Go For No, with Andrea Waltz – Episode 31 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Author, speaker, and Founder of Courage Crafters, Andrea Waltz, talks about setting “no” goals, why hearing “no” is important EVEN for top producers, and why to never be afraid to ask for what you want.

About Andrea:

Andrea Waltz is the co-author of the long time best-seller, Go for No! and When They Say No, as well as a professional sales keynote speaker, teaching B2B/B2C salespeople, business owners, and entrepreneurs how to overcome their fears of failure, rejection, and the word NO to be more successful in business and in life.

Andrea also:

• Received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from Long Beach State.
• At the age of 8 she called George Lucas to see if she could work with him on future movies.
• Youngest General Manager in eyeglass retailer LensCrafters’ history.
• Launched her own training company at the age of 24.
• Member of the elite invite-only group, Women Sales Pros.
• Named One of 25 Sales Experts You Should Follow On Twitter by Hubspot and 25 Sales Influencers to Follow on Twitter by Salesforce.com and Live Hive.
• Named Top 100 Sales Influencers and Top 65 Women Business Influencers by Tenfold and 47 Top Sales Speakers and Influencers to Follow on Twitter by SummitSYNC.
• Listed in Top 5 Female Sales Experts To Follow For Tips on Increasing Sales Productivity by Marketcircle and 51 Top Sales Influencers You Should Follow On Twitter Immediately by ringDNA.
• Was featured on ‘Idol Chat’ a TV Guide Channel show where she was interviewed on how even idol rejects can be successful failures.
• Writes extensively on Quora and maintains the space called, Fail Your Way to Success.
• Co-owner of Courage Crafters Inc.
• Has written and published several business books (four of which are fables) including the long running best-seller, Go for No!
• Produced a 98-minute Documentary DVD Movie, Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There (and drove 12,000 miles around the USA to film it!)
• Launched a publishing company called Success in 100 Pages.

Learn more at GoForNo.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Andrea Waltz is the co founder of Courage Crafters. That’s the name their company, which is just awesome. She’s the author of a tremendous book. The book is called “Go For No”. She’s also been featured in TV Guide, Success Magazine, I mean, on this mission to shift the way that the world thinks about the word no. But Andrea, we’re so excited. Thank you for being here.

Andrea Waltz
I am thrilled.

Host
So most people are terrified of the word no. Can you explain what your philosophy is about that and how, like, how did you come up with this? Like, how did you get there to this philosophy?

