Getting beyond the “no” in the sales process with Richard Fenton

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to midsize agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market. We’ll show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. We want to help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want, down the road, sellable. With 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency, coming to you of course from Agency Management Institute. Happy to be back with you today. I have been on the road for the last three weeks teaching workshops down in Orlando, and it’s great to be back home. If you’re watching the video version of this, you’re going to see the dogs passing through probably, but it’s nice to be home and back on track to have some great conversations that will help you and us have a great 2023. And my guest this week is no exception, I think you’re really going to enjoy the conversation.

Before I tell you a little bit about him, as promised, I want to tell you about some of the speakers that are going to be at the Build a Better Agency Summit. So one of the speakers is actually a podcast guest, probably it was three or four years ago he was on the show. His name is Kris Kelso. And Kris wrote a book all about imposter syndrome, and it was brilliant.It talked about why we all suffer from imposter syndrome, how we can move past it, what are some things that trigger it, and really how it gets in our way of being our most successful best self. And the fact that while it is very natural and real for all of us, there are some coping mechanisms and solutions to move that aside when you feel it coming on.

So he’s going to be one of the breakout speakers at the summit this year, and teaching super practical, tangible things that you can do to take hold of that imposter and move them out of your way so you could be super successful in all aspects of your life. I don’t think imposter syndrome just shows up in our work, I think it shows up in all kinds of places, in our parenting and with our spouses and at home, and maybe even with our folks or our extended family, our friends, certainly. So it is a reality in all of our lives, and the more we can tamp it down and control it, the less barriers we have to being the best version of ourselves. So he’s a great guy, super personable, tells great stories, and I think if you join us at the summit, which, of course, is May 16th and 17th in Chicago, you can enjoy his expertise and his advice.

Remember, if you’re an AMI member at any level, so Silver, Gold, Platinum, or in one of the peer groups, you can join us for Family Day on the 15th. And so that’s an extra half a day of content just for our members. So anyway, if you’re interested, head over to the website, grab a ticket. It’s the very first button on the navigation on the top of this site. It says BABA Summit. Grab that, click that and then register. And when you do, don’t forget to grab your hotel room because that room block will sell out. So we got a great rate on rooms and I don’t want you to have to pay a penny more than you need to.

So let me tell you a little bit about our guest. So Richard Fenton wrote a book in 2010 called Go For No! with a co-author. And actually, his co-author was on the podcast many years ago talking about that book. It actually hit Amazon’s best seller list in 2010 and remained in the top 50 of sales books for about the last 13 years. It’s really good. It really takes the idea of how we sell and how we react to a prospect’s responses and turns it on its head. So they’ve got a new book coming out in February called When They Say No. What do we do when we get a no?

So I wanted to make sure that I had Richard or his co-author back to join us again and to talk about that new book and some of the things that they have learned in studying this and how no often isn’t a no, and what we do to get past the no and come back to a future conversation. Interesting, Richard, not only does he write business books, but he also has an 11 book paranormal thriller series that he writes under a pen name. So clearly a prolific author and a pretty smart guy, and I’m excited for you guys to meet him. So let’s get to it. Richard, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Richard Fenton:

Hey, Drew, great to be here.

Drew McLellan:

So sales, for most of my audience, this is not their favorite thing. So when they get a no, they are not excited. So tell me how you and your co-author decided to tackle this topic first in 2010 with your first book When They Say No, and then now again with your brand-new book that’s just coming out. What was it, What No Means, right?

Richard Fenton:

It was Go For No! was the first book.

Drew McLellan:

Go For No! Right. And then When They Say No is the new one.

Richard Fenton:

When They Say No is the new one that’s coming out. Well, first off, I share something probably very much in common with most of the people in your audience, and that is that I hate to sell. And most people who think that the person who’s written the book Go For No! And has done sales training for over 700 different companies over the last 20 years would just have to be somebody who’s conquered sales and has no fear of failure or rejection and just loves to get on the phone. And none of that, none of that is true. It couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is I came from a background where my father was the quintessential sales natural. He was a legend in the automotive fleet industry, number one seller of General Motors product in their history.

Drew McLellan:

Wow.

