Go for No: The Path to Getting Closer to "Yes" with Andrea Waltz
Are you ready to take your business and career to the next level? Discover the secrets of success from seasoned sales professionals with a combined 40 years of experience. Learn how opting for "no" can build courage, confidence, and resilience that will ultimately lead you closer to achieving a resounding yes. This episode is sure to open up some fresh approaches to achieving success.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
Results-driven approach to "no"
Why your N.Q. is more important than your I.Q.
Building resilience after failure
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"Go for No! YES is the destination. No is how you get there: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0966398130?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_27303RT5JNV6QV2362RE
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About our guest:
Today's guest is Andrea Waltz, best-selling author of "Go for No! YES is the destination. No is how you get there." Through her book and keynote speaking Andrea helps people create a powerful shift, reprogramming the way people deal with failure and rejection.
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The Story Behind the “Go for No”
You had written this book on Go For No, which is contradictory to sometimes what we have been told and what we've been programmed, which is always leading with Yes. I'd love to hear about your career journey and where did you start and kind of where did you go into writing this book about “Go for No.”
My background did not start off in teaching people about how to overcome failure and rejection like I made up that career, but that's what I've been doing now for over 20 years. Who actually comes up with that as a job, it's so weird. I went to school and got a Bachelor of Science and Criminal Justice and while I was in school I was also simultaneously working my way up at a company called LensCrafters. And I met, my now husband, and he told me this story that is actually in the book, "Go for No," and it was actually him telling me this story. It was the catalyst for me, to understand that "No" is actually the way to get to "Yes". And that's why the subtitle of our book is Yes Is The Destination, No Is How You Get There.
The title though, is a huge marketing issue because people hear "Go for No" and they think, "Go for No," why would I wanna hear No? Nobody wants to hear No. Everybody wants to hear Yes, we get that. The challenge though is that most of us are taught and trained in society to avoid no and to avoid rejection. And so this book takes a very counterintuitive approach to that. But when we launched our company, we had the decision to make, and that was, we knew we wanted to write a book. We knew that a book would help us, open doors to companies for speaking engagements and training, when we launched our business, that's what we were focused on.
We knew a book was important, but getting a publisher, getting a New York publisher was not in the cards for us. We didn't have a big platform. We weren't speaking all over the country and, there were no social media at the time, so we couldn't even say, "Oh yes, we have 250,000 followers." There was none of that. We did what we call self-published. We self-wrote the book, we self-published it, and it didn't do anything for several years.
In fact, it was failing miserably. We almost gave up on the book, which is kind of funny because the book is about being persistent through No, we almost completely gave up on it. And then we went to a marketing conference and there was a guy who was in sales and we were handing out books. I mean, we would give books out to anybody who would take the time to talk to us and we said, "Hey, here's this book you might like." He called us a couple of days later and he said, "Are you guys open-minded?" And we said, "Yeah," and he goes, "I wanna give you some feedback about your book." And we said, "Yeah, we're open-minded. What do you have?" He goes, "Well, it's one of the best sales books I've ever read. But you have one of the worst covers in the history of publishing. If you're willing to change the cover, I would like to buy 5,000 copies." And we said yes, "We will absolutely change the cover."
That was an important lesson that we learned, because of a couple of things: one, you have to be open-minded and be willing to get some painful feedback sometimes, but also the fact that we were just putting ourselves out there, that chance, and that's what's so important in whatever career you're in is getting out there, showing up, putting yourself out there.
The book has been out now for over 20 years. We did change the cover. He did buy a couple of thousand copies if my memory serves correctly. And since then, we have spent the last 20 years on this journey as experts on rejection using the book "Go For No." We've now sold 500,000 copies, it went from failing miserably to finally doing really well over all this time. And self-published never in a traditional bookstore.
How to Address When Someone Says “No”
Coming from a background in sales, I started my career in dental sales actually when I was 23 years old, and it was in capital equipment sales, and I heard "no" a lot. On any given day, I would be doing door-to-door, cold calling to dental offices, 20 offices a day. I mean, driving around with my Google Maps, this is kind of dating myself, but my Google Maps driving around going door to door, what I found is no does not mean no, it means not yet.
