MMS #124 - Turning Rejection into Revenue: What to Do When They Say No with Andrea Waltz

[00:00:01] Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling, Relationships, Social and AI in the Buyer-Centric Age. Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fistbump, alongside Microsoft's number one social seller Carson V Heady and Tom Burton, author of The Revenue Zone and co-founder of LeadSmart, as we explore the strategies and stories behind successful executives and sales professionals.

[00:00:24] Dive into business growth, personal development and the pursuit of excellence with industry leaders. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this podcast is your backstage pass to today's business landscape. This is Mastering Modern Selling brought to you by Fistbump. Hey everybody, welcome. Carson, welcome. Brandon.

[00:00:52] This is, can you believe this Carson? This is episode 124. I can't. I can't. Yeah, Andrea and I were just chatting, I'll introduce everybody to Andrea Waltz, who's here with us. But Andrea and I were talking and, and she's like, you guys got quite a following, like we've been at it a long time. We've been working at it. Coming up on three years. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:16] So, everybody, thank you for joining us. We have multiple audiences. I want to welcome you all. So if you're live with us on LinkedIn or YouTube or anywhere else, I forget where else we stream these days. Everywhere. TikTok. That's it. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. If you're live and you want to comment and join the show, we'd love to encourage you to do that. Ask questions.

[00:01:44] And Andrea is much smarter than the rest of us. So she's going to answer all of them for you. I was just going to talk the whole time. I'm here to learn. That's it. I got my notepad ready to go. If you're watching this after we've gone live and you're in any of those still comment, we'll come back around. We'll ask questions. If it's directed at Andrea, we'll tag her and make sure that she sees it and gets a chance to come and answer it. And finally, if you're on the podcast, we love you guys, too. Thank you so much.

[00:02:13] Our podcast downloads have been going a lot lately. Like we've been on a growth path, which is really cool. So if you're on the podcast, thank you so much. And if you like what you're hearing, we'd love the reviews. We'd really appreciate that. Take the time to do that. We'd be very grateful. And if you really, really like it, screen capture it on your phone. Send it to a friend. Let them know that we exist. And for everybody, if you have any topics that you think we should cover, let us know. We want to be responsive.

[00:02:43] So there we go. Carson, we did our duty at the beginning. That's right. We're ready to dive in. This is great. Bob, aloha. And Scott, hello from Canada. Good to see you. And Andrea, thanks for joining us today. It is my pleasure, you guys. I'm so excited about this. Well, Andrea, let me do the, you know, let me do the obligatory bio that's going to make you embarrassed, but I'm going to do it because you're impressive.

[00:03:12] Like everybody listening, Andrea is impressive. Like you've got to, you got to listen to her. So Andrea Waltz is, she's a known speaker and sales strategist. She's co-founder of a company called Courage Crafters. You probably heard of her from the over 500,000 copies of her book that have been sold over the last two decades. Sure. First book was called Go for No. Yes is the destination.

[00:03:41] And her second book, did I put that in right order? I did. Your second book with your co-authored is When They Say No. Andrea, did I do everything right? And welcome to Mastering Modern Selling. You did. You could have just said Andrea Waltz and, and she's the master of no. You know, I had to put all that other cool stuff in there to make Carson and I, you know, feel better about ourselves.

[00:04:07] Like we got Andrea on and she writes over 500,000 books sold. I feel like that's what I love about the rising episode count is that I feel like our guest quality just continues to get better too. Case in point with, with Andrea today. So I'm excited to dive in. I don't know that we've ever really leaned into the rejection and the no, and it's since it's so inevitable, I think there's a lot to, a lot to learn from today's episode already. Yeah. We should have done this, this topic episodes ago.

[00:04:36] So Andrea, before we jump into rejection, um, why don't you tell us a little bit more about you beyond the bio and, uh, and then let's jump into rejection. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will say, I, I, I appreciate the intro. I, I wake up every day, you guys trying to figure out how to get this message of you need to intentionally increase your failure rate. You need to intentionally be willing to hear no more often every day.

[00:05:05] And I've been doing that now for like 25 ish years. I've been in this space for a long time. I didn't start there though. Obviously nobody wakes up as a kid wanting to be a salesman. I, or a sales trainer or anything to do with sales. I actually wanted to make movies. I, I love star Wars with a passion. What about back to the future? Do you like back to the future? I love back to the future.

[00:05:33] I like ET and I love Raiders of the lost Ark. So Brandon was in back to the future. So that's why I knew it. I knew I liked Brandon. So, so you guys, I wanted to make movies. And then later on in life, I decided that I wanted to be a crime scene investigator. So I got a bachelor of science degree in, in criminal justice.

[00:05:58] And when I graduated, it's, there's not a whole lot of jobs for crimes. You would think that they were all over based on the amount of TV shows that they make about forensic specialists and all of that. Every major city has a CSI unit, a major, major crimes every week. Yes. Major crimes. Yes. That's what I wanted to do before it was cool, before it was on TV. And I graduated and they were like, we don't have any jobs, but you could maybe intern for free for a couple of years and see if one comes open.

[00:06:28] And I was like, no to that. I want to, I need to make money. I'm tired of starving. That's where the journey of no began. That is where the journey of no began. That was my first big, that wasn't the first big no, but that was, that was one where I said, okay, it's teaching me to take another path. The rejection is redirection. And so I, in the meantime, I was working at Lens Crafters. I was a, started off as a part-time salesperson, worked my way up to assistant manager.

[00:06:56] Then from there became the general manager of one of their largest volume stores in the, in the company. And I was running the lab side and the retail side. It was like a $3 million location, a lot of responsibility. And I, that's where I met my husband, business partner. Well, he wasn't my husband at the time. So I kind of got those actually in reverse order. Business partner, now husband. And he told me this idea of go for no.

