(Note: Transcript is AI-generated and definitely not perfect!
)Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Welcome to Uncopyable women in Sales. If you're looking for actionable insights in real world tools to turbocharge your sales starting tomorrow, well, you're in the right place. Your host, Kay Miller, earned the affectionate nickname Muffler Mama when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone else in the world. In this podcast, Kay, we'll talk to another superstar women in sales as they reveal un copyable strategies you can use to rack up more leads, snag dream clients, and take your sales numbers through the roof. Stay tuned and get ready to make more sales. And how about this more money?
Speaker 2 (00:00:40) - Today, my guest is Andrea Walsh. She's the co-founder of Courage Crafters. She's also the co-author of the best selling book go for no. Yes is the destination. No is how you get there. For two decades, Andrea has been teaching people in virtually every business and industry how to think and feel differently about failure, rejection, and the word no in order to achieve their goals and dreams. Andrea, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:01:14) - Hey, thank you so much. So good to be with you.
Speaker 2 (00:01:18) - I, just as I mentioned re listened to the book go for now. I loved it, it is really short and sweet, but the point of the go for no is just reinforced over and over. And you really, as I said, you flipped the script on getting the. Yes. And so I would like you to talk to me. You mentioned how you started with Richard and how you partner partnered with your co-author. So give us some background on how that came to be.
Speaker 3 (00:01:51) - Okay. yeah. So Richard and I met at work. we were working at LensCrafters. I was running a $3 million location. I was one of the general managers. I think I was the youngest general manager in the company's history at that point. And he was one of the training directors. We used to talk all the time about sales and customer service and management, and we would compare notes and I would ask him questions, and I always try to trap him because he seemed to he seemed like it was a no at all.
Speaker 3 (00:02:18) - And, he actually told me he shared with me the go for no concept, which was super eye opening. And I had a major epiphany when he shared that with me. But eventually we started talking and we talked about maybe writing a book together. And he mentioned that if we ever decided to leave LensCrafters, that we could start our own business speaking and training. And then the pay was, extraordinarily different when you were coming in and as an outside consultant, as an outside speaker. And I was just naive enough to, to do that. I said yes, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never sold. I had retail as my background up until that point. So I was very comfortable selling B2C. And then I got thrown into the B2B, swimming pool, which was a whole thing. but yeah, that's how we started.
Speaker 2 (00:03:14) - And I love the fact that you said yes, even if you weren't sure what would happen. that's something that I have talked about in other podcasts, is a lot of times when we have a question and we, before we even think it through or automatic instinct is to say no.
Speaker 2 (00:03:30) - So the fact that you said yes is great, and the fact that your book ended up being all about no. It's interesting. So this book that you wrote way back in 2000, you were just telling me, and it's just timeless information. And I know it's just been a bestseller ever since, so I really do want to dig into that concept of. Going for? No, instead of going for yes. And of course, the ultimate goal is to get the yes right. So it's not that you don't want to get the. Yes, but it's a different way of getting to that point. And as I said, flipping the script on the traditional way of looking at that. So one of the things that really stood out to me about the book is when you said, how do you know the customer is done buying if they don't say no? So explain your philosophy behind that.
Speaker 3 (00:04:32) - Yeah. Well, it started with an experience that Richard actually had when he was selling suits for a living, and he was selling to this customer, the ring, the customer up for this $1,100 sale.
Speaker 3 (00:04:46) - Customer walks out and the district manager asked him this great question, which was, what did that customer say no to? And Richard had to review the sale in his mind. And he said, you know, that customer didn't say no to anything. Everything I laid in front of that man he purchased. And then the district manager who was watching that sale, asked him the really important question, which was then how did you know he was done? And Richard had to admit to his boss at this moment that the reason that he knew he was done was that he decided he was done. Richard decided that customer had hit the limit, and which turned out to be his mental spending limit, because he was a young guy who wasn't making a lot of money. When anybody spent near $1,000 on a shopping trip in his store, if he was helping them, it was like, okay, they must be done now, because who would spend more than that? And if you kind of make it to today's equivalent.