Richard Fenton:

And I worked for him for a couple of years, and one day he calls me into the office and says, “Hey, it’s time to join the big boys.” And I said, “Well, what does that mean?” He goes, “You’re going in sales. I got the office set up for you downstairs. Your phone is hooked up, your business cards are printed.” He goes, “And I left a phone book on the middle of the desk for you to make cold calls. Look for prospects and make calls.” Well, Drew, I had no sales experience whatsoever. I went down to this new office in my new role and sat there for 30 days and didn’t dial the phone once because I could tell just by looking at the names printed in the phone book that it was the wrong psychological moment to interrupt these people. I had a fear of failure, for rejection.

Drew McLellan:

Waiting the perfect moment, right.

Richard Fenton:

Yeah, exactly. And I just didn’t think my message, “Hey, my name is Richard Fenton. I wanted to sell you some cars.” Was as important as whatever else it was that those people were doing at that time. So I had to go back to my dad, tell him that I couldn’t sell, and he took it surprisingly well. He said, “Come on in here, let’s make some calls.” Well, I’m dating myself a little bit here. Let’s make some calls, was he was making calls, I was sitting on the other side of the desk listening to half the conversation on a speakerphone.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right. Right.

Richard Fenton:

And he dials, he finds a prospect, ABC Rent a Car, dials their number, gets the purchasing agent on the phone, and he says, “Hey, hand me that yellow legal pad.” And I slide it across the desk. He starts writing and he says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Takes about six weeks, right? We invoice you? Yes, looking forward to doing business with you too.” He hangs up the phone, he holds up the yellow legal pad, and he goes, “Here, ABC wants to buy 20 cars, 10 Malibus, 10 Impalas. Just mix up the colors and the interiors.” And he hands me the pad and he goes, “That’s selling.”

Drew McLellan:

Oh dear.

Richard Fenton:

I know. So I took the yellow legal pad, I stood up, walked across the room, shut the door behind me, and that was the moment I decided to quit the car business. Because I knew I couldn’t do what I had just watched my father do. At least I didn’t think I could. And I don’t say I quit the car business as a laugh line. I quit the car business. I didn’t know how I was going to survive in my father’s sales legend shadow. So I moved out to Los Angeles. Interestingly, I took a job in sales, but this time it was a job in retail sales. I took a job selling suits for a living. And I figured in retail, it’s got to be easier, right?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, they walk in the door.

Richard Fenton:

Yeah, just walk in the door. You say, “Hi, how can I help you?” They tell you what you want. You get it. You sell it to them. And imagine my surprise for two months into this new job I’m failing again. And I’ve been warned. They say, “Hey, if you don’t get your sales up, we’re going to have to let you go.” I didn’t want to go back to Chicago. That was for sure. So I was praying for a miracle, and the miracle happened in the form of a guy named Harold, who was the district manager for that company. He came into the store, we had donuts and coffee. Store opened up, I walked up to the first customer, said, “Hi, how can I help you?” And he proceeds to tell me he wants to buy an entire wardrobe of clothing. And I thought, “This is it. This is my magical moment. I’m going to show them what a great salesperson I can be.” For the next half hour, I took care of this man. He bought a suit, sport coat, slacks, shirts, tie shoes, socks, belt, underwear, collar pin, pocket squares, I mean, it was the entire wardrobe of clothing.

Came to $1,100, which doesn’t sound like much in today’s money, but we’re going back a ways. And rang him up, sent him on his way. And I came back in and waited for Harold to tell me what a fantastic salesperson I was. And he didn’t say anything. So I kind of worked my way towards him until we were standing side by side at the cash register. And finally he threw me a bone. He said, “That was a nice sale kid.” And I said, ‘”Yeah, man, did you see that? $1,100. That was a good one.” He said, “Yeah.” Then there was this moment of silence, and then he proceeded to ask me the question that would change the course of my life. He said, “Out of curiosity though, Richard, can you tell me what did that customer say no to?” And it kind of set me back on my heels. It made me a little angry, actually. I’ve just had this great sale, and this guy’s asking me this very strange question, “What do you mean what did he say no to?” I said, “Did you not see?”

Drew McLellan:

Right. He bought it all.