[00:07:23] And he told me this, this story about go for no, where he was selling suits for a living. Customer walked in, he proceeded to help this guy. He bought an entire wardrobe of clothing and the district manager was watching this sale and says to Richard, he says, out of curiosity, Richard, what did that customer say no to? And Richard said, Harold, that customer didn't say no to anything. You watched the sale. I just have this amazing sale. And then Harold said to Richard, he said, then how did you know he was done?

[00:07:53] You know, if he never said no to anything. And so, so this was kind of this go for no story that Richard told me and, and he would tell it. And people loved it. And, and people who heard it would go bananas and be like, oh my God. Yeah, we just need to go for no. And so eventually Richard said, you know, we could leave our jobs here at LensCrafters

[00:08:16] and go out on our own and they will pay us a lot more to be from the outside. Cause we'll be, we'll be consultants and we'll be, we'll, we'll be, we'll look a lot fancier and cooler if we're not just employees of the company. And I was like, yeah, cool, let's do it. And so we quit and we launched our business. And I won't say never looked back because certainly there were lots of ups and downs,

[00:08:45] but yeah, that's, that's kind of how we started. But Andrea, I'm seeing, thank you for all that. That was awesome background. I don't know if we've ever had that thorough of a background. That was thorough, I know. No, it was good. I applaud it. But I can see the connection here. I mean, crime scene investigation, salespeople who deal with no, those are both crime scenes, right? You got to investigate. You got to find where the blood is. You got to follow the leads. All the clues. I'm seeing the connection. Brandon, no one has ever made that connection, but you are right.

[00:09:15] You are absolutely right. Give it to Brandon. Yeah. Nobody's made that connection before? No. No. But I am going to do it in my marketing from now on. I was going to say that could be in your, the plug in your next book. You need to have some kind of. Oh, yeah. I can. Yeah. I can see you starting on a stage in one of your keynotes. You're talking about your training and crime scene investigation and then applying it to

[00:09:39] a sales rep who just got rejected and you have to deconstruct the scene to find out why. Yeah. A contrarian sales investigation. This is good. You guys, so for the audience watching, this is what a brainstorm consulting session looks like when we're behind the scenes and we're helping each other come up with good marketing and, and a good ways to put together a keynote. So I'm getting free advice here from you guys, which is great.

[00:10:07] All kinds of new experiences on mastering modern selling today. Yes. So as we just said, the free advice, I, I've got to pop up the today's show sponsored by fist bump. It also happens to be my company, but for people listening, if you need help around what we do is we help CEOs and sales leaders become more connected, relevant, and influential with

[00:10:33] their buyers in order to get more of those first conversations. So we don't do what Andrea does. We're not helping you get, no, we're just helping you get the first call. And that's what we do all wrapped around LinkedIn. And a big part of it is live shows and podcasts like the one that we're on today and the whole playbook that we do after the show and using the content from the show for outreach, email,

[00:11:01] blogs, newsletter articles, all types of things. So if that's of interest to you, we'd love to help you if we can at getfistbumps.com. Okay. Got that out of the way. Andrea, let's talk about, I loved your, I loved your setup by the way, but we want to talk about the fear of rejection or the mindset of rejection first. So why are we so scared of it? Yeah. So first off, I mean, we're all biologically wired to not want to get rejected, to not get

[00:11:30] thrown out of the tribe, so to speak. So it's something that is universal. Everyone deals with it. What I have found over the years is that the more you do it, the more seasoned you are, the less, right, it tends to impact you. So this is an issue that I see. It's kind of weird though, because it's an issue that I see with a lot of new salespeople or people going into a role that they've never done before.

[00:11:57] So there's a lot of baggage around, I'm not the expert. I can't answer all the questions. So that call reluctance develops from that and procrastination. But then also sometimes people, I've noticed professional, in professional services, people just get complacent. They're used to the inbound leads rolling in, you know, year after year. And then pretty soon they turn around, they go like, I don't really have a pipeline. I don't, I'm not real. I'm not doing any outbound activity.

[00:12:27] And so that's how they kind of end up in our universe. But it is a universal issue. It is something that everybody struggles with. And so I think it's just important to recognize that you're not, you're not alone. You're not defective. And then how can we take something that we all experience and not only change the way that we think about it, but change the way we feel about it, which will obviously change the kind of actions that we take. I love this.

[00:12:57] I mean, look, no is the path to yes. And frankly, when I, when I look back and I think about a couple of things, number one, I always like to say that, you know, the rejection or the no is where our real work begins, because that's where, you know, somebody says, you can't do this, or this is impossible, or we've tried and failed to get a meeting with this client. You know, that's where it's like, okay, how do we, how do we take a creative approach? What, what are the reasons that they're telling us no?

[00:13:24] And then the second part is, you know, I think back to my first year as an account executive. And I remember reaching out to customers and getting, you know, the reasons that they were saying no to a meeting. And I started infusing that into my outreach and taking more of a counterintuitive approach to basically say, well, you know, I'm hearing from these folks. These are the reasons why they don't want to meet. So let me completely change my approach, make it unique, lean into the rejection. Why am I being rejected? And lead with the value, lead with the areas that I can serve.

[00:13:52] And it just transformed my success rate. I mean, I went from getting like, you know, maybe 1% of these outreaches with meetings booked to 50%. I mean, it was insane. So the rejection is not final. It is a learning tool. And that's where we have to look at it. Yeah. And I love that, Carson. And the two things that I took away, one is just your mindset around rejection.

[00:14:17] But the other thing is, like, strategically, look at all the value that's created. So if you can stop and get some information from people, right? Find out what is making them say no. Where are the gaps? Why are they saying no? And then use that. Then rejection becomes extremely valuable. And that's one of the things that we teach is don't just get in, like, make the no payoff for you.

[00:14:45] Look and see where's all the evidence leading, kind of to use the solving crime analogy, right? You're so right, Brandon. I should have. But you look at it and you start to see trends, right? You start to see the trends. I think sometimes, especially with new salespeople, though, is they kind of look at every interaction in a silo. And they're not looking to kind of stitch it together and look for those trends.