Andrea Waltz
Well, I know that does that so counterintuitive, right? Everybody wants to hear yes, and they’ve been taught and trained to hear yes. And that is the interesting thing about the philosophy, is that it is totally counterintuitive. What we teach is that in order to get more yeses, in order to hear yes more often, you’ve got to be willing to hear more nos. In fact, we say you’ve got to go out and intentionally increase the number of times you are hearing the word no in order to get to those yeses. And so it that’s the fundamental philosophy. Of course, there’s a lot behind it, because we do have all the psychology behind it and all the emotions that are wrapped up in getting those no’s and feeling like we’re failing and and all of that. So that’s kind of the surface level thing. And Richard was working in a men’s wear store. He was, and this is years ago, kind of in the beginning of his sales career, he was sailing miserably. He was hoping to improve. The district manager, a man by the name of Harold, was going to come in and visit the store. And rich thought that if he had a great sale while this guy was in the store, that it would maybe buy him some time to improve. So the district manager comes in this one day, Richard’s there. They open the store. Everything’s great. Customer walks in. Rich is the first salesperson in that morning. So he gets to help this first customer. And the customer who walks in happens to say, you know, i Hello, I want to buy an entire wardrobe of floating. Rich gets to help this guy. And he’s like, okay, great. So he they’re going from thing to thing, and he’s selling the guy shirts and ties and slacks and underwear and pocket square and the whole this wholesale rings them up. It’s like $1,100 and again, this is years ago, but it sold this great sale. Um, ring some up, sends him on his way, and is thinking that he’s going to be congratulated by Harold, the the district manager who’s visiting, thinking that Harold’s going to be so impressed. Harold doesn’t say anything. Finally, they’re standing side by side, and Harold says to rich, he’s like, you know, you know, that was my sale. And Rich is like, Well, yeah, did you I mean, it was, it was $1,100 that was great. And Harold says, yeah. But can I ask you a question? Just wanted to ask you a little question. And Rich says, Okay. And Harold says, Out of curiosity, Richard, out of everything that you show that man made, what would that customer say no to? And Rich thought about the wholesale and he’s like, Oh, geez, Harold, you know I, if you saw I sold them all this stuff. What do you mean? What did he say no to? He I guess he didn’t say no to anything. And then Harold asks rich the really important question, which is, well, then how did you know he was done? And, yeah, that’s the this kind of hit rich like a punch, really, he was floored. He’s like, Well, I guess I knew he was done, because I’m always done. You know? It’s like he got to that his own mental spending limit, and he sent the customer on his way. And that was it. And that was kind of that moment where Harold and we all need leaders in our lives kind of point us in the right direction. Well, that was Harold for rich. So Rich took that message. He he got the message, and then I thought I was a great salesperson. And he, he tells me this entire story, just like I told you. And I said, oh my goodness, you know what? I don’t like to hear no either. And I realized that, as great a salesperson that I thought I was, I actually shied away from hearing no because I didn’t want to look pushy. I didn’t want to look overly aggressive. You know, I did. You know all of that, I’ve interviewed a ton of experts on this exact topic. And I think pretty much everybody agrees that, you know, as kids, we start off very tenacious. We’re willing to try everything. We’re willing to fall flat on our face. We don’t care. And then somewhere along the line in our teenage years, you know, we just kind of get that tenacity drummed out of us, and we kind we kind of get taught and trained and learn. That you don’t want to stand out and you don’t want to look like a failure in front of people. So here we are all as adults, just shying away from looking and, quote, failing, maybe looking like that sleazy, pushy salesperson asking somebody for anything. It doesn’t matter. I mean, this is not even necessarily a sales philosophy. It’s really, we like to say it’s a life philosophy. He’s asking for anything. Asking for anything, and having somebody think, wow, she’s pushy, you know? So I think we have, we’ve been raised with some of these paradigms, as you say, and so we kind of keep living them over and over again.

Host
So what are some of the action steps that we can take to change our philosophy or our mentality about all of this, and kind of, you know, how we approach looking at no?

Andrea Waltz
The first thing I would suggest, I would recommend, to anybody is just start to create a no awareness. Really look around and say to yourself, how many knows, as if you’re a salesperson, you know, how many knows, am I getting a week or a day? And try to really quantify it, and try to really look and say, you know, I don’t, I do stop at that one yes. I don’t continue to to show things or to make calls if I got the two yeses I wanted for, you know, a particular day. So create that no awareness. And then got to do something that we call setting no goals. So instead of just saying, I’m going to get a one yes today. We suggest that you, you say, I’m going to try to get five no’s this week. And it can be, you know, whatever, whatever you want, whatever it could be. We help people in fundraising. So it doesn’t really matter what you’re quote asking or what you’re selling. It’s really just have fun with it. Set a no goal and try to get more no’s, and a lot of people have some really serious, deep, rooted fears. And there’s nothing wrong with that, because, again, we’ve all been taught and trained to live in the stove for yes world where there’s a lot of pressure to get yes and so yeah. And I think a lot of people, you know, they have kind of a perfectionistic quality. They want to be great, which is great, but, you know, they they almost put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect. And so what I would tell somebody says, I give them permission and actually insist, you know, I want you to fall flat on your face. I you’re going for no so I know, pick up the phone or talk to the person, and I don’t want you to get Yes, I just literally get no. Be bad. Fall on your face, experience it, so that you can at least take the action and do it, and then we can move to the next step and improve on that. But it’s taking that action and seeing that gosh, I can. I nobody died every I survived. It wasn’t a disaster. And what’s funny is when people do that and they have permission to go for no and they have permission to live in that go for no world and have that go for no mindset, the stress actually is removed, and what we find is that people relax more, and the whole experience is actually so much better because we said, listen, there is no pressure here. We want you to mess up. Don’t worry about it.