Richard Fenton:

He bought it all, suit, sport coat, slacks. And he goes, “Whoa, time out. I’m not asking you what he said yes to.” He goes, “That’s already been decided. It’s right there on the sales check. Because what I’m asking you is, what did he say no to?” And when I stopped being defensive and I reviewed the sale in my mind from beginning to end, I realized that that customer hadn’t said no to anything. Every single thing I laid in front of that guy, he said yes to. I said, “Harold, he said yes to everything.” And then Harold asked me the other great question. He said, “Well, how did you know he was done?” And I’ll tell you how I knew he was done. I was a young guy, mid-twenties, I wasn’t making a lot of money. The idea of going into a men’s wear store, I had never spent $1,000 on clothing on myself in a men’s wear store in my life. So the idea that someone would come in and spend $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 was so far outside of my consciousness that I hadn’t even considered it.

Then he said, finally, thank God, he said, “I watched you sell, and you’re not half bad. But your fear of the word no is going to kill you.” And then he said, “But you know what? I think if you can just get over that.” He said, “I think you’re going to be one of the great ones.” And I went home that night and I thought, “Is it possible that I screwed up the entire concept of what I thought my job was? I thought my job was to talk with people and do everything I could within my power to get them to say yes to me? Is it possible that this guy is right, that maybe it’s my job to get people to say no to me more often and let the yeses happen freely and easily and stress free, and with the right customer at the right time, with the right product, without trying to force something or pressure people or manipulate? Is it possible to just get people to say no more? And then is that possible?”

So I went in the next day with the express intent to fail my way to success. That’s what I decided to do, and it worked. All I can say is that the model I had been working with in my head, that yeses on one side and nos on the other. And I thought my job was to get to yes and avoid no. And what Harold got me to see was that actually I’m over here, no is in the middle, yes, is on the far side. And no is something you pass through on your way to yes. You don’t avoid no, you actually seek no. You embrace it. You realize that every time you hear the word no, that you’re not going in the wrong direction, that you’re actually making progress. That story and experience was so profound to me that I carried it in every job I ever had. I carried it through sales and sales management, and as a training director for Hart Schaffner Marx clothing, and later on for LensCrafters. And everywhere I went, and no matter who I worked with, it had an impact and it made their sales better and their life easier. So that’s really the genesis of all of this. Andrea and I met, my co-author and wife, which is another story which I’ll get to later-

Drew McLellan:

Another sales job, right?

Richard Fenton:

Yeah, a big sales job. Let’s just say that. So it changed both of our lives because we’ve embraced this very simple concept that you have to go for no. You don’t avoid it. You go for it. And the more nos you hear, the more likely you are to make more sales.

Drew McLellan:

And by accepting the fact that no is part of the sales process, that’s the thing everybody’s afraid of, is getting the no. And to your point, they think of it as the end as opposed to just it’s somewhere in the middle of the process and sooner or later you move past it. But when you remove that fear, that defines failure. And really, it’s just actually all it means is you’re one step closer. So you’re actually succeeding by getting the know. It does allow people who are not natural salespeople, who don’t love it, who are really doing it because it’s a necessary part of their job, it allows them to recognize that it’s not a failure. And they are succeeding by continuing the conversation to and through the no.

Richard Fenton:

Absolutely. And not to take it personally, not to assume that you’ve done something wrong or that you’re a bad person or you’re a bad salesperson because the person is saying no to you. It’s not a personal rejection. So many people take it personally. And we like to laugh, we like to say Baskin Robbins, 31 flavors, could you imagine a customer walks in is and says, “I’d like a scoop of vanilla.” And the pecan caramel fudge goes, “Oh, they rejected me.” Well, no, because the next customer’s going to want the pecan caramel fudge. It has nothing to do with the flavors. It has to do with customer preference. It has to do with timing. It has to do with whether the product’s too big, too small, too yellow, too blue, too expensive, too cheap, just timing, period. Too early, too late. All of these things play factors, and none of them have anything to do with you.

Drew McLellan:

Or are in our control for the most part.