Speaker 3 (00:05:40) - So this goes back many years now, it would probably be the equivalent of spending like $5,000 today, I'm guessing. And so the big lesson was that you should never be the one to stop the sale. Only the customer stops the sale, which was that lesson that his district manager was giving him in that moment by asking him these questions, to have him have Richard kind of have this epiphany, which was, wow, I, I was the one who ended the sale. The customer never said no to anything. And when he shared that story with me, I had the same epiphany because I thought, you know what? I do end the sale early, or I will make assumptions and prejudge people about what I think they'll buy or spend, what the what they're willing to, you know, spend based on what I know, all of which all of these things ultimately limit our opportunities and they limit the sale.
Speaker 2 (00:06:35) - Right. And, you know, we might have a certain idea of what we would spend.
Speaker 2 (00:06:39) - Maybe we would spend $1,000. But I gave a presentation recently and I talked about some customers will say at a motel six, and they're happy with that, and some customers will stay at the Four Seasons. And we shouldn't judge which of those are going to be their choice. Right. We need to let the customer make that choice. So so that is just a golden nugget of wisdom for anybody listening. And kind of an epiphany for me too, just not to limit the customer. Buy your own perception, but let them say no. You never know how far you could have gotten if you don't get to that point of saying no. And then there's also the perception or the feeling. I guess the feeling that we don't like to hear the word no, we feel like it's a rejection. Right? But the more no's you get, the more yeses you get. So why don't you speak to that?
Speaker 3 (00:07:42) - Yeah. And that's the underlying philosophy of the whole idea behind go for no. Is that because obviously we've created a little marketing challenge? Only people in sales who really know sales can read go for it and say, oh, I get it.
Speaker 3 (00:07:57) - Other people will will tell us what a weird title I don't understand. Don't you want. Yes, but what you understand what you come to understand. If you've been in sales for any length of time, you start to realize that yes and no are really a package deal, that you can't have more yeses without being willing to hear more nos, that they're really opposite sides of the same coin. And so when we start to be willing to ask and ask the tough questions and ask broader questions and just be getting curious, you do get a lot more no's. But that's also where all of the yeses are hiding. So that's really the fundamental strategy behind go for no. And if you walk away with anything, it's you know, it's to remember that this idea that if you want to get yes more often, the answer is not in avoiding no. Yes, we want to go for yes. But I think what tends to happen is the emphasis is put on having, and tweaking your skills of perfection to such an extent that you keep tweaking and working on this little 1% up here.
Speaker 3 (00:09:08) - And if you would simply just be willing to hear no more often and kind of open the door to that, you'll get the yeses actually easier.
Speaker 2 (00:09:19) - Right. And another thing that struck me from the book is that no often means not yet, and I actually just made a purchase in the last few months that I said no to. And the person who was making the sale, who was selling me, pretty much just ignored that and, and kept talking to me about the benefits and what I would get out of it. And I ended up saying yes. And so we've all been through that, I'm sure where we at first we don't think we are going to buy that, but often our first reaction is negative. No, it's protective. No. So if the customer is doing that then it might not mean no, it might mean not yet. So I love that. another thing that saying no. Applies to is failing what some people consider failing. You fail more often, you fail fast, and then you can move on.
Speaker 2 (00:10:19) - And something that was pointed out in the book is that if you fail fast or get a no, you can ask why. Right?
Speaker 3 (00:10:31) - Yeah, well, and I have to say that a lot of people are a little squirrely when it comes to the word failure. People don't like it. in fact, I've had some people, I it pops into my head. But because I remember this one gentleman on, not Facebook on LinkedIn messaged me, and he's like, you know, you guys talk a lot about failure, and maybe there's so many better words that you can use in your language. You could use challenge or obstacle or or all of that. And my feeling is that that the more that we give that word super power over us where we can't say it, where it's, it's it becomes the F word, the more we want to shy away from it. And I think there's such a stigma to failure. There's people that actually popularize it and that it you know, you hear these stories about Thomas Edison and Colonel Sanders and Abraham Lincoln and we we even use those examples in the book.
