Techniques for Turning No into Yes

Is it no or is it yes? Shannon? I don't know. What's the answer?

We're going to make it yes.

It's always yes.

Yeah, that's what we're going to do. But no is very powerful. And I heard this story last week. I was listening to the Gary Vee podcast. I don't know if you listened to.

Gary Vee at all. Yeah, I know who Gary V Is.

Yeah, they're the co founder of Netflix. I think it's Mark Halpern is. He was trying to get a job right out of college as an advertising exec at this fancy ad agency, but they only hired NBAs and he didn't have an NBA.

Right.

So he. But he applied anyway and there was like a thousand applicants. He made it through the second round. They flew him to New York. He got down to the last four people, went through the interviews, did not get the job. Went back. Went back home. Right. Just devastated tail between his. Yep, exactly. But what he did is he decided to write letters because this was before email, this was a long time ago. He decided to write letters to each of the people, people that interviewed him, asking them what he could have done better, how could I have gotten the job. They called him back, brought him back into the office, and they gave him the job. And it turns out that no one was offered the job. The. The entire exercise, they said no to everyone. They wanted to wait to see who wouldn't take no for an answer, who would try to convert the no to a yes. And that's what today's show is all about.

Whoa.

That's a great story. Right?

That is a great story. That's interesting.

Yeah.

You know, related, but unrelated. I was having lunch with a friend last week and he was talking about some job interviews that he had gone on where it hadn't gone his way. And he was telling me, well, I did exactly what they want. He's a programmer. He's like, I'm like, I'm not sure that what they asked you is what they wanted to find out. Right. Because sometimes it's a litmus test like, like, like your example here, right. Where it's, we're going to ask you to do a thing. But really what we're looking for is not can you solve the problem, how do you solve the problem? And how tells me whether or not you're going to fit into our organization or not. I know you can solve the problem. We wouldn't be talking if you couldn't. The question is how. So, yeah, it like it's very. If you're trying to bring on a new client or anything like that. Yeah. I would say think about what they are actually looking for and what if you were in their shoes, you would want to see. And that's a really. And it might be a litmus test. Like with this guy. He didn't even know it was a litmus test. Right. Yeah. And oftentimes you're not supposed to know, but. But.

Right, that's right. They wanted to see who was going to follow up. And I. And so as I was listening to this, I thought, man, we've talked about the power of no a lot, but today we're going to talk about the power of yes and how to get there.

I like it. I like it. Yep.

All right, let's do it.

Let's do it. You know, selling is certainly part of every business, but the buying or, you know, in our business, the partnerships that we have with our publishers, which is our way of buying. Right. Those are our most important relationships. Because without things to sell, it doesn't matter how well you can sell.

Yeah, that's correct. That's correct. And I think it goes back to your comment that you make all the time, is that we're all in the customer service business, but it goes both ways. In my experience, one of the, you know, trade secrets that I've always had, and I don't know why most other people haven't done it, but I treat my suppliers like they're my customer, and I go out of my way to, you know, what my list. I try to add value to the relationship before I ask anything from them.

The power of yes. You know what I like to say yes to, Shannon is Text Expander, because.

Absolutely.

That they are our first sponsor for today. And holy cow. I have a much easier time saying yes when clients and customers ask me to do more because of textexpander, because it makes me both efficient and accurate. I can trust that what I'm sending out very, very quickly is good without me having to proofread every single email that I send. And the reason is I use snippets inside textexpander for all of those things where I'm either repeating a phrase or I'm putting, you know, some information about, you know, one of our shows that we sell or really anything. I know that it's good because when I put it into textexpander, I proofread it. Somebody else proofread it, because you can have everybody on your team see one textexpander Library. And that way I know when I'm gonna send out the reply to this kind of email. Boom, I can just do it. I can do it from my phone without even having to think about is the formatting right? Is this right? Because it just. Boom. It puts it right in there and it works. And you can do this too, right? Because they make Textexpander for macOS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. So basically, whatever you're using, you get to do this. And you get 20% off your first year just for being a listener here to the Small Business show. So visit textexpander.com podcast. That's where you're going to go get your 20% off. It's also where you're going to tell them you heard about it on Small business show. But textexpander.com podcast is where you want to go. Our thanks to Textexpander for sponsoring this episode. Is it time Stuff?