Richard Fenton:

Absolutely. So every time we take something personally, we become less effective in the process of serving that customer.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah. So talk a little bit about the premise of the new book. So when we get a no, what happens next? Or what does it mean, or how should we interpret it?

Richard Fenton:

Well, first off, a question that people have to ask is when they get a no, is it really a no? A lot of times people will say, “I sent an email to the person, and they didn’t respond. They said no to me.” They didn’t say no to you. You don’t even know if they read the email. You don’t even know if they saw the email. Maybe their assistant looked at it and hit delete. You have no idea whether that is a no or not. So we tend to have this assumption that we make all the time that people are saying no to us. I think most people react to it when they hear the word no, they think it’s the end of the process.

Drew McLellan:

Right. The door has closed, right?

Richard Fenton:

Yeah, exactly. And Andrea and I shot a movie about 10 years ago called the Go For No! movie. We traveled around the country, interviewed 53 top performers, big name people, a lot of people making $1 million a year or more. And we pulled into Santa Barbara, one of our last stops, and we were unloading all the camera equipment. And the valet says, “What are you doing?” And we explained that we were shooting this movie. He said, “Oh my God, that sounds amazing.” He goes, “Can you sum up what you learned in a sentence or two?” Now, we had just done 53 hours of video with amazing content, and now this guy says, “Can you sum it up in a sentence or two?” And I was just ready to say, “You can’t…” And it hit me like a lightning bolt. And I realized I could sum it up. I said, “When average people hear the word no, they think the process is over. When top performers hear the word no, they think things are just getting started.” That is, at its essence, the big change in mindset.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So I think the other part, not getting a response is one way we interpret a no and perhaps isn’t one. I think another one is when you’ve been having conversations with folks and all of a sudden they stop returning phone calls or emails or texts or whatever, so they’re ghosting you, and you assume that that’s the end of it, right?

Richard Fenton:

Yeah. And would say that that is more likely to be a no than it would be to never get into a conversation with the person at all. But then again, making the assumption that just because you’re not getting a return… I’ll give an example. A few years back, we were approaching Discovery Channel stores, and I had sent a package to the vice president, a guy named Frank, and didn’t hear anything. And then I sent another package, didn’t hear anything. I left him voicemails, didn’t hear anything. Finally, I sent a letter, he writes back and says, “Hey, I’d like to talk.” Then I can’t get him on the phone. And this goes on, this contact goes on, now, are you ready? 17 times for almost three years, we’re back and forth and back and forth, every quarter. And I just said, “Hey, this no, might mean no. And it might mean never. But until the man says, ‘No, I’m not going to hire you. We don’t want you to come here and speak. We don’t need your product or service at our company.’ I’m just going to keep contacting him again and again and again.”

So the funny thing is, I finally mailed this package, immediately calls, “Hey, we need to have you guys speak at our meeting next month.” We fly out to San Francisco. He introduces me, and it’s kind of the funny part, he says, “Yeah, I stumbled across Rich just a month ago. I stumbled across Rich a month ago. And I thought, ‘This is the perfect message for us.’” And everything. “So here’s Rich.” Anyway, so I got up, and generally, this is a bad rule of thumb to do if you’re a speaker, but I said, “I hate to ever start with anything negative, but I’ve got to correct Frank.” I said, “Frank didn’t stumble across this a month ago.” I said, “I’ve been chasing Frank for three years. For 17 times he either ghosted me or he promised to talk and we didn’t talk, or he just didn’t respond. Period. Paragraph.” I said, “It was last month that we finally broke through.”

Now, my purpose for doing that was not to embarrass Frank. He’s hiring us to get his crew to understand that no doesn’t mean never. It means not yet. And that you can’t make assumptions just because somebody’s not responding to you. So yeah, somebody ghosts you, it might not be good, but it might not be bad either. Time’s going to pass whether you follow up or not. And follow up sometimes only has to be 15 seconds. “Hey, Rich, touching base again. We talked about three months ago, you told me to call you back. I’m calling you back.” If nothing else, you’re staying top of mind for when the time comes that they are ready for what you have. And then you’re going to be the first person they think of.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and you’re also demonstrating interest in their business, and that you have great follow through and consistency and all the things, at least from an agency’s perspective, we want to make sure our prospects and clients know about us, that we are diligent, that we understand. Because we’re also going to be saying to them, “Look, we’re trying to help you sell the widget of your company.” And sales sometimes take time, sometimes take multiple touches. So we’re sort of demonstrating what we’re going to be telling our clients when we ask them for money.

