so far and so it's going to be a weird conversation.

David: You also need to appreciate that a narrow claim builds credibility, but when people who read that claim, who have a need that's tangential to your discipline, or they are in a market tangential to your market, they will see relevance in that claim. You don't have to worry about language that's so specific that it misses those people who are just off of there because those people will see relevance themselves. They'll bridge that gap themselves.

It's a losing game to broaden out your language to include these slightly tangential or related disciplines and slightly tangential or related marketplaces or markets because once you do that, well, there's the next tangent over. At what point do you stop? You've got to stop early, make a narrow claim and accept that those outside of that target will also see relevance and will also seek you out.

David: When the client is asking for that tangential area, they kind of know it's slightly forward of your skis, but you let them decide whether or not they think you're capable of doing that. It strikes me that every one of those conversations you have where the client starts it with, "Can you do-" and then whatever that is- that's a test of the balance between your integrity and your desperation in how you answer each one of those questions that starts with, "Can you do this?"

Even before that conversation you might be having with a real person, you're making statements on your website about, I can do X. If that X is exactly what you've- I'm just restating what you said. If it's too big, then you haven't made any choices and there's just so many things fall apart. That's kind of this next fifth point. This to me gets to the kernel of the power of saying no and how so many things are tied to it, right?

Blair: Yes, so I'll read it here. If we cannot say no, then none of the other principles of Win Without Pitching matter. We will not create the conditions for success in our business or our life until we cut out that which we must no longer do, those with whom we must no longer do business. We're going to be ruthless about this or we're not. If we're not going to be ruthless about this, we're going to invite all kinds of problems. We're going to be dragged off into different directions.

I was on Jonathan Stark, his podcast a while ago, and we were talking about definitions of strategy and I asked him a question. I said, what's the purpose of strategy? I'm not sure I'd ever contemplated that question before, but he had a great answer. He said, your strategy allows you to discern an opportunity from a distraction.

David: Wow.

Blair: We talk about positioning. To me that's just fundamental business strategy. Your strategy is we do X for Y, this discipline for that market. The implied strategy is we're going to seek a leadership position in doing discipline for market. That idea of X for Y, that's our strategy. This thing in front of us, is that an opportunity or is it a distraction from us building this leadership position and this discipline for this market?

David: This field is full of people who are confident, who have confirmed that it's pretty smart to try new things, and their aptitude, their willingness to change on the fly is high. It's really about corralling some of this and corralling some of that so that you are effective, comes from saying no and everything else. If you have somebody enter your training program who's not going to be willing to say no, the rest of it is going to be purely intellectual and it's not really going to change their setting much.

Blair: Yes, you got it.

David: Finally, planning for the future. There's a rule somewhere. I think it's no longer true, but before you could pass one new law, you had to find five that you would ax. I think that's still true somewhere in government.

Blair: I think it's somebody's fantasy. I don't think that's ever been legislation that's ever been passed. At the end of every year, I do the same tweet where I say something like, it's not about thinking about the year ahead. The most important thing is not what you're going to do, but what you are no longer going to do. The point here is when planning for the future, we see limitless possibilities. We will harness few of those opportunities, however, until we first prune to make room for new growth.

Then the question for the future is not what will we do, but what will we no longer do? You said positioning is an exercise and elimination or sacrifice, I forget what the word was but all of those things are correct, but this metaphor of no new growth without pruning really strikes me. That one speaks to me so profoundly. There's just no room for growth unless you stop doing things, unless you start saying no.

What does that mean? Saying no to poor-fit clients. Then you can extrapolate beyond sales into your personal life. Look at your calendar. I struggle with this all of the time. I look at my calendar, all these things I said yes to, most of them I should have said no to because I know what I need to be focusing on. Maybe some of us out there have mastered it. I'd love to hear from you and hear what your secret is.

David: It's not me, so it must be somebody else.

Blair: Well, I don't know. I considered you to be one of the better people at this.

David: I just think you're going to look back over your life and you're going to want to have tried lots of things, but where you have really made an impact will be on those few things that you really focused on. Which means you could not have done them unless you had started lots of things and stopped lots of things. The sooner you stop lots of things that aren't meant to go forever, the better. That's the message.

Blair: Yes, that's perfect.

David: Thank you, Blair. This has been really fascinating. Just recapping the last six here on saying no. People are repulsed by neediness. Our credibility is diminished. We need to learn how to delay gratification. All of this is a process of exclusion and no is critical to that. If you can't say no, you can't really ever be great at sales. Then pruning to leave room for growth is a very powerful metaphor. Thank you, Blair. This has been a great discussion.

Blair: Thanks, David.