Speaker 3 (00:11:24) - These are people that that failed a lot and eventually succeeded. So there's some positiveness. But in general, I think in society we don't want to talk about our failures and and everybody's too busy talking about their success. So we use the word failure in the book and we compare and, and kind of use it as a synonym to hearing. Know that when you get to know it's a failure. And. Understanding that you are going to if you're going to hear know a lot, that means you're going to fail a lot, by extension. And we talk about five levels of failure. And the first is just the ability to fail. The second one is having the willingness to fail, which is where a lot of people get when they read our book. They have this epiphany kind of like, oh, okay, I can get it. But the third level, K, is really the important one, and that is the wanting ness to fail. That is where when your head hits the pillow. And this happens to me actually a lot, because I will go through my day and I'm doing tasks and I'm in delivery mode and I'm running through the day and my mind and I say, you know what? I never did go for? No.
Speaker 3 (00:12:30) - Today. I never heard of no. And to anything, which means probably I didn't ask or I wasn't asking enough, I wasn't having enough conversations. And so it's always a wake up call for me to say, I want to hear the word no, because it means that I'm asking if I didn't hear it, I probably was asking very little, or I was just going after those easy yeses where it was like, I'm going to ask the easy things that I know I'll get a yes to without any struggle. And so that's why this whole idea of failure is talked about in the book, because it's it's integral to the goal for no philosophy. And I'll just add here last thing and then I'll, I'll be quiet is that when we tell people go out and start hearing, no, like you need to be willing to hear no more often. I think the brain kind of has a little bit of a freak out like, well, wait a minute, this is very dangerous. This is a bad idea.
Speaker 3 (00:13:29) - We don't want to fail. And it's embarrassing. And we weren't taught this. And so in the book also, we we have this new model of failure where you look at failure in a more positive way, where you see it as not the opposite of success, but you see that really the model of failure is where you are on one end of the spectrum, the failure, rejection, hearing the word no is in the middle, and the yeses and success are on the other side. And so we we share that model so that when people start going for no, they don't automatically think, oh, I'm on the wrong track, I'm doing it wrong. No, it takes a while. You've got to stay on the on that right track, and eventually you'll get through those no's and you'll get to the s on the other side.
Speaker 2 (00:14:12) - Well, so many things come to mind. And one is, like you said in the book, you talk about Abraham Lincoln, you talk about Colonel Sanders and these people that you know, any great success story.
Speaker 2 (00:14:27) - You rarely hear a great success story where it just happened. It just fell in their lap. Right. It's going for no getting no's and rejections and things that don't work out are what the process of success takes. And so you really have to stick with that. And, you know, even for my podcast. So I've been doing this podcast since September, and I have gone for some pretty big guest guests that I have not gotten yet. But that doesn't mean I can't ask. And at some point I will get some of those guests. Not that you're not a great guest. You were definitely a coup. I was so excited that you said yes. But for for my podcast, for anything in life. Yeah. If you don't hear no, if everyone says, sure, I'll be on your podcast, maybe I'm not thinking big enough. One thing that you talk about in the book too, I love the example of door to door insurance sale, and that is, I don't know the exact scenario how that you could explain, but it's about going to door to door to sell insurance.
Speaker 2 (00:15:41) - And the question is, you don't want to buy insurance, do you?
Speaker 1 (00:15:45) - Today's podcast is sponsored by the acclaimed book Unstoppable Sales Secrets How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell Your Competition, by Kay Miller. If you want to make more sales, you need to read this book. We'll even get you started with a free download of the first two chapters. Go to UN Copyable sales com slash chapters to grab this offer right now.