Richard Fenton:

Absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

And that way we try and help them. So it just makes sense from a lot of points of view, for sure.

Richard Fenton:

Right. Right.

Drew McLellan:

So I know that you, in the book and in your teachings, you talk about selling styles. So I want to take a quick break, and then I want to come back and have you tell us about the selling styles. And I know there’s one that you believe we should really aspire to. So let’s talk about the other three that we may be falling into. But let’s take a quick break and then we’ll get into those.

Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to make sure that you are thinking about how to connect with your clients by figuring out what they love and maybe a few things that they’re not so crazy about with your agency. So at AMI one of the things we offer are client satisfaction surveys, we do both quantitative and qualitative. So an online survey, but also interviews with some of your key clients. And then we come back to you with trends, recommendations, what they love, what they don’t love, lots of insights around how you can create an even tighter relationship with your clients. So if you have interest in that, you can go under How We Help tab on the AMI website. And very bottom choice on the How We Help tab is the Client Satisfaction Surveys. You can read more about it. But whether you have us do it or you do it yourself, or you hire somebody else, it is really critical that you be talking to your clients about what they love and what they wish was different or better. So do not miss the opportunity to tighten your relationship with your client whether we help you or not. All right, let’s get back to the show.

All right. I am back with Rich Fenton, and we’re talking about his and Andrea’s new book When They Say No. Again, remember Andrea was on the podcast several years ago talking about the first book, and now we’re talking about how do we react to the no? So before the break, I had said to Rich that we are going to talk about the selling styles. So Rich, what are the selling styles and which should we fashion ourselves towards?

Richard Fenton:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing you have to understand is that anytime a salesperson tries to interact with a prospect, there’s always two things that we’re concerned with. The first is results. We want people to buy the product or service. And you can have salespeople who have a very low concern for results and a very high concern for results. You also have relationships. So you’ve got people who want people to like them, they want to bond, they want to connect with people. And again, you have people with a very low concern for relationships or a very high concern for relationships. And when you take these two ideas, results and relationships from low to high on each, what you see are these four selling styles that automatically emerge. So let me just give an example here. Take somebody who has a very high concern for results, but they have a very low concern for relationships. Can you spell used car dealer?

Drew McLellan:

Or insurance guy.

Richard Fenton:

Or insurance sales or whatever. And any business where traditionally people are hard sell and manipulative. In other words, “I’m only going to get you this once I’ve got to make the sale happen now. I don’t care whether you like it. I don’t care whether you like me. I don’t care if you come back.”

Drew McLellan:

“You can drive it off the lot today.”

Richard Fenton:

That’s right. “Take it off the lot today.” I used to work for a car dealer, and some of the things that car dealers do are just outrageous. At least they used to. It’s gotten better. It’s clearly gotten better. So this is a very adversarial relationship. We call these people sharks, right? If you think of just your typical sales shark. No one likes to be sold by sharks. And it’s the reason the sales has a bad reputation. It’s the reason why when we walk into a retail store and the person walks up and says, “Can I help you?” We always say, “No, I’m just looking.” Because we’re trying to put this wall up because we don’t know if this person’s a shark yet. We don’t know if they’re going to try to push something on us that we don’t want or need. So that is a selling style that has severely hurt the sales industry, and we obviously don’t recommend it.

On the other side, you would have a selling style that has a very high concern for relationships. They want customers to like them. These are the friendliest salespeople in the world, but they want customers to like them so much that they’re willing to sacrifice results. They’re never going to push something on a customer. They’re not even necessarily going to recommend something to a customer. If the customer says yes to one thing, they will rush them to the register and send them on their way, because the idea of introducing a new item might get that customer upset at them. So we refer to people with a high concern for relationships, but low concern for results, we call these retrievers. And quite frankly, that is what I was. I was a retriever. I started the clothing business as a retriever. If you walked in and said what you wanted, I’d retrieve it. “Good dog. Here it comes.” “You want a sweater? Here’s a sweater. Bye.” And Harold got me to see that I was sacrificing results because I was trying too hard to make people, quote, “like me”, and to not take any chances. So retrievers, hey, they get good points for customer service, but did they really make the person a customer if they didn’t sell them anything? Kind of interesting.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Yeah, they walked in already ready to buy that thing.

