“No” may be the most powerful word in sales. Saying no may also be the hardest thing to do in sales. For me, learning to sell happened one mistake at a time. 

Most people want to please, and in fact, studies have proven our brains get a boost when we help others. Maybe this is why saying no to certain selling situations is so difficult. Maybe a human’s innate desire to help others is why I spent so much of my early selling career chasing the wrong deals. My boss at the time knew that I was often wasting my time, but he never interfered. Instead, his comment was always, “if you feel like this opportunity is worth pursuing, go for it, but don’t let it get in the way of making your number.” 

Peculiar Selling Lessons

In the early days of my selling career, I chased any and all deals relentlessly (like a Labrador Retriever chasing a tennis ball). Unlike the Lab that can chase balls forever, I soon learned there wasn’t enough time in the day to run after every deal. When I reflect on my selling education, my first boss stands out as the person who influenced me the most. When he moved me into sales without asking me, much to my surprise, I desperately wanted to read a manual on what to do in my new role. 

My boss would throw out a nugget or two about selling, but he was perfectly fine letting me learn on my own. In fact, the nuggets of sales acumen didn’t even make sense to me at the time. One such sales witticism by my boss was “bring me a problem.” Somehow I was supposed to translate his vague message and go out and kill my sales goal. 

Observing the befuddled look on my face, my boss said, “Boy, you look like a fish with a bicycle.” Wrap your head around that little Bubbaism from Texas.

Back to Chasing Rabbits

In the Technology Industry, especially the software sector, a common practice in the buying process is the proof of concept (POC). Given the proper guidelines and stated goals for a POC, they can be helpful to clients for proving that their goals can be met by the technology. 

Not all POCs are created equal. In fact, it seems like most of them are goat rodeos. In case you don’t know the definition of a goat rodeo, it means a situation that’s hopelessly screwed up. Something another sales boss told me helped shed light on why most sales processes seem like goat rodeos. 

“You’ve got to understand that most of the client’s staff assigned to select a vendor have never done it before,” he said. This little piece of information changed how I worked with clients. My team and I knew appreciably more about designing and running a successful POC than most of our clients did. 

But here’s the rub. These folks don’t know you (strike one) and you’re a salesman (strikes two and three). Convincing a client they’d arrive at a better outcome if they’d follow your approach is damn near impossible. In some situations, the best answer to chasing ill-conceived or questionable POCs was to say “no”. 

No, we’re not participating (in your screwed up goat roping extravaganza). Okay, I didn’t say that last part but maybe I should have. 

A well-conceived explanation of why you’re saying no is critical. Best laid plans can still accidentally burn down a bridge on occasion. A good explanation might go something like the following:

• There are no success criteria, just tasks to complete.
• You’re not committing to buy the product if we successfully complete the POC.
• You’re testing proven technology instead of proving out the solution for the business user. 

When to Say No

Not too long ago, I prospected (email and cold calls are not dead) my way into a target account. Our answer to the client’s problem was spot-on and would dramatically improve this business unit’s operations. The VP-level folks were sold. The project sponsor listed out a few other boxes I needed to check before he could take it through the company’s purchasing process, though.

The first box to check found me in the office of the company’s Chief Information Officer (CIO). 

My VP happened to be in the same city, so I invited him to join me. The CIO was not a happy camper. One of his deputies told me the CIO didn’t like technology vendors calling on the executives at his company without his knowledge and permission. Fortunately, I’d learned long ago to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. 

Gathered around a conference room, the meeting started with the CIO admonishing me for trying to make a living at his company. After he explained his rules of doing business, my VP and I stared back at him with a grin but no acknowledgment of his rules. Waiting through some uncomfortable silence for the client, we discussed a valid concern the CIO had about using our software. 

Our software was technically superior to every product in the market. But the category of software where our product was placed by the industry analyst was littered with crappy products and mostly failed implementations. I acknowledged his concern by giving him my go-to analogy used to subtly trash our competitors.

I told him, “we’re a good house in a bad neighborhood.” The CIO chuckled a little, which took the edge off the meeting intensity. Then, he told us that to get his endorsement, we’d need to do a POC. After probing into the expectations for the POC, it was clear this was to test the technology and had nothing to do with testing out the solution we were proposing.

“We don’t do science fair projects,” my boss boldly fired back.

The CIO actually got a little frazzled by the terse nature of the comment. The blunt inflection of my boss’s voice made me squirm a bit too. We were assured this wasn’t a science fair project. Then we switched gears and talked through how to prove our solution for their business operations. In a different way, we said “no” to the CIO’s approach, and it worked out better for both companies.

Another Opportunity to Say No

Another common scenario where saying no is critical to getting a deal done is during contract negotiations. I might choose a root canal with no painkiller rather than dicker over contracts. I’m not talking about wrangling over the product price; this is about the hazy world of legal terms and conditions.

Some of these affairs turn into a colossal waste of time for both parties. At one of my companies, I was the referee between our contracts guy and the client. My guy had a genuine gift to instantly piss off the client with his demeaning tone. Then, we’d putz around for weeks (and sometimes months) over crap that easily could have been wrapped up in a day or two. The virtual chasm dividing the companies always got resolved the same way. Finally, the mystical attorneys representing each company got on the call. 

Magically, all remaining issues got resolved. Another “no” got added to my sales bag after witnessing this process a couple of times. This no is deployed to refuse to keep talking about the legal terms and conditions until the lawyers show up. It often felt impossible to get a client’s lawyer on a call. It wasn’t much easier in my firm either.

Good situations to say no to include:

• An undefined process like the POC described here.
• Having no executive sponsor for the POC or project.
• Being unable to get a meeting with the executive sponsor on a project where significant investment is required.
• Legal negotiations when people aren’t empowered to say yes or to deviate from their standard practices.
• Price negotiations.
• Anytime “free” is brought up — no one respects free. 

It’s not easy to say no as an individual seller. Finding opportunities can be really difficult especially when you only have one, two, or maybe three accounts to call on. Or maybe you just joined a new firm and you’ve got the glorious greenfield accounts. It might simply be that we’re genetically designed to desire to help others, which pushes us into fruitless business situations. 

It’s likely a simple lack of experience driving these time-wasting activities. Hopefully, your manager will guide you to do the right thing. Or like most people and your author, you’ll need to bang your head against the wall of experience several times to learn the proper path.