It's time. Okay, so let's talk about this. We all know how powerful saying no is. I mean, in fact, we've done shows where we discuss just that, Focusing your power, keeping your schedule going by saying no. But what if you're on the other side of that no? Right? How do you work around being shut down? And what techniques can you use to convince someone to change their mind? Embrace your idea, your service, and your product. So over the next half hour or so, we're going to talk about how Dave and I have overcome the no over and over again.

Right. Bullheaded persistence would be my step one. But, like, persistence is good, right? To your point, in with the. The example in the beginning of the episode here, like, that's persistence to me.

Exactly.

That's all it is. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So I have some notes that things that work for me, there's a. There's a ton of stuff online where you can, you know, look for this stuff. But I always try to, you know, when I sit down to create an outline, I always try to, you know, bring it back to a personal level of what. What's worked for me. And one of the biggest things that has worked for me is timing is being able to sit back and understand your customer, your employee, your partner, whoever, your supplier. What is it? You know, you got to be able to really work on sensing the timing and see whether it's right to. To ask. To, you know, to ask for what you want, the sale, you know, embracing a new idea, whatever it is. And I've been in situations where, you know, I could see that the Timing was bad, and I would see someone else, oh, can you give me, you know, I want this, or, you know, trying to sell that. And it's like, oh, man, don't. Don't ask right now. It's not going to work. You know, and so sometimes backing off can really save the deal or preserve your idea. If you're just getting the sense of your employees. If you're in a meeting and you want to roll something new out and you're just not feeling it, coming back in a day or, you know, at some later time can really help. And I think it's often overlooked that that simple act of thinking about the timing of presenting your idea or your pitch or whatever it is can really help you.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, timing and listening is what I'm hearing from you. Right. You got to read these scenarios and choose your moments and. But it's easy to convince yourself that it's better to wait. Right?

So that's a good point. Yeah, that's a good point.

You've got to pull the trigger. Because if you don't ask for what you want, you know, in. In sales, it's always, you got it. The last thing you do is ask for the sale. So I told you all about my product. This is great. Can I take your order? Right. I mean, it's. It. I know.

That's right.

Classic. We've all seen it at car dealers. But there's a reason they ask you, because what else is going to happen if you just say, here's our great product, and then stop talking? Well, that create. That's actually more awkward for everyone. Not you. I don't actually care about me in those scenarios. Right. The salesperson, it's. Think about the person on the other end. If you don't ask them for their business, that's kind of weird for them.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, they're expecting it. They're expecting it. Yeah. If you don't ask, you got to ask and. But you. You got to time it well.

Yeah. And so I'm going to jump ahead with a concept that I think is really important because I think it ties into this. If the. I think you can manipulate the timing by using pacing and leading. And if you're not familiar with pacing and leading, look it up. We'll put a link, of course, from changingminds.org up in the show, notes that you can go read some examples. But pacing and leading really is. In the beginning, you want to pace your customer, your employee, your supplier, whoever you're trying to convince of something. You're trying to persuade them to buy your product, to embrace your idea, use your service. You know, find something, anything that you can agree on with this person that you want that yes from and work from there. Paste their ideas, their concerns. You can paraphrase something they said. So you're pacing them, they start to feel comfortable. You're building up rapport with them. You're mirroring the phrases that they use, their actions that they're using. I mean, kind of, you know, you want to fit in. You want to make them very comfortable, and, you know, agreeing with things they said and then getting them to agree with you. You know, phrases like, well, you know, yes, I agree, and then a statement, or, yeah, we can all agree on this. Once you start pacing them and they're comfortable. And again, it's all about timing. You got to read how long that take. Then you can start to lead them in the direction that you want them.

To go because you've earned their trust. Is credibility. Yeah. Yeah. I always. I always think of it as being a chameleon.

You've got to.

