Reprogram Your Fear of Rejection.

In this episode of How To Sell More, host Mark Drager chats with Andrea Waltz, respected speaker and co-author of the best-seller Go for No! Andrea shares her refreshing take on how embracing rejection can actually lead to bigger wins in both business and life. She breaks down practical ways to boost your confidence, open up more sales opportunities, and completely shift how you handle challenges.

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"Don't make assumptions. The worst thing that you can get is a no, which in my book is not that bad." — Andrea Waltz

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Listen to The Episode!

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

Transform Your Sales Mindset: Learn how changing your perspective on rejection can boost your sales performance.

Practical Strategies: Gain actionable tips on implementing the Go for No approach in your daily life.

Inspiring Personal Growth: Discover how embracing "no" can lead to personal and professional development.

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Follow Andrea Waltz on Social

• Website: www.goforno.com
• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawaltz/
• X: https://twitter.com/goforno
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goforno/

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More About Today's Guest, Andrea Waltz

Co-Author of Go for No! | Speaker and Virtual Trainer. Reprogramming how people think and feel about rejection to sell, serve, and succeed in business and life.

As a well known speaker and co-author of the best-selling book "Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There," Andrea Waltz brings over two decades of experience in helping businesses and individuals embrace rejection as a tool for success in both business and life.

With a passion for changing the relationship people have with the word "no," Andrea teaches B2B and B2C companies about the mindset and strategies needed to handle rejection effectively, turning "no" into an opportunity for growth.

Prior to co-authoring "Go for No!", Andrea worked in the corporate world at LensCrafters, where she quickly rose to become the youngest General Manager in company history. It was here that she discovered the power of reframing rejection through experiences that became the foundation for the Go for No philosophy.

Earlier in her career, Andrea began exploring the concept of overcoming fear and rejection, which led her to develop transformative strategies that have helped countless professionals achieve greater success.

Mission: Andrea aims to help business leaders and sales professionals overcome the fear of rejection, embrace "no" as a part of the process, and unlock greater success through resilience and authenticity.

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Key Topics Discussed

• The Fear of Rejection in Sales: Understanding why we naturally avoid hearing "no" and how it limits our potential.

• The Go for No Philosophy: How embracing "no" can lead to more "yeses" and greater success.

• Building Confidence Through Rejection: Practical steps to become more resilient and self-assured by embracing rejection.

• Implementing Go for No in Sales Processes: Strategies for integrating the Go for No approach at different stages of the sales cycle.

• Overcoming Personal Assumptions: Recognizing and eliminating assumptions that hinder sales opportunities.

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Key Takeaways

• Embrace the Word "No" - Shifting your mindset to see "no" as a stepping stone rather than a setback.

• Increase Your Sales Opportunities - By being willing to hear "no," you open up more possibilities for "yes."

• Build Personal Confidence - Overcoming the fear of rejection enhances self-esteem and resilience.

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A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager: So Andrea, no matter where one is in business, whether you're just starting, you're five years in, you're 20 years in, you're 30 years in, you're always gonna walk into a presentation or pitch, or there's always going to be an opportunity that makes you uncomfortable. Because either, the other people on the other side of the table, they're keeping their cards really close to the chest, or this is a really complex or big deal. And so if you are listening to this today, I think you're gonna get a lot out of this conversation because I want to talk about how we overcome that little bit of trepidation, that little bit of fear that happens to all people in a selling role. No matter whether you're a professional salesperson or the owner of the company, you're going to find yourself across from someone, and you are going to be terrified. How do we deal with that?

Andrea Waltz: I love it, Mark. This is the topic that I am so passionate about. I've spoken about this whole idea of failure and rejection for the last 20 years. And you are so right, we all experience this. And the question is not are you going to experience it? The question is, what are you going to do when you are faced with the potential of hearing a no? And how when you get that no, how do you bounce back? How are you resilient? And so I'm super excited about our conversation.

Mark Drager: So break down for me, how did you get into this? I mean, you've dedicated your life to it. So why this and why did they go for no method?

