We Are Born With Only 2 Fears
The fear of loud noise and the fear of falling.
The more we grow into adulthood, the less we accept failure and rejection in our lives.
I love using my 6-year-old son, Luca, as an example.
Luca learned to walk 2 years ago. When he was still learning, he would fall over and over. My wife and I would cheer him on and encourage him after each fall. That encouragement motivated him to be more persistent and to try further until he succeeded. The failure was accepted with joy and encouragement, and as a result, persistence became natural to him.
Babies actually learn to walk by falling one step after another until they find the adequate balance and stability to eventually walk properly.
Unfortunately, The More We Grow In Life, The Less We Accept Failure And The Less Persistent We Become.
A few years after learning to walk, we enter the school system, and our relationship to failure take an opposite direction. If he gets an F on an exam, our teachers and parents will blame us for the poor results. Unlike when we were trying to walk, our parents and teachers did not let us try over and over again until we succeeded. This rejection of persistence comes from our constant cultural exposure to negativity.
In fact, by the time we are 17, an average teenager has heard the words “No you can’t” over 150,000 times, versus 5000 “Yes you can”.That is a ratio of 30 no’s to a single yes! As a result, we are all becoming afraid of the word “NO.” We are afraid of saying and hearing “NO”.
Fear of rejection is the number one fear in sales. So let me help you kick this fear in the A$$!!
What If I Told You That Accepting “No” Might Actually Be The Shortest Way To Success In Sales?
Your relationship to “No” is the single most destructive thought pattern sabotaging your performance in sales.
Learning how to master “no” will help you increase boat sales overnight.
You must develop a ‘secret’ mindset for overcoming and reprogramming your fear of failure and rejection so that you can get better results and sell more boats. How can you change your response to rejection so that you can get off your comfort zone and finally make things happen?
I also want to share a new way of setting goals that will have you feeling encouraged and excited, instead of wanting to give up. So without further due, let’s dive in!
As some of you know, I am an avid reader. The more I read, the more challenging it becomes to find key insights in a book. If I get 3 or 4 good ideas from a book, I consider it a good read.
However, once every few months, I stumble upon an amazing book. And these are the types of books I like to recommend or share with you.
I finally found this amazing book on sales I have been looking for in a while and I am going to do a complete review of this book for you.
Because, it just may be…
The Best $10 You Will Ever Spend In Your Sales Career
So, don’t forget to buy this book as it is probably the best $10 you could invest in your sales career.
Go for No! has a 5-star rating on Amazon. It is loaded with value and examples that can be used in your everyday sales career. And even if you don’t like reading, don’t worry, it is only 90 pages and can be read in less than 2 hours.
I will provide a complete review below but remember this is a book that you definitely need to own and read at least once every year.
Book Overview
Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There, was written by Andrea Waltz and Richard Fenton.
It is a short fictional story that teaches how to overcome the fear of failure.
The story follows the journey of a photocopier salesman, but the concepts taken from this story are universally applicable to any type of product or service, or any other area in our lives.
Why You Should Read This Book
• Are you tired of poor performance in sales?
• Are you finally willing to achieve your true potential?
• Are you ready to discover a new paradigm shift that will help you focus on success without being afraid of failing at all?
• Are you open to celebrating your failures as much as your successes?
This book will show you how to quickly get past your failures and discover the science and benefits of setting ‘no’ goals for yourselves.
10 Key Takeaways
#1 The more people you talk to, the more sales you will make.
#2 Failure is the halfway point to success – a stepping-stone to where you want to go in life.
#3 We have no control over the actions of others, but we do have control over how we react.
#4 No doesn’t mean never, it just means not yet!
#5 Failing and failure are two very different things.
#6 It is important to celebrate success and failure.
#7 Get past failures quickly and move on.
#8 85% of interactions between salespeople and buyers end without the sales person asking for a buying decision.
#9 92% of salespeople give up after the fourth time, but 60% of customers say no 4 times before saying yes.
#10 People are remembered for their successes and not their failures.
5 Quotes
#1 “Yes is the destination, No is how you get there!”
#2“If you’re going to fail, fail big!”