You've got to adapt and be, like, similar to your. The people that you are surrounded with in that moment. Just.

That's right.

Again, just to make them comfortable. And this is certainly, like you said in your actions, in your phrasing and all of that, but also in how you present yourself, right? Like, if you show up in, you know, to the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company and you're wearing jeans and shorts and sandals, you know, you are not rough. You're not a chameleon. Now, you stand out. Now, that might work for you. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. Maybe I'm saying you should be very aware that you are doing that intentionally. Right? But most of us, if we're gonna go to the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company, you go there and you wear a suit. Now, you know darn well you're not going to wear a suit that's as nice as the guys that are in there, and you don't want to. You want them to know that they are ahead of you in this scenario. If you're trying to sell to them, right. Like, they want to feel like, oh, we can help this guy.

Yeah, that's good.

That's close, right? He's got a nice suit. It's not as nice as ours, but you know what? If we help this guy, he might be able to buy a suit that's as nice as ours, right? And so you got to. You got to get yourself in that realm so that they feel like they can help elevate you. And now you're in great shape because everybody likes to help somebody. And you can even compliment them on their nice suit. You can say, wow, that's a really nice suit. Someday I hope to get one like that. You know, something like that is really a nice thing to be able to do. But think about how you're going to look when you show up. Think about, you know, I. I know you used to be in the watch resale business, Shannon. I know lots of people in corporate America that one of the first big expenditures they make for their business is buying the right watch so that when they show up at a sales meeting, they are presenting the image that makes their customers comfortable. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. Just make sure, again, be intentional about it. Know what you're doing. And I know that, I know that that strategy has worked out really well for some people. For others, it doesn't work out at all. You have to make it work for you.

But, yeah, sure, yeah, it's all adjusting and finding a pace that works for you. And one of the things I have on my list as well was, you know, at the same time you would ask for the sale, sometimes it's okay not to get everything you want. Sometimes it's okay to get a piece of your customer's business to get that relationship going, to get your foot in the door, to prove yourself to them, to, you know, create that credibility that you're looking for. Getting, you know, in there could be more important than getting everything you want. And sometimes suggesting a test run, a trial can be a great way to placate the fear of change that, you know, we often encounter. Just because you're an awesome rock star change agent and you love all this stuff. You know, depending on your customer, they may not want that. So getting in the door could be more important than getting every single thing you want at one time.

I want to take us on a little tangent here with trials. Make sure you define a trial that you believe based on your experience with what your company offers, that you believe is going to work. Because the last thing you want to do is let the customer define what trial for your service or product means only to have them fail because they haven't experienced enough of your product. For example, with ads on this podcast, we will not take, I say we will not there. I'm sure there's been one scenario where we have. But generally speaking, we will not take a sponsor on that has, that will buy less than three spots. And the reason is we know that if you only hear one spot from that sponsor, you're not going to react enough. Enough of you aren't going to react in the ways that people are looking for in order for that to have been considered a success. And three spots is what we've found over the last, whatever, 15 years to be sort of the right sweet spot for a test. Honestly, it's more like five or six. So a lot of times we'll convince someone to buy three and then we'll tell them, hey, good news, we're giving you a fourth bonus one, because we want that extra traction, we want that extra time. Make sure trial is your terms, not just whatever your customer dreams up on the spot. And again, that's going to take pacing and then leading to get yourself there. You got to build trust with the pacing and then lead them to, well, if you want to do a trial, everybody perks up at that. Great. We do offer that and here's how a trial works and it's a three show campaign and you know, that sort of thing or whatever works for your business. But just be aware of those trials.

Yeah, that's good. I like that. And it kind of ties into one of the things I have here as well is that you've mentioned on the show a number of times this two week trick, you know, hey, we're going to try this for a couple of weeks and see how it works. Especially powerful when you're rolling out new ideas for your team, your partners, employees, but could be used for customers as well. I think it's a brilliant way to get buy in to try something by deflating this sense of worry about new things. You know, even if you have already decided that hey, this is going to be the way it is. Giving people, you know, time to absorb things, to test the concept, to offer some feedback, smooth out the implementation of what you want. Can really help them embrace it. Much better than if you just come in one day and say, hey, this is the new way it's gonna be.