Richard Fenton:

Yeah, exactly. And so the sale doesn’t start until the customer says no. So I wasn’t even selling stuff when I was selling clothing to people because I was just giving them what they wanted. So that’s a retriever. Retrievers are reactive rather than proactive. They wait for a prospect to call them because they saw an ad or they saw them in social media or whatever it happens to be. And so they’re just waiting. They’re waiting for the customer to come to them.

The worst, of course, would be somebody who has a low concern for results and a low concern for relationships. These are people who don’t care if they sell anything, and they don’t care if they like them. And we refer to this selling style as hippos. That is not a physical representation, that is an attitudinal representation that they’re apathetic and they wait. And hippos don’t survive very long in almost any business, Walmart, you can probably get by with the whole herd of hippos. It’s that type of business. But in any outside sales thing, the hippos will flush themselves out pretty quickly.

So the one that you alluded to, the style that we refer to as the ideal style is the sales lion. And the sales lion is somebody who has an equally high concern for results and relationships simultaneously. They have come to the conclusion that selling is not something you do to people. It’s something you do for people. That every action they take is in the customer’s best interest, not a manipulative action, just in their own best interest. And they believe that actually if a customer does not buy their product and service, that they have done them a disservice. It is a very different mindset from either the retriever or from the shark.

And if you can get to the point where you’re a sales lion, and we always like to use the example, I know I’ve used some retail examples because they’re easy to understand, but you go shopping with your mom for a pair of glasses, and the salesperson says, “Would you like the anti-reflective coating or the polycarbonate lighter lenses?” And your mom goes, “No, I’m not interested in that.” And you knew she should have the lighter lenses. You knew the AR coating was good for her eyes and you go, “No, no, no, no. Hang on, mom. No, no, no, no, no, you’re going to get this.” Well, the salesperson has to treat every single prospect as if it was one of their parents. They have to get them to see what the best product or service is. They have to take the chance and explain that this is something you should do. And that’s the type of attitude a sales lion would take.

Drew McLellan:

But also it probably says, “But you know what? I don’t think you need this thing, this other thing that we could sell you, you don’t really need that because…” For whatever reason, right?

Richard Fenton:

Yeah. Well, thank you for saying that, because that’s a really important part of this. There’s a lot of people who just equate selling with techniques and manipulation. They just think, “Oh, I’m going to sell somebody. Sell, S-E-L-L is a four letter word, sell’s a bad word. And of course, we get that feeling because we’ve been sold to so badly in the past ourselves. We think we’re doing something to people. But if you’re asking great questions and you’re listening to the answers, and you’re comparing it to the products or services that you have to offer this person, you don’t have to ever lie about anything ever. There never has to be a manipulation.

If you just listen, and at the end of that analysis you say, “Wow, we’ve got a service you’re going to love.” Or, “You know what? Based on everything you told me, I think we’re the wrong agency for you.” There are enough prospects in the sea that you don’t need to try to force what should be a no, what should be a no, because it was the wrong service at the wrong time for the wrong person into a yes. Because then everybody ends up paying the price for that. You pay it. They pay it. So thank you for bringing that up. It’s really important.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. All right. So if I am a sales lion and I’m getting nos, and I want to assess them properly, and I want to respond to them properly, what are some strategies that a good sales lion brings to the no?

Richard Fenton:

Wow. Well, that is a big, big question, and I hate to fall back on the last thing I just said, but it really truly is the thing. It’s if they keep saying no, you have to keep asking more questions, and you have to be listening very carefully to the answers. So when you explain your service, you explain the terms and what the deliverables are and what the price is going to be, and you get this, “I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem like it’s the right thing for us right now.” Well, a lot of people would take that as a no, or retriever would certainly take that as a no, right? The retriever would say, “Okay, okay. Well, call me back again in the future if you ever just change your mind.” Click. To get off the phone, get out of the conversation as quick as possible.