Host
Does the go for no philosophy apply to top producers do you think?

Andrea Waltz
Yeah, and I love that you said that we always make the point that we that, you know, the people that are on stage winning awards, super successful people in every business of industry, writers and actors and, you know, athletes and stay at home moms with a side business, you know, everybody who, really, who ends up being coming a top producer actually hears some more no’s and literally failed enough. There’s like this tipping point. You know, there’s a tipping point where, if you fail enough and hear enough no’s, then what happens is, your confidence starts to grow. You learn from those no’s, and then you this tipping point happens, and you don’t hear no quite as often. But what happens is we don’t get through that process. We don’t force ourselves through that process, through the pain, if you will, to reach that tipping point. And that’s kind of the trick and so but absolutely, top producers here know more than anybody, and when we start getting those no’s in the beginning, I think a lot of times we the questions that we start asking deep inside is, what does this, know really mean? And we start thinking this, no means I’m not going to be successful this. No means I’m bad at what I’m doing. You know, we get this. The nos have all these negative meanings, where, when we work through those and we do it enough, and we we let those statistics and those numbers play out, and eventually they do play out in our favor when we stick with it enough that we see that those no’s don’t mean that at all, but it takes some time to get to that place.

Host
How have you leveraged go for no philosophy like to advance your own career, like, how is this? How have you been a practitioner of this message yourself?

Andrea Waltz
Well, you know, it’s so nice to be able to teach something that you need yourself, which is totally true. I, as I said, when Richard told me this story about go for No, we hadn’t written the book or anything. And I said, this is brilliant. I get this. And after we wrote the book and we decided to. Create a whole training program around this, and kind of forced me to really look at all of the psychology and to see where I needed it, and so I have absolutely used it in my career. My favorite story is one time we were at this conference and I saw the vice president of huge retail organization standing over in the corner, and I wanted to approach her, and I I just thought, oh, you know, I was very young at the time. I was super nervous, and I thought, you know, you spend all this money, you pay this money. What’s the worst that can happen? Remember to go for no so I walked up, I approached her, we had a great conversation, and we ended up doing, you know, probably $100,000 worth of business later on, because I just forced myself out of my comfort zone and had to remind myself to go for no and the truth is, I’ve gotten over the whole psychology and the emotional reaction that’s been so freeing for me, because I do keep my stress down. I do understand the whole go for no philosophy, but every now and then, you know, when I get nervous, I have to remind myself and tap into everything that I know. So that’s why it’s so fun for me to teach, is I get to constantly. I get the constant reinforcement every day.

Host
How does go for no apply to non sales people like, do you think this philosophy fits in other places?

Andrea Waltz
Absolutely. And that’s what I love about it, is I feel like when we get to share this with people in every business and every industry which we do, it applies to everybody and and kids. I have so many great stories of people who tell me that they’re teaching this to their children because they feel like they don’t. They want their kids to remember this. And you know, kids that are 10, 1214, they’re starting to hit that magic age where they start carrying what other people think and start ringing themselves in. But it is a complete life philosophy. We all tend to shrink back and not ask for what we want. Jack Camfield talks about this quite a bit and relates up to self esteem. So you know, if you’re we always say, you know, you’re out with your spouse or significant other, and you’re at a restaurant, and they put you at the horrible table in the back next to the water station. And then, of course, there’s the cute table for two of the front with the candle. And this is your moment to say, Okay, I’m gonna go for no if they put us, you know, if they, if they can’t move us to the queue table, at least I asked. At least I tried. So ask, ask for what you want, and you’ll be amazed at what can happen. So it’s definitely a great light philosophy.

Host
It’s just fantastic. It empowers you. So, Andrea, we just, we appreciate you for what you’re doing and keep going and think thank you for being with us on the show.

Andrea Waltz
My absolute pleasure. Love it.