Here's the new world order. Yeah, it seems a little bit like you're reading an edict when you show up, because it is. When you show up and say, hey, here's the new way we're gonna do things much better to say, hey, I had this idea, we've been talking about this. I want to, there's something I want to try for two weeks, you know, two weeks is that magic number Once you are, you can develop new habits and break old habits in two weeks. Most people, obviously not everybody, but most people, two weeks is the right amount of time to get comfortable with a new thing. But it's also not scary. If I say, well, for the next two weeks we're going to record this show, but we're going to do something really weird and add a lot of echo to it because we really think you folks want a lot of reverb on this show. You know, like this. Right. Can I. Oh, I have the wrong reverb unit set up. Anyway, we do add a little bit of reverb to the show, but I'm not going to add more because I'd have to do a different thing. But, but you know, you'd say, well, that's okay. But if we said we're doing it forever and you didn't like it, you would just stop listening. So there you go. We're not going to do that. By the way. We're sticking with the amount of reverb.

That's good. Yeah. And it's just a great way to ease yourself in. I, I mean, I've always been a fan of the soft sell in the sense of, hey, we know our product is great. Our service is awesome. We, we believe you'll benefit from it. Here's why. But you know, giving them the opportunity to try something out, whether with a trial or whether, you know, with a, you know, two week experiment type thing, you know, when you're trying to pitch an idea to your people, I think it's a really good idea.

Cool. Hey, I want to take a break here and talk about our next two sponsors before we move on to awesome. I've got. Well, I know we've got some other things here to sort of finish out the other half of this conversation.

We do, yeah.

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And you know, the interesting thing to me is we talk about these things from a sales perspective. You're always selling things, that kind of stuff. But it also, for me, I spent most of my life trying to find product, trying to find deals because I'm a reseller and I'm still doing that, you know, always looking for things. And it works exactly the same way for potential suppliers, connecting with them, following up, trying to explain how, why they should sell to you, how you can add value to their brand or solve a problem for them. It's the exact same thing. It's that persistence and just keep working on it over time, setting up those reminders and those because everybody gets busy. You know, I use the reminders app on, on my Mac and my phone all the time where I can just quickly set a reminder and it'll ping me. Hey, send a follow up here, send it, you know, that kind of stuff. Whatever works for you. It's really important. And I think a lot of it is all about building relationships. And I think to be very successful, you have to build a relationship before the ask.

Yes.

However small that may be, Even if it's just a little bit of rapport that you've built and credibility, you know, that you're talking to someone and you only have a limited time window, or if it's something over time where this customer or supplier, in my case, could be critically important to your business, you know, you want to just work on it over time. Like, I do a lot on LinkedIn, and one of the things that drives me nuts is people want to connect, and that's great. But don't pitch something to me the second you connect with me. Don't try to sell. Sell me literally 15 seconds or have some automated thing that tries to tell me about your business and why I should be using your services right out of the gate. You don't know anything about me.

No. Interact a little bit.

Yeah, right. Read my content, comment on my posts. I post every, you know, every small business show gets posted to LinkedIn. LinkedIn. The way you connect with me, go make a comment like that post and let me see your name a few times before you start talking to me about, hey, I can offer the service. I see that you talked about the, you know, XYZ on the small business show, or I see that you were in this article or you wrote this piece of content. Connect and build that relationship before you ask for anything.

Yeah, yeah, that. No, that. That's totally. And you're right. It's always about building relationships. I certainly couched my examples in the sales scenario, but we do the same thing. You know, selling is. Is certainly part of every business, but the buying or, you know, in our business, the partnerships that we have with our publishers, which is our way of buying. Right. That's.

Those are.

Those are our most important relationships. Because without things to sell, it doesn't matter how well you can sell.