Often they may say no at that time. It may not be the right time. It may be a different approach to my sales but it doesn't always mean no forever. It could mean no at that time, cause there are many times when eventually customers have purchased or they've given a referral. But I think there are a lot of lessons that we can learn, whether we're in sales or not in sales, on the value of embracing "No". And the value of transitioning into that, the vision of getting to "Yes". What is some advice that you share in the book? That, like I said, whether they're in sales or not in sales, that they can apply to their everyday life when they hear “no”?
The funny story that I have to share with you is the one that my husband told me, and I'll kind of just preface it. I'll shorten it up and I won't go through the long part of it. But basically, he was selling suits for a living and his district manager showed up to see how he was doing, because, my husband, Richard, was failing miserably, and he ended up getting this customer who came in and bought this entire wardrobe of clothing. He spent like $1,100. Now, this goes back a long time, so this is like the equivalent of spending, let's say $5,000 today. And the district manager watched him have this great sale at the end of it he asked Richard, "What did that customer say no to?"
Richard was so mad because he showed this customer all of this clothing and he bottled this clothing and it was this great sale. He's thinking he's gonna get congratulated, but instead the district manager, what did that customer say no to? And Richard had to say, "The customer didn't say no to anything." And then the district manager asked him a really important question. He said, "Well then how did you know he was done?" It was at that moment that Richard had to admit that he only knew that the customer was done because that customer had hit his mental spending limit. He was pretty young. He wasn't making a lot of money at the time, and when that customer got to that $1,100 mark, it was, okay, this guy has to be done. I'm just going to ring him up. I'll take him to the cash register, ring him up and send him on his way.
Harold, this district manager said, "You know, I watched you sell. You're not half bad, but your fear of the word no is going to kill you. I think if you could just learn to get over that, you could be one of the great ones." And so my husband decided at that moment that that was the key to his success. That he was going to start going for no; he could show more products and services to customers and let them decide.
When he told me that story, as I was mentioning in my background, because we worked for the same company, and he told me that story one day and I had my own epiphany, I was like, wow, I actually thought I was a superstar salesperson. I didn't have the same hangups my husband did of failing but I thought I was. At the same time though, I recognized that I would hold myself back, that I would see opportunities and then talk myself out of them thinking to myself, well, they're just gonna say no to me, so why bother asking?
I had a fear, I think, of a lot of salespeople, but a lot of people in general, and this concept applies to everybody because the reason is it's rooted in two things. One, it's rooted in asking, which is scary for a lot of us, and two, it's rooted in courage. You have to have that self-esteem, and also that courage to ask. When I learned this when he taught me this and told me this story, I recognized that I needed to be better, that I also let the fear of no hold me back.
When we launched our business, that's why so much of it was built around this concept, and that's why we wrote the book around it. I find that people, no matter what they do, if you have a kid who's a girl scout and she's going out there selling cookies, if you are fundraising for your favorite charity, if you're trying to get a promotion, if you're trying to get a raise, we all have to ask for things. Or if you're in sales, for sure. We're always asking for things all the time. The thing that holds us back more than anything is just that fear of the word "No."
Handling Rejections in Our Life
You're so right. It can be applied to so many different areas within life, within the business, in sales, there's this, and I don't even know who came up with the cystic or it's just kind of this random phrase, but it's, you have to hear a hundred nos in order to get to the yes.
When you're looking for a job, people will often disqualify themselves based on looking at the job descriptions, they start to say, well, I don't have industry experience, or I don't have X number of years of a particular experience that they're asking for. So they start to disqualify themselves and talk themselves out of applying for a job. The more jobs you apply to, the more of a chance you have of getting a job.
Here's the one that I think really resonates, especially if you're looking to advance your career, when I would have people on my team and they'd possibly go for a position, at our company that I worked for, it was highly, highly competitive. I mean, these are the top of the top salespeople in all of medicine. It's always been the top performers, and you would have sometimes five, or 10 top performers going for the same position, but even if you didn't get the job, you get the no, there's still value in going for it. One is, it increases your currency within the organization, and what that means is you get exposure to people and part of the interview process that you may have not been exposed to.