Speaker 3 (00:16:11) - Yeah, so that was a in reference to a, a consultant who challenged this company to just get their sales people instead of going for. Yes. So quote unquote, to just go out and start knocking on more doors. And the point was that, well, there's a couple points. One is the point of quantity. And I know this is kind of sacrosanct in the sales training world because nobody today wants to talk about quantity. It's all about quality of presentation and quality of reach out. And I absolutely agree with all of that. I don't think that you can just make a thousand outreaches today and or hundreds of cold calls.
Speaker 3 (00:16:54) - It's impractical in today's world because eventually the, you know, the numbers just become too high. So you have to you have to also improve the quality. But the point that the this consultant was making was, hey, send your insurance agents out, have them knock on a door and just ask a disqualifying question, which in this case was you don't want insurance, do you? And of course, 99 out of 100 people would say no. And then the other last person would say, well, wait a minute. Yeah. yeah. I have been looking, you know, tell me more. And that's the whole idea, is that sometimes it's that you don't need some fancy presentation and approach, some that sales in many ways still is a numbers game. And I will always maintain that. Although in today's competitive world, the more you can infuse personalization, I guess at scale, quality, the more you can actually disqualify people early. And that means being willing to hear know early in the process.
Speaker 3 (00:18:01) - Right? So it it is a way of ensuring that when you finally do have a face to face with somebody, it's much more of a quality conversation because you've asked some questions up front, right? It's kind of like asking somebody, hey, would you ever consider, doing something a business on the side where you could make money on the side? if it didn't interfere with anything that you were doing? Right? And you say, yeah, I guess I would. You know who I'm not against making extra money. So that's a great disqualifying question. You're talking to people who are open to other income streams, and you don't talk to people who aren't. So that's what's powerful about the question is that it gets you through a lot of no's and gets you to the yes.
Speaker 2 (00:18:49) - And maybe is the worst thing you can hear, right? It's a difficult one when you hear, maybe because you could end up wasting a lot of time and and some people just don't want to say no. And I've been in that position too.
Speaker 2 (00:19:03) - If you've been in sales, if you had a lemonade stand as a kid or sold Girl Scout cookies, you know you don't want to hurt someone's. Feelings and say no. But really, if you get a no, then you know where you stand. And so we call our the target market our moose. And you can see the picture of the moose. And I sent you some information about that earlier from my book. And so yes targeting your customer is huge. And it raises your closing rate. It helps you serve your customer better. But I agree sales is still a numbers game. And also, I feel like one of the things that people are afraid of, and I will even say maybe women are more afraid of, is asking for the sale because they don't want to hear the word no. So not being afraid to hear that word now helps you ask for the sale.
Speaker 3 (00:20:02) - So. Yeah, exactly. And I'll just add here too, that, you know, a lot of, a lot of times we are afraid of that rejection.
Speaker 3 (00:20:12) - And so we have to we have to sometimes be willing to fight through. And this may be the also have to do with being a woman is. I think sometimes we wait for feelings to pass that we don't take action with the feelings present in our body, and it was one of the things I learned early on in cold calling for our business when we first started, because I was literally calling to find out who the vice president of HR was at a company or the VP of sales, and I would sound terrible. My voice would shake, I was sweating, and what I learned was, I can't wait for those feelings to go away. I have to act despite those feelings. I have to act with the fear. And so in doing that, it it kind of tells you that, you know, you've got to put those feelings aside. Nothing wrong with emotion, but you you can't wait to not be scared.
Speaker 2 (00:21:07) - I totally agree with that. And having courage doesn't mean that you don't have fear.
Speaker 2 (00:21:12) - Of course it means that you're doing it. When you do have fear and you're still making yourself do it. And to a certain extent it's just uncomfortable. They. We've talked about the comfort zone for how many years when we were kids. Right. The comfort zone. And the only way to really break out of that is just to do it. And it's painful at first, and then it gets easier and it makes, you know, bigger things easier, and you just have to do it. So interesting that you say yes. In the beginning you were afraid to make those calls. So let's transition a little bit into the fact that you have started a business. You have your own business. So let's talk about what made you what motivated you to start your own business.
