2. ‘The salesperson never decides when the sale is over; the customer does.’ Then he looked me in the eye and said, ‘Eric, your fear of hearing the word ‘no’ is the only thing standing between you and greatness.’
3. “After the conversation with Harold I started really looking at what set successful people apart from the masses, and their willingness to fail was at the top of the list.
4. Successful people fail eagerly while failures avoid failing. The whole point of becoming willing to fail more is to become a success, so that one day you won’t be forced to look back on your life and say to yourself, ‘I’m a failure.’
5. A willingness to fail means a person will tolerate just enough failure to get what they need from life, and no more. A wantingness, on the other hand, means you’re not just tolerating the no’s in your life, you’re actually beginning to seek them.
6. What if we decided to make each no we received and every rejection we encountered something that empowers us? Instead of avoiding rejection, what if we made the decision to seek rejection? Instead of avoiding no or perhaps simply tolerating it, what if we went out of our way to actually go for no!”
7. “Simple. Rather than setting goals for the number of yes’s you are planning to get each week, you set goals for the number of no’s you’re going to collect.”
8. “Let’s use my friend Paul who is in network marketing, for example. If his goal is to get ten people per week to come to a meeting, and typically about five percent of the people he approaches are willing to attend, then his goal would be to get one hundred and ninety people to say ‘no thanks.’”
9. Believe it or not, research shows that eighty-five percent of all interactions between retail salespeople and shoppers end without the salesperson ever asking for a buying decision.
10. “Absolutely! Studies show that as many as 80% of all salespeople don’t make it through their first year for the simple reason that they failed to make enough calls. That’s it. Nothing else.”
11. “That reminds me of this telemarketing guru I heard about,” I interjected. “He recommends that phone solicitors ask customers in the first ten seconds if they have interest in hearing about the product they’re selling. If the customer says no, then they politely say thank you and move on rather than going through their entire pitch. As a result, they make ten times as many calls, but only invest their time making their complete sales pitch to prospects who have just qualified themselves.” “It’s the same basic premise,” Cheryl replied. “You know, when you mine for gold, you don’t really look for the gold, you remove the dirt. Selling and gold mining are very much alike. It’s the people who remove the most dirt, who work their way through the greatest number of no’s, who ultimately discover the greatest number of golden yes’s!”
12. “the best piece of advice I can offer is to learn that no doesn’t mean never, it means not yet. Statistically, research shows that forty-four percent of salespeople give up after one no. Twenty-two more give up after the second no. Fourteen percent more give up after the third no. Twelve more give up after the fourth no. What does that come to?”
13. “Correct. Ninety-two percent of all salespeople give up without asking for the sale a fifth time, but research also shows that sixty percent of all customers say no four times before they finally say yes. That means the quickest way to separate yourself from the rest of the pack is to get at least five no’s from everyone you try to sell to!” “And you track that?” I asked.
14. “Because when I get someone to say no, I can immediately move to the next step which is to ask, ‘why?’ Let me think about it teaches me absolutely nothing, but if they say no and I follow up with why, now I’m on the verge of discovering what I need to do next to make the sale.”
15. “Well, I’d have to say my advice would be this… If you’re going to fail, fail big!” Kurt stated. “Elaborate on that,” Eric encouraged. “What I mean is simply this,” Kurt continued. “Common sense says that if you’re going to get a no from somebody, get it from the client who needs twenty copiers, not just two. Get rejected by the purchasing agent from the company that buys forty thousand gallons of cleaning solution every month, not just forty.
16. “Think about the numbers for a moment. If I call on one hundred accounts that each have the potential to lease two copiers from me, and my closing ratio is ten percent, then I end up with twenty units out the door, right? But by focusing on accounts with the potential to lease twenty copiers, I only needed to close one sale to get the same twenty units!”
17. “For starters, I’d say that a primary key to creating outrageous success is to understand the need to fail exponentially. After all, one person can only fail so fast. Great leaders help everyone in the organization understand the need to fail faster.
18. “Exponential failure requires someone in the organization to be an exponent, in other words an advocate or spokesman, of the failure concept and to champion it. But I can’t begin to tell you how many executives I’ve seen who reach the top and suddenly forget what got them there. They start trying to avoid failure, and when a leader is afraid to fail, everyone in the organization knows it. Not only do people sense it but they figure that if you’re afraid of something, there’s a good chance it’s something they should be afraid of, too.”
19. “The second is to reward people for their failures, not just their successes,” he responded. “Everyone runs over to congratulate people for their sales successes, but how often do we go out of our way to congratulate people for their failures?” “Virtually never,” I said.
20. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all in favor of rewarding people for their successes, but not to the exclusion of recognizing the people who’ve displayed a true willingness and wantingness to fail.
21. “At CopyQuest, we recognize the top ten salespeople with a ‘Producers Pin’ award,” Eric continued, “but we also recognize the ten salespeople in the organization with the greatest number of failed attempts with what we call the ‘Go for No!’ award. And, if I recall correctly, Cheryl and Kurt made both lists.”
22. “That’s because we’ve caught on to the concept that winning a ‘Go for No!’ award almost assures that you’ll end up with a Producers Pin. Or, put another way,” Kurt concluded, “Yes is the destination, No is how you get there!”