Now you're putting yourself on the radar that, Hey, I wanna get promoted. If a position comes available, you've already interviewed me. Consider me for the next time. It opens the conversation, and people who listen to my podcast know that I don't say feedback. I say it feeds forward coaching because you're asking for what went well, and what didn't well, and that's helping you move towards that next step in improving the skills that you want.
It could also open up the door to ask one of the people that are part of that interview process and say, would you be willing to mentor me and help me get to that next step so that when that position comes available again, I am prepared for it. Unless we put ourselves in that situation, unless we have the courage to put ourselves in the situation to be, willing to accept the no, then we'll have a harder time getting the results that we want both in business and in life.
Our Own Willingness to Accept “No”
I couldn't agree with you more, and we don't talk about this so much in the book. The book is actually a really short 80-page fable and it tells a story of a guy who wakes up in a house that, he discovers belongs to a wildly successful future version of himself. It's got a little supernatural twist going on. It's kind of a fun fable, but it shares the philosophy, the "Go for No" philosophy.
But to your point, and this is something that we've seen, is that we all have a relationship with the word no. We don't know. We do, but we do. And so what happens with your brain, and you use the word willing, which I really like, is you have to be willing to hear that word. And when you're unwilling, when you're not willing, what happens is your comfort zone starts to shrink around you. Your opportunities start to shrink around you.
People wonder, well, how do I get to that next level? How do I get a mentor? How do I get more opportunities? And the secret is not so, difficult. It's not necessarily easy to do, but it's very simple. And that is, it's put yourself out there and start asking more. That's where you have to be willing to face that "no." And as you do, you learn so much as you said, and you learn that you can survive it.
You learn that you can handle that rejection and in handling that rejection, one of my favorite quotes is from Jack Canfield who wrote The Success Principles and he said self-confidence. He defined self-confidence as successfully surviving risk. That successfully survived risk. When you put yourself out there and you ask for that thing that you want and you receive that, no. It is building your resilience. It's building your self-confidence even though you didn't get the result that you wanted. And that can be distressing and discouraging and you might throw a little pity party and you've gotta allow yourself to kind of move through that. Understand that that's how you build your resilience.
That's why when you see so many people, I remember hearing an interview with Lizzo, the singer, and she was talking about how she went through so much rejection and lived in her car and she would beg people to buy tickets to go see her at some horrible club, and she was just hustling and hustling and asking, and asking. Well, it built a tremendous amount of resilience, and that's what we need in today's marketplace.
Determining One’s “No” Quotient
Richard and I talk about how there's such a thing as your IQ, your intelligence quotient. We know how important that is. However, there's also your NQ, that's your no quotient. It's the number of times you are willing to hear no and keep going. And that really is an interesting number because in today's world, that persistence, that tenacity, that underlying resilience, I think is more important because, in the marketplace that we're in, it's more competitive than ever. It's just a different world now. And everyone's playing in the sandbox on social media and everybody's doing things. And so if you aren't willing, as you said, to use your words to hear "no", it's going to be a struggle.
When you look at some of the most successful people in the world, you've got people like Oprah, Steve Jobs, Denzel Washington, and Lizzo, the woman that wrote Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling, and Steve Harvey. You think of all these people that are wildly successful, if you listen to their interviews, every single one of them will talk about the nos that they had earlier on in their career.
All the nos that they had and the rejections that they had, they built the resilience to be where they're at today. But if they never heard there, no, if they didn't put themselves outside of their comfort zone, they would never be where they're at today, I believe. I would believe they wouldn't be where they're at today if they weren't willing to hear the no’s to push through it, to learn, to grow, to build on their resilience, and to have the courage to keep going.
It's because they were willing to hear the no’s. I truly believe that a lot of times we talk about failure, but I don't see some instances when we don't succeed in the areas that we want. It's not a failure. I believe we either win or we learn and we grow. And so when we hear no, that is an opportunity for us to learn, to grow, to ask questions, to be curious, and to help us prepare for that next step.