The shark would actually attack. The shark would be like, “I don’t understand what the problem is. I’ve explained the features and the benefits. I told you what our service is. I explained everything. It’s perfect for you. What’s the issue?” The shark would make the prospect wrong. So what does the lion do as the middle ground? The lion says, “I’m here as a consultant.” The definition of a consultant is somebody who asks questions, reviews the answers, and then makes recommendations. So if you’ve asked the questions and they’ve said no, but you don’t understand why they’re saying no, then you really haven’t asked all the questions yet. So what we normally do is you have to respect the person’s right to say no and say, “I understand this may not be the right time for you. And if it isn’t, that’s fine. We’ll drop it here. And maybe I can follow up again with you in the future. But it really sounded to me what we have is what you need. So could you just tell me what was it that caused you to say no?”

So in a consultative, customer-centric way, put it in their best interest that you get the answer. In their best interest. And what you’ll almost always find out is that there’s something that’s holding them back. And sometimes it’s so small, sometimes it’s so small, they go like, “Well, we don’t really want to make a year-long commitment.” “Oh, okay, well, what would be the commitment you’d be willing to make?” “Well, we’d be way more comfortable with six months.” “Okay. So if we started with six months and the deliverables were there, then you’d probably renew with us and we’d keep going towards our…” Whatever. And they go, “Yeah, that would be great.” You go, “Terrific. Let’s do six months.”

Drew McLellan:

Or, “The first quarter’s soft for us. We just don’t have the budget right now.” So I’m saying no, and really if I ask another question, what I’m really saying is, “How about in April? Or how about in…” Right?

Richard Fenton:

Exactly. And so when we run too quickly from the word no, we run away without any idea of what the issue was. Well, how are we ever going to overcome that? I don’t even the word overcome. It sounds like we’re fighting. How are we ever going to get past this issue, that may not even be a big issue? So a lot of times, a lot of salespeople, especially people who don’t like to sell, who feel that selling shouldn’t be a part of their job, and by that I mean creators and artists and service people, and people who would run an agency, people who do social media, people who do all different types of things for someone, and then they’re forced to go out, and I say the word forced, but it’s a necessary, I hate the word evil, but it’s a requirement of the job to be able to go out and contact people and say, “Here’s who I am. Here’s what I’ve got. Let me ask you some questions, see if we can work together.” They disdain the process so much that they don’t want to get involved in involved.

Drew McLellan:

Right. And fear it, I think.

Richard Fenton:

Yeah, exactly. And then when they do get involved, there’s that little part of them saying, “I don’t want to be here. I didn’t even want to make this call.”

Drew McLellan:

Or like you with your dad making the assumption that they can’t be good at it.

Richard Fenton:

Oh, yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Because I think when people think about sales, they think about the sharks and they think A, “I don’t want to be that. I don’t want anyone to ever think of me that way. But I don’t think I can do that.” So I think a lot of people mislabel sales as the shark kind of sales, and they think if they can do it that way, they’re not going to be successful. But part of what I’m hearing you say is, and as you were talking about the asking more questions and, “Oh no, I don’t want to make a year commitment, or I can’t start until April.”, one of the things I think that I took away from your first book is that every time we get a no, we actually get smarter about how to get to a yes faster.

Richard Fenton:

Absolutely.

Drew McLellan:

So what I’m hearing you say is, as we get a no or a not now or whatever, by staying in that consultative state and asking more questions like, “Can you just help me understand why this isn’t a good time for you or why you don’t feel like we’re a good fit?” Or whatever it is. Number one, I may be able to remove a barrier that is, as you say, small or artificial or a misunderstanding. But even if it is a real barrier for this particular prospect, now in my conversations with the next prospect, I can tackle that head on and say, “Look, just want you to know, we almost always start with a yearlong commitment. But if that’s not right for you, we can certainly talk about other arrangements.” I can now weave that into my conversations for the next person if I hang in there and ask the questions of the person who just said no to me.

Richard Fenton:

Right. Absolutely. And one of the things that I think we all tend to discount is that, and our good friend Bob Burg, who’s the author of the book, The Go-Giver.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Love that book.