[00:15:13] And they take the rejection personally. So instead of seeing that it's not about them personally, but they have something to do with it, they are involved. And so what's that common denominator? That's really good. I think I'm going to show, I got to show this just to, you know, support myself. Paul Flick's comment on there, I've worked on some deals which resemble crime scenes.

[00:15:41] So I think we might be onto something here, Andrea. There's going to be a whole series, a whole theme now as a result of this. We should do like CSI Wall Street, and we could literally just do like a sales story of crime scenes. You said something else that was really important earlier, Andrea, and it was about the fact that over time and through experience, these things don't bother us or affect us as much. I mean, I can tell you at this stage in my life and career, I mean, it just doesn't, you know, the no's, the rejections, they don't faze me at all.

[00:16:11] And we're, I mean, I'm talking about like deals that we've pursued and we've chased, and then they go in another direction or whatever it is. Things that are sometimes debilitating and crushing when you're starting out in your career. These things roll off you very quickly later on in your career, because number one, you realize that it's, it is a natural element of sales. And second, because to your point, there's so much that we can do to dissect these and learn and do a postmortem like in a CSI show.

[00:16:40] Talk to us more about what can we learn, Brandon? You got me started, man. Now I'm on a roll. I'm waiting for the movie reference. That could be a tough one. Andrea, talk to us more about how can we maybe stop? There's so many pressures, I think, that prohibit us in the moment sometimes to stopping and realizing the learning moment in a no. But how can we consciously do this more as individual contributors, but also as leaders

[00:17:09] who are trying to create a culture around better mindset? Yeah. So I think from a leadership standpoint and as an individual, the very first question that people need to ask themselves to kind of start this reprogramming process is, what does this mean? And so your brain is already answering that really fast. You get a rejection and your brain already answers this with, what does this mean? It means we're going to die because your brain is very worried about protecting you on the

[00:17:39] most basic level, right? The rejection built in your DNA. So your brain equates that with, this is really bad. And so from a leadership standpoint, it's really about helping people see that rejection is part of the process and how to kind of assimilate that and expect it. I'll give you an example. Like in one of the things that I do, which is kind of fun, I do a go for no 21 day challenge.

[00:18:05] And what that is, is for 21 days, people challenge themselves to see how many no's that they can get as fast as they can. Most of the people in the challenge are, they're making calls. They're cold calling or they're warm calling or they're sending LinkedIn messages. They're following up with people. And their goal is to try to get to as many people as they can and to get what we call a good no.

[00:18:31] And so in doing that process, what you learn, you build up some tolerance. You build up some resilience. And that's a big part of kind of numbing yourself to no. So that's the first part. But when you do that, it helps you do that reframe. It helps you answer the question, what does this mean? With instead of catastrophizing it, it's what this means is absolutely nothing. I'm still here. I didn't die. It's time to go again. What did I learn?

[00:19:01] What can I do better? And also just statistically, the numbers and I absolutely, I know we'll probably talk about this later. I'm just going to bring this up now. Hate the analogy of the numbers game. Go for no is often equated. Go for no as just an idea is often equated of, hey, it's sales, it's just a numbers game. And I think we're so beyond that. I think you can't get away from the fact that the numbers matter.

[00:19:31] And you can't really analyze data unless you have enough of it. And too many salespeople that I see will make a couple of calls. They'll try a particular message. They'll try some kind of cadence. And then they'll go like, well, that didn't work. Well, how many calls did you make? Right. And so, sorry, I've kind of gone off a little bit on a tangent. I'm coming back. I'm reeling myself in here. We trust you. Yeah.

[00:19:56] So, but the thing is with the building of the resilience and understanding that there is kind of a numbers game aspect to it. And that is part of it. And so when you get your numbers up, that is how you retrain your brain to understand what this means is you're going to keep going. You're going to survive. And that's just a big part of it. It is just numbing yourself to those no's. When you've been around long enough, you start to get there. As you've said, Kirsten. Yeah.

[00:20:27] I think Bob's comment about the training ground where new sellers acquire their alligator skin is disappearing, is very interesting. You know, top of the funnels activities are being automated and maybe they're not having as many no's early on. Do you find this to be, is this a challenge that's happening with new sellers? They're just not getting the at-bats to get the rejections? Yeah, that's really interesting.

[00:20:56] And I have never heard anybody say that. And I think that is absolutely correct. Here's why I personally don't see that is because the people that I think end up in my world. And I mean, so in my business, there's kind of two parts of my business. One is just going out and doing keynote speaking at conferences. And when you do that, unfortunately, you don't get to interact as much with people.

[00:21:22] And then when I do things like the go for no challenges, that's when people who are self-motivated, they're usually full or significantly on commission. And they've tracked down go for no because they need it.

[00:21:40] And so as a result, I don't think I'm seeing those type of people because they're not out there seeking the strategies and the mindset to help them deal with that. Does that? Yeah. Yeah. I think you nailed it. And, you know, I definitely want to hit on Anthony's question as well. You know, but briefly to touch on Bob's, Andrew, I think you're spot on.

[00:22:04] And it's an interesting observation because, yes, I think more and more of the upfront tasks are being automated where they can. And I think that there is an interesting statement about the compare and contrast of, you know, what experiences maybe we had as sellers in olden times versus present day. I do see this in some sales teams. Absolutely.

[00:22:32] And I think it definitely, on the one hand, I think some of these folks are being shortchanged in the full sales experience. But on the other hand, where is sales going and what is the need going to be for sellers at what stage in the cycle? And I think it's all going to be dependent on that. I mean, I'm very grateful that I had the experience of going out and knowing exactly what it takes to earn that first meeting and then to get to that meeting,

[00:23:00] to go through the multiple steps of a sales cycle, to invest time, pull in resources, and then especially to have the deal go dead on the table. I think some of the ramifications here, Bob, are if you haven't created and kind of baked this deal from the start, I don't know that you're going to have as much skin in the game and passion at like 95% into the sales cycle either. You're not going to be like living and dying by some of these deals.

