Episode 293: The Bottom Line - It's A Hard "No"

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are gonna be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.

Just get what you need and go.

So with that, let's get into today's episode.

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Hey, what's up everybody? Happy Friday. Hope you've had an awesome week. And so we had our 2-day MBA on Tuesday, Wednesday. We had Coach P was in the house, and Alex Shattuck was with us. And then my coach, Mike Reed, he— one of my coaches, Mike, was there on Tuesday afternoon. And then our boy Micah spoke at the 2-day MBA. So it was a great event. Great to have many of you to be able to join us. We had, um, I think we had 154 is how many people registered for the event. Of course, obviously whenever you're on the call it fluctuates, um, just a little bit, but overall pretty successful event. So anyway, all right, so, uh, this is a little solo episode that'll drop— oh gosh— in a couple months, um, and I'm calling it, calling it a hard no. Hey, what's up everybody? So I yesterday was on a sales conversation with someone, um, wanting to— had downloaded one of our free lead magnets, um, Sunday Night Planning asset, and had kind of gone through the sequence and then booked in a call, uh, with me yesterday. So I ended up on the phone for about 45 minutes or so, kind of went through, which was way longer than it should have been. It was— that's a whole I could do a whole podcast on that, but should have gotten off that phone call in about 15, 20 minutes to kind of realize it wasn't a good fit. Now I'm going to share with you something, uh, that I ended up sharing with her later on, but let me kind of walk you through the conversation if you'll bear with me for about, uh, 45 seconds here. So, uh, we go through, I'm going through kind of my normal sales process, sales motion, asking the same kind of questions, getting to know about her and her business and the things that she does. And then in the end, I transitioned and said, would you like to know a little bit about, um, our program and kind of how we serve business owners? She said yes. And so now right there in regards to that sales conversation, I actually shouldn't even gone into the conversation because she really wasn't a great fit for, uh, where she was and what, where we are, et cetera, and, and who we really serve. But anyway, that's not the point of this. Afterwards, she said, you know, um, I would really like for you to contact me in 6 months. And I said, would you actually like for me to contact you? And she said yes. And, uh, she said, but I'd also like to talk to you about one of the businesses that I'm starting is a network marketing company, an online network marketing company. And at first I didn't really pick up what she was mentioning, but then I kind of figured out that it was basically a BNI. So many of you are going to be familiar with BNI. So imagine BNI but just in a virtual environment. Now That doesn't surprise me at all that this exists. And so I gave her the opportunity to share with me kind of the pitch or the presentation. And so in the end, I said, well, thank you so much for sharing that. I'm going to go ahead and let you know that it's a hard no, but let me share with you why it's a hard no. And so first, you know, have you ever wanted people to be able to tell you, regardless of what you sell, like, like you just want to push them to a decision, to get them to decide. If it's a hard no, tell me no. Don't let me think that you're actually interested in it, whatever. And I've had that experience before where I'm being nice and I would think, oh, you know, maybe, sort of, kind of. Now I'm, I'm really working to try to let people know that it's a hard no, or no, I'm actually genuinely interested in and what it is. In this case, I said it's a hard no. So that's the first lesson, is as much as possible for yourself, when people are selling you on something or engaging you in something, if it's a hard no, let them know it's a hard no. Because she ended up later on saying, hey, I actually really appreciate that you told me that so that, you know, I know, uh, kind of where you stand on it, and that's actually really appreciated. So she validated that. The second thing is is I ended up telling her why. And this is probably the bigger lesson in this conversation. And the reason I said it's a hard no is I said, while this is a really good idea, there's a lot of really good ideas. As a matter of fact, this as a method would fit in what I call the marketing flywheel. It would be one of the areas that you could actually begin to get leads. You could actively be in a referral network, whether it's online or in person, like a BNI, and and begin to get leads from those other people.

I get that.

However, the thing that I've had to learn the hard way is that whatever I put all of my time, my energy, the resources— there's only so many resources. I'm going to mess this up a little bit, but I've heard that strategy is how you allocate finite resources to infinite options. This one was just an example of that. Could I do it? Maybe. Yes, I could certainly do it, and it would probably give me some level of business. But we're putting all of our resources— my time, my energy, my effort, the focus of the team, etc.— into one marketing channel. And that marketing channel is on paid ads, period. That's what we are doing to be able to grow that business. And so, uh, while it's just the many of the good ideas, you could come to me and say, do you have a referral strategy? Are you doing this? Are you doing this? Are you doing this? And the answer is No, we are not doing that. We're saying no to good ideas. This may be a really good idea. It just doesn't fit in what we're doing. And so therefore I shared with her, there was two kind of lessons in this today is where possible yourself, tell people it's a hard no. If it's a hard no. Secondly, encourage people, uh, for you or your salespeople to push people to a decision. We're just going to get you to decide. It doesn't really matter what the decision is. I just don't want to waste my time anymore. That is kind of part one. The part two of this is the reason why it's focus. It's strategy is what we say no to. And again, could that work out? Well, maybe, but I don't have the bandwidth. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. I just don't have the focus. And I'm certainly not going to put any additional money to it. Even if she said it was going to be an hour a month for whatever, I would say, that's wonderful. I'll revisit that at some point in the future when we have additional capacity and bandwidth. And so there you go. There's my lesson that just happened yesterday. I don't have all of these things figured out by no stretch of the imagination. I learned all— I'm learning these things along the way myself. But I thought I would share it with all of you. I shared it with Lauren, my EA, this morning. And I said, you know, I think I'm actually going to shoot a podcast for this today. So anyway, hope you have a great weekend. And till next time, lead well.