Andrea Waltz: So as it turns out, there is no college major called rejection. Although there should be and I would award the diplomas. Actually, what's funny is I met my husband, Richard, and we run our business together, we have for over two decades. I met him at LensCrafters. We were both working at LensCrafters, I was running a $3 million location, and I was the youngest General Manager in the company's history. He was one of the training directors there. And he told me a story. And the story was pretty simple. It was about how he was selling suits for a living when he was a young guy. So this goes back a long time. And he was actually failing, he thought they were going to fire him. The district manager was coming in to see how everybody was doing. My husband Richard thought that this would be a great opportunity for him to impress this guy, Harold, the district manager, and maybe they would give him some time to improve his sales. So the day that Harold shows up, this customer walks in and basically announces that he wants to buy an entire wardrobe of clothing. And my husband Richard got to help this man. He sold this guy a suit, a sport coat, slacks, shirts, belt, pocket square—this, it came to $1,100. It was this $1,100 sale. And so fast forward to today, that would be probably the equivalent of spending at least $5,000, right? So he has this great sale and he's thinking that Harold is going to congratulate him for the sale. And instead of congratulating him, this district manager asked him this life-changing question. He said, Richard, out of curiosity, what did that customer say no to? And it was at that moment that Richard had to admit that the customer hadn't said no to anything. He reviewed the sale in his mind. Everything he laid in front of that guy, the customer purchased. And then Harold asked him the really important question. He said, he didn't say no to anything, then how did you know he was done? And that was the really important question. The only reason that Richard knew that the customer was done was that the customer had hit his mental spending limit. Whenever anybody got over $1,000, it was like, you're done. I'm gonna send you to the register, ring you up, send you on your way, right? You're done shopping. And Harold told Richard, he said, you know, I watched you sell and you're not half bad, but your fear of the word no is going to kill you. If you could just learn to get over that, I think you could be one of the great ones. And he went home that night, he says, two letters from greatness, the letters were no. And he came back the next day and made it his mission to be willing to hear no more often.

So Mark, when he's telling me this story, I actually have the opposite feeling. I'm not a failing salesperson. I was like a sales superstar. So he's telling me this, but then I had to get honest and I realized, I admitted to myself, I thought, I don't like hearing no either. Like, I will do things and prejudge people and not offer stuff that I think I'll just get a no to. Why offer it? I don't want to hear it. No, that'll just devastate me and throw me off my game so I'll just right I'll just prejudge. After he told me this, I applied for no, I fell in love with this whole idea of hearing no, and I fell in love with the idea of overcoming rejection. And eventually, we left our corporate jobs. We started our own business, in part just focusing on this topic. And so I've made it my mission to help people reprogram the way they think about failure and rejection to sell, serve, and succeed.

Mark Drager: That is such a great story. Because the truth is, I mean, no makes most people uncomfortable, right? If you look at one's personality, there is this metric about disagreeableness. And those who are much more comfortable being disagreeable, they, this just doesn't bother them if they kind of piss people off. And this could be cultural. This could be based on your age, or where you grew up. But this idea of getting comfortable with the rejection, getting comfortable with the no, I was thinking, as you were speaking about a post I saw this morning that said, if you're not getting hate on your social media posts, you're not making enough of a difference. And I thought, I don't want to play that social media game. Like I, I don't want to go out there and piss off a bunch of people, because that somehow is an indicator that I'm now doing social media correctly. And I'm not willing to play that game. But it's the same fear of rejection when I'm speaking to someone. It's the same fear of feeling like I'm pushing someone too far, where the budget's getting too large, or the deal's getting too complex. And so this costs all of us a lot of money because we're not only leaving money on the table, but we're not even potentially pursuing the size of the client, the size of the deal. We're not making the investments. This can hurt all areas of our sales and marketing, and growth within our companies.

Andrea Waltz: Yeah, well, a couple of things. I love what you said about that. I see those posts all the time. And it's funny, because it really is your intention, right? If your intention is just to get on social media and be a jerk so that you get attention. If you're doing it, I think you're doing it wrong, as well. But really, the whole idea behind going for no is to be willing to have the courage to ask and to be the one to take on the responsibility of shouldering that rejection. So what I mean by that is, instead of relying on your customer or your prospect to come up with things, kind of that whole order taker mentality, or the whole thing of, hey, if they want it, they'll let me know, type of thing to where then that leads to dissatisfaction because customers don't know what they don't know. And so you get home and you realize you didn't get what you should have gotten, or the person wasn't a good consultant, and they didn't look at all of the offers, and they didn't challenge you and say, hey, you might need to think of this, hey, you might need to think of that, you might need to you want an add-on to your house. Here's why you should make the room even bigger. Have you considered these things? Instead of just having that order-taker mentality? It's having the courage to get those noes. And as salespeople, good salespeople, it's our responsibility to shoulder that burden.