Richard Fenton:

Bob and others have said, “All things being equal, people tend to buy things from people they know, like and trust.” Know, like and trust. Well, if you hang up the phone quickly and you don’t continue a conversation, can you explain to me how they’re going to get to know you, like you, and trust you? They’re not going to get to know, like and trust you when you’re not communicating.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right.

Richard Fenton:

And the way you get people to know, like and trust you is to focus the conversation on them rather than on yourself. Every time you’re talking features and benefits and terms and payment plans and all of this, it’s about the deal. And that’s always read by prospects as, “Oh, you care about making the sale.” But if you just will dig deep, if you just will go deep into the needs of a prospect and maybe spend 15 minutes more time digging and giving free advice, giving some free information that you feel they should be paying for, but they’re not. Well, in that 15 minutes you’ve bought currency with them, you’ve bought favor. They’ll take your next phone call. They won’t assume that you’re trying to sell them, that you’re trying to help them. So all of those things go into this desire to be more of a sales lion who gets themselves out of the way and focuses exclusively on the prospect.

Drew McLellan:

So if no often doesn’t mean no forever, what’s the right cadence, what’s the right approach to continuing to keep in touch with that person, to recognize, “You know what, they’re not ready to buy today.” So we teach a workshop and we talk about being a thought leader and a subject-matter expert, and what that does is it keeps you top of mind with the prospect, to your point, you’re giving good advice, you’re helping them be better at their job today because it may take them a day or a decade to be ready to hire you. So from your perspective, knowing that our prospects… In our business, there’s no buying season, there’s no white sale. We don’t have a buy one, get one free coupon. Until the prospect needs us and is ready to invest both the time and the money to hire an agency, get them on board, get them up to speed, there’s really nothing we can do to speed up that process. So when we get a no but we really feel like it’s not a forever no, how do you recommend that a sales lion stays in there?

Richard Fenton:

Well, this is such a wonderful opportunity for most people, and they don’t necessarily see it. When they find out they’re not going to make the sale, get the client, they get a little deflated. There’s just like, “Oh, okay, well I’m sorry that it’s not perfect for you.” This is the opportunity for you to stand tall, to not be affected by it at all. To say, “Of course, I understand. If you said yes today, you would be one of the rare prospects that we have that has turned into a long-term client with us, because it takes time for us to understand you and to know you, and for you to have faith in what it is that we do. And so because I know that things change and that they might change, would you have any problem if I called you back in April and touch base just to see if anything has changed with you? And maybe I’ll come up with a few more questions in the meantime. You may have come up with a few more questions for me, and we can have a brief conversation. It can be 15 minutes, it can be 15 seconds, it doesn’t matter. Can I follow up with you in April?”

Now, the reason for doing that is that you’re asking for permission to follow up. So instead of just saying, “Okay.” Click. And now you’ve got to think, “Should I interrupt them again?” Three months later you’re going, “Should I?” Now, instead of you imposing yourself on them, you are in the process of fulfilling the promise. You said, “I will call you back in April. I will call you on April 15th.” You can be as specific as you want to be. And you call back and you say, “Hey, it’s Bob Johnson with the ABC Agency calling you back as promised. I told you that if I had any more questions for you, I’d give you a call. I have two questions, and maybe you’ve come up with a few questions, and you’ve had three months to come up with a couple really good questions.”

So I mean, it’s fantastic. But it’s also great service. The fact that we will sit down and go, “What are a couple of good questions?” Because we know we’re trying to sell them. We can’t get that out of the way. But if they’re the right questions that gets you connected and you know you can deliver on the promises, you know that your agency does what you say it does well, you have an obligation to try to get that customer to understand how good you are. Because if you don’t, they’re going to end up with a shark who’s going to hammer them, force them into a bad contract for a long period of time for more money they should spend and they don’t deliver.

So I mean, really, how is it that we, if we are professionals are ever doing a disservice to the prospect? And the answer is we’re not. And so now every time you call back, they’re getting to know you, like you, and trust you. Every time you make a promise and you keep the promise, they go, “Oh, this is somebody who kee