Yeah, that's correct. That's correct. And I think it goes back to your comment that you make all the time, is that we're all in the customer service business, but it goes both ways. In my experience, one of the trade secrets that I've always had, and I don't know why most other people haven't done it, but I treat my suppliers like they're my customer, and I go out of my way to one thing on my list. I try to add value to the relationship before I ask anything from them.

Yes.

What value can I Bring to them. Is it some kind of insight? Is it a problem that I see that. That they have that I could solve? I just got featured in a San Francisco Chronicle article about the handbag experiment that we started here a couple years ago in the small business show where I wanted to see whether I could start and run a company just with my phone. And I know nothing about the handbags, but I did know, hey, how to ask. What do you do with your defective product? What do you do with your problems? What do you do with the returns, the things that don't sell? And that's how I got in the door. It wasn't the conversation of, hey, I want to buy your best product at the best price. And, you know, because they don't want to listen to you. They're everybody. Everybody wants that. But when I went in and said, look, I want to just buy your junk, let's say. And I'm holding up quotes here because I knew there was money in it, even if I just had to, you know, toss it and throw it away. And that was just the tuition I had to pay to get the relationship started. And then I could work my way up the food chain by showing them the value that I added. So don't think about what you want all the time. Think about either what your customer wants or your supplier wants, you know, maybe your employees, whatever. However you want to, you know, look at it, add value before asking anything in return.

Yeah, that's so smart. When we. When we branched out from just representing, you know, web publishers to representing podcasters, the first thing I did was I went to all my favorite podcasters and I bought some ads from them.

That's great.

For a new website that we had launched. At that point in time, I was like, yeah, I just want to do this. I mean, it was a. I wanted to learn how the business worked from that standpoint. But it also was very much, I want you to see me as someone that pays you. And now we can create a relationship where, hey, you know, we have this business that does this for web bubbles. So smart. Yeah. It seems like maybe there's an opportunity for us to work together. Oh, yeah, that sounds great. They would say, you know, oh, yeah.

I tell you, 90%, maybe even more of people that are struggling. Miss that. And it's that you're willing to go in, spend a little money, offer something of value, whatever it is, to open the door.

Right.

Otherwise, calling them, just trying to pitch them right out of the gate, you know, it's. It's Much more difficult.

And that, to me, is much better than walking in. You know, let's say. Let's say you spend, I don't know, whatever it is, you know, a few thousand dollars, maybe it's $10,000. I don't. You know, it depends on your business and how you grow it.

Sure.

That, to me, is way better than going in cold and saying, hey, you know, in our scenario, I want to represent your show. And they say, well, I don't know you from Moses. And then you say, okay, great. And now you've got to cut a bad deal in order to get them to pay attention to you. Whereas if you just came in with a little bit of money and spent a little bit of money with them, you know, maybe now there's the trust relationship because you.

Absolutely.

Yeah, of course.

Of course. You're the real deal. That's the other thing. I. I talk to people all the time. And, you know, with this, you know, bag business that I'm in, being able to send a wire transfer for a bunch of money to buy, when you say you're gonna buy, that's how you get their attention, Right? If you're just nibbling around the outside, I mean, if you're gonna make an impact, you have to show them, okay, I'm committed. If somebody calls you and they say, I mean, I have this phrase I've always used. I said, we. I take it all. I'll take everything you have. I'll find a way to do it. I always tell people, don't worry about the money. Worry about the deal. If the deal is good enough, you always find the money.

Right?

And we've done shows about financing and where to get cash and everything. But if you've got a smoking deal, call me. I will help you figure this out. So with my business partners over the years, I've always said that we'll take it all. And that's how you get their attention again, is you're not cherry picking. Oh, I don't want to take this because it might have a little problem or I don't want this older generation, this. And, you know, when I was buying tens of thousands of iPads and stuff from companies like Best Buy and everything else, you can't complain when you get stuff that's a little beat up or doesn't quite match the, you know, the condition that they told you, you can have a discussion about it and you can use it to help build your credibility to get the deal next time, too, because you can say, hey, I just want to let you know I'm taking care of this. But the people that reported to you the condition of this product really wasn't quite what they said it was. But I'm fine with it. I'll deal with it. I'm just hoping you can give me a little consideration on the next deal we do, because you're. Again, then they're showing all this, this person's cool. They're going to handle it for us. I mean, unless it's really egregious. But you're also building a bridge to the next purchase, which is critically important.