#3 “How many times is a person willing to fail before succeeding?”
#4 “Your fear of hearing the word “No” is the only thing standing between you and greatness.”
#5 “Courage is acting in the face of fear. It’s being afraid of something and doing it anyway.”
3 Powerful Stories Taken From The Book
1) The Life Insurance Formula (60 no’s to get 1 yes):
A Chicago insurance company’s profits were declining. In an effort to stop this decline, they hired a consultant who ended up telling them that they aren’t calling enough people. In order to prove his findings, the consultant performed a test using the company’s sales employees.
He told them to go door-to-door and ask people if they wanted to buy life insurance and to start with the following question: “You don’t want to buy any life insurance, do you?” The goal of this test was simply to see how many people the employees could ask the question to each day.
The result was that the approach “failed” – 59 out of 60 people said no. One out of 60 doesn’t seem like a lot, but it took one employee about 8 hours to reach 60 prospects, so it works out to about 1 sale a day!
The moral: If you truly want to accelerate your sales performance, you must fail faster!
2) The Digging For Gold Metaphor:
While playing a round of golf with some friends, the lead character of the book, Eric Bratton, learns the concept of failing faster and the similarities between selling and mining for gold. When you mine for gold, you don’t actually look for gold, you remove the dirt in the way. Whoever removes the most dirt the quickest, will find the most gold. In other words, the people with the most rejections (the most ’no’s’) get the most ‘yes’. Start comparing your “No’s” to the dirt and your “yes’” to the gold. The more “No’s” you collect, the more gold you will find.
3) The Pike Syndrome:
A group of scientists at an aquarium put a large carnivorous pike fish in a tank with some small minnow fish, and separated the two with a glass partition. The pike fish swam into the glass partition for hours trying to eat the minnows, eventually giving up. The scientists finally removed the partition for the pike. However, the pike fish stayed on its side of the tank despite the removal of the glass, because it thought the barrier was still there. In other words, it had conditioned itself to stay within self-imposed limitations. People can behave in similar ways. They can give up if they don’t get what they want, and can restrain themselves within their own imaginary walls.
Book Summary
The story opens up with the main character, Eric Bratton, as he works towards making his sales quota for the week. Eric wants to be successful, but he doesn’t have the drive and always ends up doing just enough to get by. During the week, he becomes easily distracted by focus groups and playing golf, instead of reaching his quota.
One night, Eric has a dream about playing a game of golf. During the game, he slips and falls into a creek at the golf course while looking for his golf ball. He blacks out from the fall, and wakes up in a house owned by a future version of himself, 10 years later. This future version is hugely successful, very wealthy and has written several books. Confused as to why he is there, Eric contacts his alternate reality self and together they begin to help each other figure out why he has woken up in his future version’s house.
Together, they recount their identical memories from childhood and youth until they reach a point in their matching life continuums where each of them responds to the same event differently. Someone gave each of them a piece of advice, but only the successful Eric took the advice to heart. The successful Eric realized that failure is the halfway point between himself and success, and that contrary to popular belief, he was not in the middle of failure and success.
This concept changes his life, and he soon realizes that failure is just a stepping-stone to where he wants to be. From that point on, the successful Eric became the number one salesman at his job. On the flip side, the regular Eric’s sales got worse before he was fired 2 months later. The regular Eric had found the truth but ignored it and continued on with his life as if nothing had happened.
As the two Eric’s pondered the significance of one life-changing event over dinner, they discovered that everyone on the planet thinks failure is something to be avoided at all costs and that when encountering failure, we should give up and turn the other way.
The story continues with the successful Eric teaching the average Eric what sets successful people apart from average people. It has to do with their willingness to fail and to not take rejection personally. If you push long and hard enough and don’t quit, you will reach success. Successful Eric teaches average Eric to do something every day that scares him and to face his fears so he will expand his comfort zone. Average Eric learns to not let his fears get in the way, as he witnesses his alternate reality self fly a plane despite his fear of flying.
