“Would you agree that the average salesperson slows down when he or she reaches their quota?” my mentor asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Why do you think that is?”
“They’re rewarding themselves for their accomplishment, I guess.”
“Rewarding themselves by ruining their chances at having a record-breaking week or month? No, I think it’s just another way of staying within comfort zones and avoiding the pain of rejection. Most people classify the amount of pain they must endure to survive in this world as necessary pain. Anything beyond that, by definition, is unnecessary pain. That’s why it becomes so easy to dodge that extra effort-we’ve labeled it in our minds as unnecessary.”
“That’s exactly what I did this week,” I finally admitted. “I had a great Monday going. I was three for three, and what did I do? I spent Tuesday doing paperwork, Wednesday in a focus group, and on Thursday I was going to play golf...until I fell out of bed and wound up here, that is.”
“Ben Franklin said it best: ‘Success has ruined many a man!’”
“Yeah, well, I let having a great day turn into a horrible week.”
“Let’s look at what would have happened if you were setting ‘no’ goals rather than ‘yes’ goals.”
“Okay.”
“What was your sales goal for the week?”
“My goal was to close four sales,” I replied.
“And how many calls do you usually make in a typical week?”
“I try to get myself in front of 20 prospects every week.”
“Okay. So what if, instead of having the goal of getting four ‘yeses,’ your goal had been to get a minimum of 16 ‘nos.’ What would have happened on Monday afternoon after you closed your third sale?”
“Instead of being ahead, I’d have been behind!” I exclaimed.
“Correct. So what would you have had to do?”
“I’d have had to increase the number of calls if I was ever going to get to 16 ‘nos’ for the week!”
“Exactly! Your success would have led to an increased number of calls, whereas when you were going for ‘yes,’ you decreased them.”
“I get it!” I said excitedly. “Let’s use my friend Paul who is in network marketing, for example. If his goal is to get 10 people per week to come to a meeting and typically about 5% of the people he approaches are willing to attend, then his goal would be to get 190 people to say ‘no thanks.’”
“Yes. His goal would be to get rejected by 190 people. You might call it the ‘get rejected and get rich’ plan.”
“Get rejected and get rich,” I repeated quietly to myself.
“Eric, I’m going to tell you the truth. I haven’t set a traditional success-oriented goal in almost 10 years. I only set goals for the number of ‘nos’ I’m going to get.”
“You set no success goals at all?” I asked in disbelief.
“None whatsoever,” he responded firmly. “If I focused on how well I was doing in terms of results-oriented goals, I’d probably slow down just like you did. But, instead, I’ve focused on the behavior-oriented goal of constantly increasing my rate of failure. I have complete and total faith that if I set my failure goals high enough and do my best in each and every sales situation, then the successes will come. And they always do.”
About the Authors
Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz are founders of Courage Crafters, Inc., a company dedicated to helping organizations achieve breakthrough performance. The authors of Go for No! Yes is the Destination, NO is How You Get There, Richard and Andrea conduct workshops and keynote presentations that encourage participants to overcome self-imposed limitations and achieve their full potential by intentionally increasing their failure rate. Clients include Ameriprise, Macy’s, and High Performers International. For more information, visit www.goforno.com or call 800-290-5028.