Critically important. That's really smart. Yep. Yeah, that's the way to do it.

Couple more things on my list. One of the things I really like when I get getting told no a lot and, oh, that just won't work for us is I. I like to ask to be the backup. If they already have someone providing a similar service or they're buying their product from somebody else. Introduce, introduce the idea of being a backup supplier. Because it. Everybody's worried if things go wrong, what do I do? So that's what I say, hey, just keep me, you know, here, let me send you our flyer or, or whatever it is. Keep it on your desk. If you have a problem or you think there's something or they can't handle capacity that you need, give me a call. Just keep the relationship open and keep the dialogue going. You want to keep your customer close and to continue to show them how great you are. You know, that persistence that you're reaching out. Maybe it's holidays, maybe you're doing something nice, I don't know. But being second can be very profitable. You can get your foot in the door. It can lead to much bigger and better things. And I've had some great examples of us in the past being number two and eventually working our way into the number one supplier.

Well, because you have the opportunity to know what your customer wanted but couldn't get from that number one. Right. You can have that conversation if they say to you, yeah, we're not really interested right now. Okay, yeah, fine. You know what? Just keep me in mind and then walk away. Then, you know, a month later, whatever your. The right timing is, reach back out. Hey, Just wanted to see how you were doing. Yep. Okay. Maybe by then you've interacted a little bit on LinkedIn or wherever it is you're finding, you know, these people so that you can. You're building the relationship and then at some point you can say things still going okay with, you know, with company A, any. Anything that's not working out, maybe, you know, I can help you navigate those waters. We've been in this business for a long time, and if you build enough trust, you can get them to say, yeah, you know, there's. They're fine, but. And that when they say that, you are in because all you have to do is solve the but. Right?

Yeah. They're telling you what they want, telling.

You right and all. And now if they're saying, oh, they're fine, but, you know, they don't pay us a million dollars a week no matter what happens. Well, if it's a bad. If it's a bad ask, you could say, yeah, well, we couldn't do that either. You know, like, that's just not how the business works. But again, you're not saying that as the sal salesperson. You're saying that as, you know, the helpful person. But if they say, yeah, you know, they're always late when they pay us. Yeah, you know, we see that a lot. And actually, you know, we worked really hard at the beginning to make sure. We built an infrastructure that made sure that people got paid on time. And, you know, if. Don't want to get in the way, it sounds like things are working all right there. But if you want to make sure you're paid on time, let me know. Maybe there's something we can do together.

Yeah. And I would caution you never to badmouth the number one supplier who's probably your competitor. That's not the way to go about it. The way to go about it is even talk good about them. Oh, hey, I know these guys. They're great. But, you know, we do things a little differently. We've. We've learned over time that we can solve. Keep the focus on yourself.

Yes.

This is how we solve the problem. We increase our payables or whatever, you know, in your example, and talk yourself up, don't talk the other competitor down, because it just makes you. It makes you look bad. And it's. It's. It's not authentic, I don't think.

No. And in. In those scenarios, you have the opportunity to not compete based on price. In fact, most of the conversations that I have in those environments are, well, you know, we will cost you a little more than, you know, company A. And if you want to stick with company A because it cost, I totally get it. Like, we're. There's the way we run our business here. We cannot do it with those kinds of margins. We do things a little differently here, and that Sometimes gets people's attention. Like when you're willing to say, I'm going to cost you more. Wait, why? Well, you know, we, we offer a little bit more hand holding. We, you know, we're a little bit more. Whatever it is that, I mean, you actually have to have a differentiator. You can't just say we charge more. Like, you need to show why and be able to stand on that and know that some people are going to walk away and it's like, yeah, that's fine, if that's okay. Yep, that's okay. Yeah, so that's a huge, powerful thing to be able to say is, yeah, well, we'll cost more. But you know, and you know, using that example, they don't pay us on time. Well, yeah, you know, we found we made that a huge priority here. Now it does mean that we have some extra staff. And so in order to make that happen, we, you know, our fees are a little bit higher, but we do have this infrastructure that it sounds like maybe might work better for your business. I don't know. That's your choice, you know. But if you want to learn more, just ask.

