Success is Mindset so Start with "No"

I was fortunate to lead some very good teams. After one significant event, this was shared.

Don't let life's vagaries keep you from being successful. Success is a mindset. Nobody can take it away.

There are a lot of life lessons in sales, as it should be. All of the company's foibles, successes, lack of processes, and organizational alignments/misalignments are right at that point (the tip of the spear) where the sales professional meets the prospect.

Sales provides all of this at a 10X speed, in front of the prospect. If you have the right mindset, it can be a font of wisdom.  Enough preamble.

Jim Camp wrote a book "Start with No."  

You may have heard "go for the no."  Same thing, different context.

When salespeople focus on getting a yes, they:

• Become needy

• Oversell

• Don't make consultative statements which is the right thing to do

• Lose control of the process

Having a mindset of "going for the no" is exactly the opposite:

• I don't need another thing on my plate which is time waster

• Everything I do is value add, if my prospect doesn't respect that, I still won (you can win in two ways, by getting the PO or "getting the no" so you can move on)

• Clarifies objections, priorities, and constraints

• Puts both parties in a rational, problem solving mode

Prospects feel safer saying "no" than "yes". When they say no, they can be more open and honest. This is honest engagement.