Speaker 3 (00:21:58) - I guess I was motivated mostly about because one, I was really excited about this whole go for no concept and philosophy and teaching it, and I had no entrepreneurial skills whatsoever. I mean, the first year in business, I was probably the worst business owner ever.
Speaker 3 (00:22:17) - I mean, we we really didn't write a formal business plan. We were kind of like, okay, let's start and let's just see how this goes. And we were finding our prospects as we went and trying to figure out ways to market. And all of this was in the I feel like it was the Paleozoic age. There was no social media, there was no other tools. Right? None of the tools and technology that we have today. So we did a lot of direct mail, which, and a lot of cold calling and kind of doing campaigns and things like that. and I learned that nobody was coming to save me and that sleeping in was a great luxury for the first couple of months. And then eventually be like, no, you have to get out of bed. And you, you have to discipline yourself. And I am not really a disciplined person. Even though my father was in the military for 27 years. thank God I may have gotten some of the some of the discipline, but that's really what's required, I think, is to be in have your own business and to maintain it for a long period of time is, you need discipline.
Speaker 3 (00:23:24) - You need that consistency. And obviously, you know, there were things that happened that were very lucky. We had we had a couple things that were just good for me timing standpoint.
Speaker 2 (00:23:33) - Well, you know what they say about luck. Luck happens to people who are looking for opportunity and who are ready for it. as far as luck goes, it's it's interesting. Our family were golfers and so we watch these major tournaments. We never miss a major tournament. And it's amazing that even the best golfers in the world, they are lucky. You know, sometimes it just comes down to luck that their ball balances a certain way. Something happens, either for better or worse. And so a lot of things we do depend on luck. But the fact that you got out of bed, you stuck with this. You showed tenacity. That's a huge part of success in business and life. You talked about having setbacks, which is something that every everybody faces, we all face in sales and business and life.
Speaker 2 (00:24:27) - So how would you say that you have dealt with setbacks or disappointments in your business?
Speaker 3 (00:24:34) - Yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, one of the big one of the big disappointments actually, was the go for no book. It did not sell very well at first. In fact, the first yeah, the first five years were pretty, pretty bad. We were about ready to throw in the towel. The go for no people. We we tried and try. We tried so many things and and we went to this book marketing seminar and we met this this we met a lot of people. We were always giving out books. We were always handing copies of go for No to people in hopes that the right person would read it. And who knows, you know, that type of thing. And, we were at the seminar and we were leaving. We had one book left, and I had overheard that the guy sitting in front of us was in sales. So I told Richard, I said, give it to that, give it to that guy.
Speaker 3 (00:25:18) - So we just handed him a book and he called us a few days later and he said, he's introduced himself. He said, you guys gave me a copy of go for no. He goes, are you open minded to feedback? And we said, yeah, yeah. What do you have? He goes, well, first of all, I, I read every sales book out there and I we've come to be very good friends with him. He goes and and so I now I know he had I read every sales book out there and this book is excellent. It's one of the best sales books I've ever read. He goes, but you guys have the one of the worst covers in the history of publishing.
Speaker 2 (00:25:51) - Oh, interesting.
Speaker 3 (00:25:53) - Yeah. And and he goes, if you're if you're willing to change that, he said, I'll buy 5000 copies from you. And we were like, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (00:26:02) - Really? How fast can we get to this design? Right.
Speaker 3 (00:26:05) - Yeah. And so, we learned to not give up.
Speaker 3 (00:26:11) - We were consistent. We were always persistent. We always just pushed through, and we finally hit the bestseller list with go for no at the end of the year in 2010. So it took ten years to turn that book into a bestseller. We did change the cover. I think that helped immensely. It also gave us the confidence to keep going because we weren't getting discouraged. We were getting deflated. And sometimes you need those little sparks of hope or you need to. You need to sometimes even be willing to step back and go like, okay, what are we missing? We didn't see it, but thank God that we were just keep putting ourselves out there so that we finally got the feedback. And I think that being that it's my husband and I, we can bounce ideas off of each other. If you're by yourself, you can't think alone. You've got to have somebody to bounce an idea off or say, like, am I thinking about this correctly? Is this making sense? You know, getting into mastermind groups and stuff? I think all of that is really helpful.