[00:23:29] I mean, I can tell so many stories of being up late at night on the phone with like my internal whisperer at the customer, like arming me with what I needed to know for the meeting the next day. And I think some of those experiences are going to go away in favor of, to your point, like the seller being at the last mile. And so I think it just, it changes the whole experience. You know, what is sales going to look like five, 10 years from now?

[00:23:57] I think AI is going to be very prevalent and prominent in a lot of areas right now. But I think there's also going to be a pendulum swing where the skills and the EQ are going to, and the fundamentals are going to be all the more important in the aftermath of that. So yeah, I think we're seeing some of those changes and it's a different, different sales muscles are being developed,

[00:24:20] but I'm glad that we have these sales muscles and knowing how to cope with and deal with rejection is always going to be a strong one to have. Well, it is. And, and I'll just comment that a lot of people look to technology. I mean, why, why in sales is technology so helpful? Well, it's helpful in literally every facet of our lives, right? It's helpful in GPS, getting you where you want to go and booking travel and everything.

[00:24:46] So there's some practical reasons why technology is in sales now, but one of the main things, and you see it celebrated like, you know, zero, zero rejection, right? Do this thing, use this, use this tool. There's zero rejection. And all of those technologies are designed to kind of help, help people have that feeling of, oh, I can do this. And there won't be any point where I'm going to have to hear no.

[00:25:16] And that's a really dangerous thing, I think, to game to play with people, because first it's just, it's absolutely not true. And the people that develop these skills going forward are the ones who are going to win. I'll tell you this, though, kind of just wrapping up Bob's question.

[00:25:36] I've had people come up to me after a talk and talk about their fear of even sending an email, just hitting send. And it is not Gen Z, but definitely the millennial generation where they, so the technology helps mitigate some of the fear. But interestingly, I have found it doesn't mitigate all of it. Yeah.

[00:26:02] You know, and I see that in, you know, what we do at Fistbump with leaders around creating thought leadership content. There's a big fear of rejection there. And it's easier to say, well, let's go hire somebody that could use my LinkedIn account and mass message lots of people get back to the numbers game. And it's almost that removal of self that gives them, I mean, that's really where their fear comes in. It's I need to remove myself from this.

[00:26:31] I'm scared to put myself out there. I'm scared to make it more personal. So let's go with messages that are out there. But even that, from what I'm hearing, like as we're talking about is if some of those messages aren't going out, they're not experiencing the rejection. They don't have the opportunity to grow the alligator skin. Can we shift to this, Andrea? When you and I, we did our pre-call before the episode.

[00:26:54] One of the things that we had talked about and reminded me of something I learned from Brian Tracy, gosh, 15 plus years ago, is embracing the rejection. You talked about having your personal success ratio as a way to help you. Can you explain what you mean by that? Yeah. So really, it's reverse engineering and knowing your numbers. So reverse engineering, how many no's it takes to get that yes.

[00:27:23] And if you know the statistics, then throughout your funnel. How many people are you getting top of the funnel? Where are you losing people? And eventually, I mean, this is like so old school, you guys, but it's true. You know, W. Clement Stone, who was the founder of Success Magazine and started Combined Insurance Corporation of America like when he was 25.

[00:27:48] And he knew that salespeople were terrified of rejection and hated it. And so he would give his salespeople beans to put in their pocket, put like 20 beans in your pocket. And every time you get a no, move one bean from one pocket to the other pocket. And before you've moved all 20 beans, you will have gotten one yes. So let's take this into the new world, right? But the idea is still the same. Like you have to know your numbers.

[00:28:17] And I think if you know your numbers in whatever business or industry that you're in, you just reverse engineer and say, okay, how many people do I need to be reaching out to? How many conversations? How many meetings do I need to have? And where can I expect that yes to come? And if you are, once you figure that out, then you can kind of see where the gaps are. Like, where are you losing people? Are you losing people top of funnel with your messaging?

[00:28:46] Or are you having great meetings and you're not able to close? And then why is that? But at every step, it's being willing, I think, to ask the tough questions early. I just saw a great question that I know that's coming up so that you are getting to know faster so that you're not chasing after deals that are poor deals. You're not filling your pipeline with a bunch of stuff that's going to turn into nothing.

[00:29:15] You've got to be going for no and be willing to hear no at every step of the process. And that's such a fundamental part of what Go4No is all about. You hit some really powerful stuff there. I mean, I think about it and there's only so much we can control in sales. We can control the quality of the message that we send. That's going to give a higher probability that somebody will take the meeting. We can control the quantity of outreaches that we make to your point. Know your stats. Know your number of outreaches to get to that yes.

[00:29:43] And then you can control the consistency by which you execute over time. And a lot of this sales methodology is, you know, where can I shore up the gaps in my process so that I have the highest probability of success? We can't let any numbers like absolutely govern us. I think that's the problem that a lot of times the Monday morning quarterbacks look at the data and they just want to find some asinine statistic to stump you.

[00:30:07] But the reality is like what the data can do and where AI is super helpful is it can automate a lot of these tasks so that I can actually go in and talk to an executive without even prepping. And I can sound like a genius because of what AI can arm me with. And that's what I think great sellers are using AI for is how do we shore up our process, prep efficiently and things of that stature to go in. Now, what I'd love to hear, Andrea, and this kind of touches on Anthony's earlier question about the thoughts of rejection as it relates to uncertainty. Why are customers saying no predominantly?

[00:30:37] And I've got a lot of theories and we've talked about that a little bit on this show before. But I think at the heart of it is like why are customers saying no and how can we get to know quicker? Because I couldn't agree more. We got a lot of fluff in our pipeline and we don't need it. There's no sense in fluff being there because you're going to have to answer to it at some point. But how do we really plug into why customers are saying no and make our process more effective to get to that yes? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:05] So, I mean, I think that customers are saying no because they have PTSD for the last 60 years of salesmanship, right? Everyone is terrified that they're going to get a typical go for yes. I'm not throwing the go for yes people under the bus at all.

