Make your greater commitment explicit

When you say “no” you’re actually saying “yes” to something else that’s implicitly more important to you. Consider making these implicit commitments explicit. When we told our kids “no” for more movie time, we were actually saying “yes” to bedtime and getting a good night’s sleep---for them and us.

In the business world, Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, modeled this one very well recently. I recommended Brian’s lead generation firm to one of my clients, and they are now actively considering his proposal. Since my client had never used an outsourced telesales firm before they wanted to be comfortable that this approach would work for them. So they asked Brian to have one of his agents call my client as a trial cold call experience. Brian said no. Why? He felt that it would be deceiving his agent to have them think that a mock call was a real one. By saying “no” to a prospective client’s request he was actually saying “yes” to his employees. Brian explained that his commitment to honesty with his employees was always more important than winning a new client. And that philosophy only scored more points for Brian.

Explain why saying “yes” is actually a bad idea

There are times when agreeing to a request would actually be a disservice to the requester. My friend Gil Roberts, sales manager at PodTech, a hot new podcasting firm blazing the trail in social media networking, gave me a great example of this last week. I had called Gil intending to hire his firm on behalf of one of my clients seeking innovating demand generation campaigns. As I spoke with Gil, he helped me understand that podcasts would not meet my client’s short term objectives. You might think it unusual for a sale person not to sell. Sure he might have said “yes” and accepted a quick purchase order which would help his quota goals. But Gil saw that doing so would only lead to disappointment later and a non-referenceable customer. Without ever saying “no” he patiently educated me on why “yes” was a bad idea.

Perhaps less rare than a sales rep saying “no” is an engineering manager whose default answer always seems to be “no” when asked to shoe horn yet another product feature request. The engineering manager might take Gil’s approach by patiently explaining to the executive team why accepting a new feature request from a hot new customer prospect might actually have far worse consequences such as impacting the greater revenue potential of other committed features.

Trust your body to tell you the truth

Sometimes it’s a lot easier to say “yes” than have to deal with the discomfort of a “no.” I find this particularly the case with Vice Presidents of Marketing who have many constituents to please—the CEO or VP/GM, VP of Sales, VP of Engineering, their own staff, etc. And most marketers are optimistic, people-pleasing types so saying “no” is almost a sign of weakness. When I ran marketing at HP Managed Services business (then HP Outsourcing), a $1B business, I found that it cost me political points when I didn’t “yes” enough to my peers and higher-ups even if it jeopardized my team’s standing commitments. What to do? As my executive coach, Dennis Mead-Shikaly would say “listen to your body….it never lies.” Notice how you may feel a tightness in your stomach, your throat, or your jaw when you say “yes” when you would really like to say “no.” These feelings can be helpful flags that ask you to slow down and think twice about the internal disconnect.

And maybe this is a lesson in courage, to act in the face of fear or to risk unpopularity for a greater cause. The late President Ford is a wonderful example of courage. He basically said “no” to the entire nation when it was calling for Nixon’s indictment. In Ford’s address on September 8, 1974, he states “I have come to a decision which I felt I should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens, as soon as I was certain in my own mind and in my own conscience that it is the right thing to do.” It was an act of forgiveness and grace that helped heal the nation. Since he lived to be 93 years old, I’m quite certain he was completely at peace with this decision—body, mind and spirit.

© 2007 Sridhar Ramanathan

I like the idea of sharing with the person making the request why saying "yes" would be a bad idea. One of the nuggets of advice a professor once gave me was to "provide an alternative" when saying "no". I recently ran into a situation where I had a request to review an industry publication and had a week within which to send in my comments. I could have agreed to do it, however rushed my effort would have been given that I had to work through a financial audit of my business unit, take care of two kids and complete my asssignment for a class I am taking this semester. Instead, I offered to get a colleague, equally recognized in the industry, to review the paper. My colleague appreciated the "advertisement" on his behalf and the paper review was accomplished.

Posted by: Priya Tabaddor | May 10, 2007 6:36 AM