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like it. So the last thing on my list, which it's a little unique, but it has worked really well for me at certain times to get, to get access and to get, you know, people to switch that no to yes. It's introducing scarcity and exclusivity. Now you can't do it all the time because. But it's kind of this playing hard to get, it can really work to your advantage. You know, phrases like, hey, we only take a limited number of customers or we only have enough product for, you know, X1. I used to really love when, when we had the, the, you know, fire hose of awesome product when we knew it was endless, at least for a limited time. And everybody wanted, I mean, you know, because everything always changes. But we had some great pipelines for product and, and everybody was beaten on our door to buy it. I would always say, hey, oh, all of these products are on allocation, meaning our existing customers have given us orders for everything we have. We have no product left. But let me see if I can get you some. Let me work on our team and see if we can get you a limited amount. Now, you know, sometimes you have to. That may be directionally true, but you know, you're trying to create this idea that, hey, not only is this product hard to get, but, you know, we are just only selling it to a certain number of our customers and man, it can, there's something about it and it can make people really, really want to buy from you. And it's worked really well for us. You kind of, you know, it's only when unique situations come up.

Yeah, you got to be careful with that. Yeah, I, if there's something fundamentally true about your business that creates some level of scarcity or.

Yeah, that's right.

Then feel free to lead with that. But make sure you know that you are telling, make sure it's true. I suppose that's the thing is it has to be.

And like in the case with me, like using an iPad example in the Apple market, it's always how do I get more product? Where do I find this product? And so it was just the fact that guys, we can only get through and refurbish a certain amount product each week and all that product is spoken for. Let me see what I can do for you. And I just noticed that it just made people hungrier and hungrier to want to buy from us. And I could often shift them into other stuff that they would buy. You know, hey, you can have a hundred of these. But I, in order for me to, to justify it, I, you have to take 50 of these and so you kind of have to, you get to create this bundle of product and they would buy it and it worked out really great and it solves some big, you know, problems for us.

I like that. That's really smart. Yeah.

So for me, you know, the key takeaways from today's show is, you know, converting no's to yeses. Work on your timing, learn about pacing and leading and how powerful it can really be for you. Not just in this but your entire life. You want, you know, introducing things as short term experiments is a great way to do it. But probably the number one thing I, I would say is build relationships and add value. Before you ask, if you can get that figured out, man, you will be unstoppable and I encourage you to focus on that.

Yeah. And you know, I've certainly seen people do that with what's the right way to say it? Where, where they're almost saying, implying something negative, negative about the customer. Like you would be lucky to do business with us. That's not my style.

No, no, no, me neither.

I've seen that work. Don't get me wrong, that's, you know, we, we, we talk.

That's arrogance. It's a little too arrogance.

Yeah. I much prefer to take the, the less dominant role of we would love to work with you. Just the honest role, I guess, is the right way to say it. We'd love to work with you. If we can make a deal work that works for both of us, like, let's do it. And if we can, let's not, you know, like it's, but never will I say, you know, I just don't, I don't like to send that, that arrogant message of, you would be lucky to do business.

Oh, yeah, no, no, you can't do that. That doesn't work well.

I see some people make that work. It does not work for me. It is not my style.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been up against that too, with some larger companies and it just drives me nuts.

And it's like, hey, you know, seen it with smaller people. I've had sales people that, that took that well, salespeople that interviewed with us that took that approach and it's like, yeah, it's interesting. Not, that's, not that, that might work somewhere else. That sounds great. Do it, but take it somewhere else, please. Not here.

That's great.

Yeah.

But it's a great show. A great show. Today I, I, I learned a lot. Of course. As always, we would love to hear from you. If you could go to businessshow.co review. Leave us a quick review. It really helps us. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great rest of your week.

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