[00:31:24] But they're scared they're going to get a salesperson who they perceive is manipulative, who will ask questions in a certain way to force them into a corner. You do love your children, right? You do want your family to have the best possible protection, right? And ask those questions to where you're into a high pressure sale.

[00:31:50] And so I think that we know, I think you guys have probably seen it, this ship has turned and has really turned, I think in a really good way over the last few years. But I don't know that the general public or certainly like even in the B2B world, I don't know if they know.

[00:32:13] And so because so many people are talking about building relationships and not high pressure selling and consults of selling and all of these things and all of these programs. And yet I think that's why I said PTSD, I think there's still this, the buyers are still holding people at arm's length. And now that they're armed with technology and AI, now they can do it easier than ever.

[00:32:38] And so from a go for no standpoint, we have to come at the conversation of no is a perfectly acceptable answer. In fact, you know what, before we even talk, I'm going to assume that it is no. No, let's just start with, let's just start with no. You, you, this may not be a fit for you. In fact, one of my favorite ads is Viking Cruises put out a great ad and they have a double page spread.

[00:33:06] And it's everything that they do not provide. It is no to, it's a list of no's of we don't do this, we don't do that, we don't have casinos, we don't have the fruity drinks, we don't have the photography, we don't have all the stuff. And so as a consumer, if you're doing research and you see all of the no things, you're like, that's for me.

[00:33:24] So as salespeople, we have to be so upfront with the no that people feel so psychologically safe, that they're open minded to hear what we have to say. And then, Carson, it's just, I'm having Matt Dixon voices in my head around the jolt effect. And when he talked about, you know, we moved from this era of FOMO to FOCU.

[00:33:52] The fear of messing up. Yes. Yes. Yes. He did say FOFU in his book. No, he did say FOFU. Messing up. And yeah, we've definitely shifted that. And how does, I mean, that all plays into this whole mindset game, Andrea, that you're talking about, about the mindset of no. Well, yeah, Brandon.

[00:34:19] And so the mindset of no, and here's something else that we really haven't, I love that you're talking about the fear of messing up. This is the other thing is, and this is something that we talk, Go for No, by the way, is just a very short fable. And it is a story that we, it's a story about a sales person who is fairly average. And he wakes up one day in a house that belongs to a wildly successful 10 years in the future version of him. And he meets this other version of him.

[00:34:47] And together, they are trying to figure out what it is that makes this future him so successful. And the secret, as it turns out, spoiler alert, is that the other him learned to go for no and learned actually to love failure. And so there is an underlying theme in go for no that you have to start to love failure. You have to court failure. You have to seek failure.

[00:35:12] And not just for failure's sake, but for what it does for you from a resilience standpoint, what it does for you in teaching you, in building your confidence. I think somebody asked just about uncertainty. And that's my fear with the technology is that we're developing salespeople who are hiding behind technology. They're using the great parts of it, but they're hiding behind it.

[00:35:38] And I wonder if in the calls, in the discovery, in the communications, they're not going to be floored if they get and feel completely at ease and uncomfortable with hard questions, tough questions, things that they can't answer.

[00:35:59] And I have to tell you that I am seeing some of that, where people are, I tell them, like I tell the people in my go for no challenge, I'm like, you know what, you guys, I don't want you to come back with success stories. This isn't about proving yourself. It's not about getting a gold star. I want you to come back with stories of how you messed it up and how you failed so that we can, so that you can survive that. And we can talk about that. And that actually is going back to what Carson said about, you know, what can leaders do?

[00:36:26] So leaders have to create a culture where this is okay. They have to talk about no, right? They have to talk about rejection. They have to talk about where are we getting no? Why are we getting no? And how can we get better so that everybody feels like it's just completely on the table and it's not the elephant in the room? And that's one of the biggest challenges is often the sales culture or lack thereof. You know, I just finished reading The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.

[00:36:55] And let's be real. So many of our organizations, right, wrong, or indifferent, but mostly because, you know, numbers are reported quarterly to Wall Street. We manage on this quarter-to-quarter mindset. And that is contrary to what you're preaching. And what I believe to be true is that we also, we have to plant these long-term seeds. You know, I look back at the great deals that are happening right now. And the seed was planted six months to a year ago. You know, these sales cycles can be long.

[00:37:23] But if I'm only looking at the current quarter, I lose sight on these things. I lose focus. And so we have to challenge these norms. And, you know, I think the other benefit, I guess, or almost curse of doing this as long as I have or being in this realm, like, you know, having this level of experience. It's like you get to a point where, yes, the rejection doesn't sting anymore. But you almost, with the technology, I'm sleepwalking.

[00:37:49] I mean, it's so easy now to get a meeting because of the wording that you can leverage with AI. And, like, I'm adding a personal touch and I'm doing it what I believe to be the right way. I'm using the customer's websites. And I'm, you know, but I'm almost sleepwalking. You get to the meeting and then you're doing the fundamentals. You're leaning in and you're, you know, listening.

[00:38:07] And, you know, but I just I fear that we're not creating and instilling the necessary culture and EQ skills in our teams consistently enough across the board to be able to create that culture where we welcome and we invite the rejection and the no. Because that is exactly when the real work begins. If we're not pushing the envelope, I mean, back to your original story, then we're not really providing our optimum value.

[00:38:35] You know, ideally, we work for an organization or we represent a brand that can can really join in and change the game for the customers that we serve. You know, I think, too, about like I loved your analogy of the Viking cruise. You know, we've talked before, Brandon, on this show about I'll tell customers all the time this may not be a fit. And frankly, you know, you've got a great contact or you've got a great relationship with XYZ Company, my competition. One of my friends works there.