As the story continues, average Eric learns that his future wife, Elaine, is also a hugely successful art salesperson because she applies the same ‘no’ principle to her job. The story includes lots of examples of other very successful people throughout time, who had to fail hard to earn their success. People like Abraham Lincoln are remembered for their successes and not their failures. Most people probably don’t know that Lincoln had less than one year of formal schooling, failed in business twice, and lost 8 out of 10 elections. Similarly, Babe Ruth is not remembered for his 1330 strikeouts, but for his 714 home runs.
How many times is a person willing to fail before they succeed?
Harland Sanders was 65 when he started KFC because his retirement checks were not enough to live off of. He spent 2 years trying to sell his chicken recipe to fast food restaurants before KFC became big, and during that time, no one wanted to sign up.
Eventually, average Eric attends a presentation that successful Eric is speaking at. During the presentation, average Eric trips on the stairs backstage, falls and blacks out. When he wakes up he is back in his original version of the time-space continuum. From this point on, Eric begins to live his life differently using the concepts that his future self-taught him. Six months after waking from his dream, Eric earns the number one ranking for sales three months in a row and has the lead in the number of fails in his company.
We have no control over the actions of others, but we do have control over how we react. People stay within their comfort zones and avoid rejection because the word ‘no’ is related to one’s failure. This book teaches that failing and failure are two very different things. Hearing ‘yes’ is easy and teaches us nothing. It doesn’t help to build character or self-esteem the way pressing on in the face of failure does. People only tolerate whatever pain is necessary for their survival. We never make the extra effort because it is seen as unnecessary. The most empowering word in the world should be ‘no,’ not ‘yes,’ because ‘no’ doesn’t mean never, it just means not yet!
3 Great Amazon Reviews:
No matter what you sell this is the book for you. The concept is simple – the more people you talk to, the more successful you will be. However, this is a different approach. The authors successfully sell the idea that you must fall in love with the word NO. If you have been in sales for more than a few minutes, you really love YES and you don’t like NO very much. What if you could learn to love hearing NO? I haven’t reached that point yet, but the authors have helped me stomach it better!
– Merl K. Miller
If the world were my way, every person should read this book. This book makes you truly FEEL the possibilities in every avenue of your life. You will not feel the same about your own potential after reading this, and the world will seem a bit brighter, no matter how positive a perspective you have. Go for it, read the book, you won’t be sorry. For the record, I am extremely busy and have read 100s of books and this is the FIRST review I have ever bothered to write.
– Christina M. Pegram
This is the book that we all wished we would have had 25 years ago (well, at least if you’re near my age :). A most amazing book! Master this book and you’ll master ‘winning in life’. Success, wealth, and achievements will virtually track you down and force themselves into your life. This book is not a book that is ‘recommended’; this book is ‘required’ reading for anyone wanting to pursue and live their dreams. Get it into your hands as fast as you can. You’ll wonder how you’ve survived this long without it
-Michael D. Murphy
Conclusion
I hope that today lesson was valuable and that you will invest in the book.
Rejection is not easy to handle and often makes us feel uncomfortable but overcoming it is truly the key to increasing boat sales overnight.
I decided to show you the pic of the anaconda because I have always been afraid of snakes. Ten years ago, while visiting the Amazonian forest I saw this massive anaconda (400 lbs & 20 feet) in captivity in an animal recovery farm.
I decided that it was my chance to finally face my fear and conquer it. I asked 2 farmers to put the snake on my shoulder. It was really hard at the beginning but at the end, I became more confident and realized that I was just facing an internal fear as the snake wasn’t presenting any danger in those circumstances. The snake was eating 1 chicken per week and you could approach him only 48 hours after he ate otherwise he might be aggressive.
Do you agree that overcoming your fear of rejection and embracing “No” can be the best decision you will ever make in your sales career?
Comment below and let me know your feedback.
Want More Powerful Boat Sales Tips Like These?
If so, then join my Free 7-Day Training called:
Traditional Boat Sales Is Dead, The Old Way Of Selling Boats Doesn’t Work Anymore
For more information, head on over here:
https://www.yachtsalesacademy.com/courses/7-day-boat-sales-transformation/
To your success!
— Vincent Finetti
Founder & Instructor
Yacht Sales Academy
P.S. Try a listing strategy from my FREE Listing ebook here.
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