Speaker 3 (00:27:09) - I've seen I mean, we haven't done it as much. We've had some mentors here and there, but I've seen other people get in these mastermind groups and it helps immensely. So I think that's one piece of advice, as I would say, just don't think alone.
Speaker 2 (00:27:23) - That is very good advice. And so would you say you were lucky that someone saw that and recommended a new cover?
Speaker 3 (00:27:30) - Well, based on your what you're saying were luck meeting opportunity, we did show up to the conference. We we were willing to hand books out at our own expense. So yeah, it's it's it's a little luck, but it's also the fact that we were there, right?
Speaker 2 (00:27:46) - Yes. You wouldn't have been lucky if you didn't take all those steps. And I didn't realize it took ten years for your book to become a bestseller. And I have a book you can see behind me and Copyable Sales Secrets, and it's been out for a couple of years, and it's been successful, but it's not a bestseller.
Speaker 2 (00:28:03) - And I have had people say, this is such a great book. It's simple. It's a fun read. I have lots of stories, so you're giving me hope and encouragement that just hang in there, stick it out. I also think of Chicken Soup for the soul, which we mentioned early on, and I'm sure you know that story that Mark, Victor Hanson and Jack Canfield, they got so many rejections, and then Jack Canfield put the books in his car and called on people, and he was on every media opportunity. He was on TV, radio. He would get up in the middle of the night if he had to and talk about that book. So you can have a product or service that is just gold, but you have to sit, you know, hit that point. You know, lightning has to strike and lightning isn't going to strike if you're laying in bed, as you mentioned, you got to get out of bed.
Speaker 3 (00:29:02) - That's right. As the artist, whether you're a speaker or an author or painter, I think artists, they don't necessarily want to sell in some cases, I, I like selling, but it matters when you, when you show up and you put yourself out there.
Speaker 2 (00:29:20) - Right. And and I talk a lot a bit about this. I talk a lot about sorry about this on the podcast that sales does have a bad name, a bad rep. And yet if somebody needs what you have and you, you can solve their problem or you can help them achieve their aspiration. Sales is really helping people. I like to say sales is helping. So yes, artists, many business owners, they start a business because of what they love. But hey again, you can't just sit in your office and hope the phone rings. You have to go out and get it. So those are all great points. I would like to ask you if you have any closing thoughts for our listeners. You've covered so many great points. So if you don't have anything, that's fine. But do you have something that kind of wraps all this up before we go?
Speaker 3 (00:30:12) - Yeah. I mean, I just encourage people who are listening to this to create a no awareness. So really ask yourself, how many times do I hear know in a given day or in a given week? And can you improve upon that? And, and a fun way to think about it is to just say, what if I challenged myself to get one know every business day for the whole year? And what would that do at the end of the year? How many yeses would appear and would come from that activity? If you just said, I'm going to try to get one know a day.
Speaker 3 (00:30:46) - So it's a fun challenge. You can kind of gamify it a little bit, reward yourself if, if, if you get that. No for the day. and it's amazing what yeses will appear when you become know. Aware.
Speaker 2 (00:31:01) - I like that, and I accept that challenge. Did I hear a note today? And that will be my goal. So what great advice. A great place to end on. Andrea, thank you so much for all your wisdom and thank you for being on the UN Copyable Women in Sales podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:31:20) - Thanks, K.
Speaker 1 (00:31:23) - Thanks for listening to this episode of Unstoppable Women in Sales, your source for secrets you can use to make more sales. Check the show notes for links and contact information. And if you enjoyed the podcast, please spread the word by subscribing, sharing and leaving a five star review. You can always learn more by going to UN Copyable sales competition last. Until next time, go out and supercharge your sales like a true unstoppable rock star.