[00:39:02] I'm happy to make the introduction if they're the right fit for you. You know, we'll make that work. But we've got to embrace the rejection, understand it, dissect it and then be able to move forward meaningfully. Because without the rejection, you're not going to be able to really uncover what they need and you're not going to be able to form a real relationship. Andrea, before before we move into I do want to go into the autopsy, failure autopsy, especially because we're talking about crime scene now.

[00:39:29] But but what Carson was saying there, could you address like what are some of the best practices that leadership can can embrace to try and start bringing? I mean, I would imagine it's really difficult. Like we don't talk about our failures in public very well. How does leadership embrace this and start to bring it in to to make a change? Yeah.

[00:39:51] So the companies that I have seen implement go for no successfully are the ones that do it not only kind of bottom up, but top down. Everybody uses the phrase go for no. Everybody talks about it. In fact, the guy who kind of taught Richard this go for no idea, you know, he would ask him, like, how many no's did you get today? How many no's are you hearing back when he was selling suits for a living all those years ago?

[00:40:21] And so I think that that's one thing. Another thing is celebrating is celebrating when somebody and you hear this a lot, but I mean, literally celebrating when somebody gets a no or they work a deal and it falls apart instead of. And this is kind of where the failure autopsy comes in is instead of it being like this horrible, shameful, embarrassing thing.

[00:40:49] We've got to celebrate attempts as much as we celebrate and tries as much as we celebrate results. And in most organizations, it really is the opposite. Results are everybody's on the leaderboard. Everybody's trying to hit president's club. All of the yeses are talked about. I think we learn a lot more from the no's and what happened and what went wrong. So what went wrong with that deal? Why did you know who did they not bring in to be on the conversation?

[00:41:19] You know, what did we miss? Right. And so that's something that I think is that comes from top down. You know, I remember once Richard and I doing a training session for a very large pet food retailer. You would know who they are. And the VP of sales basically was like he at some point kind of early had stuff to do.

[00:41:49] So he left. Well, what kind of signal does that send to everyone else sitting there? And the signal was, well, this isn't a priority. And so I'll just add that if revenue is important, I know organizations have like the chief revenue officer and all that. I think that everybody has to be completely focused on revenue and they have to see go for no has to be talked about from everybody.

[00:42:17] And the organizations that have done it well, it's everybody. I love it. I mean, look, the beauty is in the attempt. And frankly, like as sales leaders, if we're talking about what's stopping us at every stage of the cycle, whether it's getting the meeting, whether it's what happens that we can't secure a second meeting, whether it's something dies midway or a customer's ghosting us or we lose a deal. If we're dissecting each piece, we can help ourselves to figure out what are these blind spots so that we don't ever have them again.

[00:42:45] And there's always going to be new kinds of blind spots. And there's always going to be things that, you know, transpire that prevent you from really seeing around corners effectively. But the more you understand the rejection, why it's happening and you can address it as a leader and you can bring your team together around those types of events, you're just going to make everybody better. And that's why, you know, that's why it's so culturally important to embrace those moments and leverage them as teaching moments and learning moments for everybody.

[00:43:14] Yeah, yeah.

[00:44:11] Go for no. Go for no.

[00:44:45] Your mindset, your posture, when you are willing to hear no, when you want to hear no, will just get, will clear out what's not working and bring you exactly what is working because you are willing to hear the no's up front early and continue to move on. So that's level three. And level four is failing bigger and faster.

[00:45:11] So it's going after bigger clients, better clients, clients that make the difference. That's level four. And then level five is failing exponentially. So which is failing as a team. So it's everybody going for no. Everybody on the team willing to hear no at every stage where they need to have what we call a go for no moment, which is the moment where you have the opportunity to ask the question.

[00:45:39] So what are the questions that you need to ask the question? So what are the questions that you need to be asking that you're not or that you aren't executing on as consistently as you should? And that's where the autopsy comes in, Brandon, which is, are you executing on the go for no moments in your process throughout from top of funnel all the way down at every stage? Are you asking the question? Are you getting a yes? Are you getting a no?

[00:46:06] And are you doing it as often as you can, as early as you can? And that's really how the autopsy is done. What's great about this, too, is that this is a process that you've got to adopt yourself and that, you know, unfortunately, sometimes you're not going to work in an environment that's going to give a friendly, safe space for you to fail. You know, you're going to have to subscribe to this process and you're going to have to stick with it. And I think that's really important.

[00:46:35] The biggest deal I ever inked, I was told no at a level of leadership. And I went above them and went to other business decision makers. I had people internally that signed on that were going to help me with this deal that left me midway through the deal. So this isn't going to happen. And, of course, they came back near the end before the big announcement and all the hoorah went out because they wanted their name on the win sheet. But, you know, the point is, is that. And you weren't better at all, I can tell.

[00:47:05] No need to be. You've got to. But the bottom line is you've got to commit to this process no matter what is happening around you, even though it's going to sometimes be painful and it's going to sometimes be uncomfortable. This is a process worth committing to whether your leadership or whether your culture adopts it or not. And then for leaders, make sure that you've given that space where it's okay to fail.

[00:47:58] Yeah. Because I think you've got to do it. And in the course of my life, I think.

[00:48:17] You've got to commit to this, because I want to keep your. I've got to him, because I think people have to do it. right you want to have quality presentations because if you're just doing the numbers game thing and you're not paying attention to any quality whatsoever or your messaging or anything you're going to do a tremendous amount of work and have almost no payoff and i do see people

[00:48:44] who come to me with that as the scenario and it's like okay you you got to back up you're probably not talking to the right person or you're talking to the right person you're not saying the right thing it's it's one of those two right and so um but that that also tells you a lot if you have data that's the greatest book endorsement ever

[00:49:08] andrea are there uh size of companies or types of companies where maybe going for no isn't as advisable or it doesn't work as well yeah i mean the reality is that the um there's kind of a inverse relationship with the number of prospects that you have right to the um maybe the

[00:49:36] willingness that you want to quote unquote fail so if you are selling like high-end technology airplane parts something like that and you've got about seven companies you work with you're not you're not going you're going for no but you're doing it in a very very tactical micro way to get

[00:50:00] buy-in from people or meetings because that it's very as it's very essence you guys go for no is simply just ask like if somebody's like what does go for no mean it just means ask like i'm we're just saying it differently and we're saying it we're saying it in in the go for no way because what we're telling you is ask even though you may get a no ask even though so you're you're risking your

[00:50:25] self you're being vulnerable you're risking failure you're risking your reputation you're risking whatever you're risking what people think of you you know all of that but go for no at its heart is asking so brandon your question is a good one and i do run into this sometimes where somebody's like what about an account that's like really important and i'm not ready i'm not prepared well i and it's

[00:50:50] a valid issue like should i just go out there and just fail fail fail and and completely demolish my chances with like this gold star client not necessarily however i will say that most people i see especially who kind of run their own thing maybe it's a financial planner and they have some some multi-millionaire that they wanted to approach and they still have an approach to this person

[00:51:17] they're just talking themselves out of it because they are fearing failure they're fearing what this person's going to think about them maybe they're fearing the no and at that point they need to go for no at that point it's like you know what you could practice your presentation or your approach with this person all day long how it's going to go and what you're going to sound like but eventually you just have to do it like stop trying to get stop trying to be perfect you just have to do it and so

[00:51:44] that's what i run into more is brandon trying to pull people and get them to take action and get them to just do it um rather than the small statistic of people who yeah you need to prepare like don't go in you we want you to feel confident and that's really important obviously this message is not like go in fail make a complete and total ass of yourself and embarrass yourself no obviously not

[00:52:10] prepare but don't wait forever because i'm telling you your competitors are probably you know you got to worry about them they may not be sitting back waiting till everything is perfect it's never all going to be perfect yeah and i and you know it's you know i mentioned matt dixon earlier and in the jolt effect and you know one of the big things i took away from that book was from the challenger sale where

[00:52:36] it was challenge challenge challenge the data that they found in the jolt effect was more of you know wiser sales people when they're hitting objections are starting to backpedal and say okay what's going on and they're aligning more as the consultant or trusted advisor instead of challenging more and so it makes me wonder like on your from your end and you're like when do you push

[00:53:00] and when do you not push that's that's a really good question well something carson said too earlier which i really liked was um you know bringing forward the objections early on and i think that that is something that i i think is kind of a go for no philosophy you know um i kind of think of go for

[00:53:24] no as both strategy and philosophy right it's it's a mindset but it's there are also some tactical things um one of the things we suggest is set set a number of no's that you're going to collect so literally set a goal for the number of no's you're going to hear so that's a very tactical thing um but pulling forward those objections is one way that i think you can do exactly what you're saying is um

[00:53:47] is you're kind of saying no for people and that is very pulley um and we know that we can't push anyone to do anything and so i think making sure that people at all times have that psychological safety by by watching your messaging and so by um and and this ai is very helpful for this these days right

[00:54:13] to kind of run your run your scripts whether you're saying these things or writing these things in an email and run them through a filter of i want to make sure that i'm at all times giving this person um an out or making sure that no is on the table for them and a lot of people think that when you do that oh if you do that then they're gonna know that they can say no to you well i have news for everyone

[00:54:42] they already know they can say no to you the only thing that you're gonna do by making them feel like they can't is giving them that ptsd and and making them feel like you are the same salesperson that they fear that you are which is a salesperson where they're going to get pushed and persuaded and convinced

[00:55:02] into something that they don't want yeah andrea this has been great carson do you have uh any follow-up questions anything yeah you know what i'm curious about andrea is you know you've been on this journey for some time what would you say are the biggest changes the most impactful changes to the sales ecosystem over that time but what has also stayed very fundamentally true

[00:55:32] hmm yeah um so that's i think the well i mean the big change obviously is just watching the technology change um watching people go from how everybody is doing outbound selling on the phone to everybody's doing it um virtually or they're not doing outbound they're doing it they're engaging in all of the

[00:56:00] strategies and marketing tactics to drive those inbound leads which by the way once you get an inbound lead you still have to go for no it's like exactly the same um you still have to have a conversation with people generally speaking um but but even so i mean with ai uh i see that there's i mean lots of sales are happening millions and billions of dollars are transact acted today without any salesperson

[00:56:27] whatsoever that obviously will will continue and so um but i think in some in some there are still some things where it won't and um where people are going to want to talk to somebody and we're just that's going to be really interesting to see i i think that the thing that stays that has stayed the same

[00:56:51] is human nature you know our our brains have not caught up to any of what is transpiring they i don't think our brains have caught up to the fact that we have airplanes i don't think our brains have caught up to the fact that we have cars you know we've been around for a long long time so the what i see with people who for example join a go for no challenge or read go for no and send me a message or something

[00:57:18] is um a lot of fear about what other people think that is probably the number one thing is people are concerned about what this person is going to think and what that means right and it doesn't matter that they may never interact with this person again it um all of the logical thinking that i you know that i

[00:57:44] can help them with like hey it doesn't matter they're not thinking about you and all of the stuff um that's just a very real ingrained fear in people and it's very difficult to get rid of so one of the things that i kind of coach people on is that the psychological um issue with rejection has two well it has two parts one is psychological it's what you're thinking about right it's it's your

[00:58:12] fear of what does this person think of me what are they going to say about me what what does this mean but also there's a biological part and that's the butterflies and the shaky voice and the sweating and all of that and so i teach people you can't wait for these the physical sensation of fear to go away before you take action if you're going if you're nervous about making a call or oh my gosh i have this

[00:58:38] meeting today i you know i've i've prepared i've prepared that's all you can do is you've got to prepare and you take the meeting despite all of the biological feelings you think about them you recognize them you're like oh this is why this is happening my brain is here to protect me i get it and then you take action and and eventually some of that starts to go away but the sting of rejection

[00:59:02] is just hardwired us and so i i think we will just continue to have to deal with this as because we're humans and with all the ai stuff that's coming down we will still have these as issues as long as we still communicate and quote unquote sell whatever that looks like even in 10 years salespeople are are

[00:59:29] so averse sometimes to rejection that they will i i mean i remember when i ran a call center years ago and you know we had first started and people would walk around and saying you know i was just asked to send this massive proposal and then you know i think too about all the fluff that people put in pipeline and all the you know the the hemming and hawing that we do sometimes to make it sound like yeah there's a chance that i'm going to hit my number based on these five deals that are super kludgy and the

[00:59:58] reality is a yes or a no is better than a maybe so i in fact i will often try to coax the potential for rejection or risk out of a customer dialogue just to say you know hey like these are you know i i have these resources that are available i can invest i can do these things but you know let me know if i need to spend my time and priorities elsewhere it's not gonna you know no harm no foul you know i

[01:00:23] need to go out and and create work elsewhere and we have other projects to invest in so you know it's not gonna hurt my feelings if you let me know that that's not a priority right now i'm available i'm here i'm happy to do whatever i can but um don't be afraid to kind of coax out that risk that they see to you know brandon the earlier point about what matt dixon preaches but also you know very in line with what andrea said today um you know we got to make sure sometimes we don't just say okay to a

[01:00:52] maybe or keep kicking the can down the road that's not going to help anybody and um as we kind of wind down brandon i i really i tried hard but i you know trying to come up with a movie reference about as close as i got just thinking of the movie seven and the seven deadly sins we could do like a seven deadly sales sins of rejection maybe that would be the movie reference more time on that one

[01:01:17] yeah so andrea early in our our mastery modern selling episodes carson almost every episode he had a movie reference to use as an analogy or a word picture and so it became for a while that it was every episode carson where's the movie reference we haven't done that as as much for a while maybe we should bring it back that was fun and andrea talked about movies we talked about csi i mean we've we've got the theme going yeah yeah well one one movie references is jim carrey's you know was in yes

[01:01:46] man yeah right and he had and he had to say yes to everything so that it would get him out of his comfort zone and go for no in its own weird way is kind of is it's the op like it's the opposite but but when you but when you're willing to hear no it's crazy how the yeses will come from that yeah you know what we do with with fist bump with clients you know we use a live show and a podcast

[01:02:15] as part of their reputation building and it scares the crap out of people like they've got to host a show and like brandon you make it look easy i'm like well i'm well over a hundred episodes into it i mean carson and i go back to episode one and we sucked i mean it was bad you know it was bad and then but you know what episode five was better than one and 20 was better than five and you get better and and what we do is you got you've got three weeks from the time we start you give you a

[01:02:45] one-week grace period but within four weeks of go you're doing your first episode because you've got to get that first one out the door to go through the physiological challenges the sweaty palms the butterflies oh my god people are gonna think i suck and all that but five is always episode five is better than one but you don't get to five unless you get one and just trying to push push people and doing it and i think it's it's probably like your challenges like you're getting people more

[01:03:12] comfortable with no by getting those yeah exactly great analogies there like you know did michael jordan stopped shooting because he missed a shot and you know i always think of that great hank aaron quote about how when he was in a slump he just kept swinging i mean statistically speaking you're gonna get to that yes and i think the key is to continue to look at you know why you're getting no embrace it

[01:03:40] don't be afraid of it and i gotta tell you i mean somebody's been in sales for 25 years i mean you get to a point honestly where it's like it doesn't phase you at all in fact it's almost like okay how can i how can i turn that into a yes like your mind just starts churning of like all right i heard no why be curious understand why they're saying no understand why they perceive risk and

[01:04:02] it's just it it's um it is a path to so much more success yeah yeah um i'm gonna give you know last last word for you number one let you respond to what carson was saying but i also want to make sure you let uh everybody know how they can connect with you where they can find you of course the book is go for no it's on amazon uh but what are other ways that if somebody wants to reach out to you they want

[01:04:28] to hire you to be a keynote speaker where do they reach out to you well you guys i've i've been around for a while so i'm well branded so if you type in go for no onto the line you're gonna find if you i've been at go for no on instagram twitter whatever um or x as they call it uh as the kids call it these days um yeah you'll find me i love it bob the nemo reference just there you go i love it

[01:04:55] i love it my kids was obsessed with nemo so seeing that far more times than i can care to share you know i find a lot of those movies i've listened to them far more times than i've watched them because they used to drive while the kids were watching dvds in the back seat yeah all right well andrea thank you so much for taking time to share with us today i thought this was excellent um i've got a lot of things i was thinking about a few things i'm going to talk to my team about so

[01:05:22] thank you thank you for that well it's my pleasure you guys are amazing um love the conversation it was a lot of fun and so i i appreciate you having me yeah well you should have seen this episode one we weren't so amazing please don't we need to strike close from the record yeah all right well everybody thanks so much for joining us uh next week episode 125 i believe we have larry levine joining us next

[01:05:48] week if i'm right and so that'll be another excellent episode i think that's his third time he's a he's a three peter that's coming up so uh thank you anthony and bob and sarah and scott and several others i think paul was in there deborah thank you so much for joining us today and carson i want to wrap this up and bring it home thank you andrew this was awesome thank you so much for uh teaching

[01:06:14] us how to not be scared of the word no and uh thanks for our audience and uh until next week happy modern selling bye everybody thank you for joining us today on mastering modern selling if you enjoyed this episode don't forget to subscribe for more insights connect with us on social media and leave a review to help us improve stay tuned for our next episode where we will

[01:06:44] continue to uncover modern strategies shaping today's business landscape learn more about fist bump in our concierge service at get fist bumps.com mastering modern revenue creation with fist bump where relationships social and ai meet in the buyer-centric age