Mark Drager: So let's assume that you're going for no and you get comfortable with this. What benefits? I mean, obviously, more sales, great, but what are the soft benefits that I can't even imagine having? By breaking through this fear of rejection, getting comfortable with noes? What does this give people who have been through this and really understand how to work it?

Andrea Waltz: So I'm glad you asked that, because one of the biggest benefits is just personal self-confidence. One of the fun things that we do in this, is go for a 21-day challenge, where people go for no for 21 days, they see how many noes they can get. And part of the challenge is what we call personal noes. Now that doesn't mean having people tell you, "No, I hate your shirt," or something like that, like personal against you. But it's just making some, of what I guess you'd consider, scary asks in your day-to-day life. So you go to the nice restaurant, you want to see the cute table up front with the little flower on it in the window, and then they walk you to the very back and set you by the water station. And you're like, "Oh, I really want that cute table up front." Well, now this is your opportunity to ask for that or ask for an upgrade when you check into a hotel or whatever those day-to-day things are.

And so, Mark, what I have found is yes, the sales are great, but probably the biggest transformations that I have seen are anecdotal in nature because I have people email me like, "I'm so much more confident. I just feel so much more at ease. I'm not stressed out. I don't feel the pressure. I feel like I can reach out to people and I'm just not so worried about what they're going to do or what they're going to say." And so those benefits are so huge because it does wash over into people's lives. One of the people in my challenge had to kind of—I don't know the background of it—but had a difficult relationship with her grandfather. And she decided that she was going to pick up the phone and call him. She hadn't talked to him in years. She was gonna go for no with a family member. And she did, and they rekindled a relationship. So, it was so wild that had never been done in any challenge that I had done before. So I see these really cool things happen, these really neat benefits that I didn't even expect.

Mark Drager: And so let's say I'm having an introduction call with a prospect, meeting them for the first time. I imagine this is very different than if we're in the pitching phase or the scoping phase or even trying to close the deal. So what does this look like at various phases of the sales process?

Andrea Waltz: I love that you asked that. So it's kind of different for everybody. The whole idea behind Go for No is that it can be layered into any process that you have. So whatever number of steps you have in your sales process, or whatever it is you sell. I think having to go for no top of mind and being aware that you want to hear no and that it's okay. So it starts at the beginning, though. If you are doing outbound, I think it starts with some simple disqualification. And I remember listening to one of your podcasts, I want to say it might have been the one on LinkedIn, you guys were talking about this idea of disqualifying and how powerful that is, to be willing to ask the tough questions up front, and get that no early so that it saves everybody time, it saves you time, it saves this prospect time thinking that you have a solution that maybe in truth, you don't. Maybe you're just not a good fit. So get the no early in the process.

Then later on in the process, it could look like creating an awareness of what are the go-for-no-no moments that you have in your process. Like, where are the other questions that come up in your discovery? For example, what are the things that you need to ask? Sometimes these are, again, more tough questions where you'd rather not find out, you'd rather deal with it after you get the final yes and sign the contract. But be willing to ask those questions within that discovery. And then the most obvious one, of course, is just at the very end, depending on your process, asking for the sale like, "Hey, just sounds like we're a go, sounds like we should move forward." I don't care how your language or messaging is on that, we don't teach scripting. But it is about, again, having that courage to make sure that you're asking. And what I find is that a lot of people do a lot of presenting, and no asking.

Mark Drager: I mean, I can guess why this is, but you've dedicated the last 20 years of your life to this. Why is it that we have a fear of rejection? We're worried about looking like a fool or stupid or whatever it is. But why do we do it to ourselves when we know that it's hurting us?

Andrea Waltz: Yeah, well, first of all, we are biologically wired to not be rejected. And we're looking for the easiest, I think the easiest way to do that is to not make waves, to not get noes. And I think humans are optimists, we want to think everything's gonna work out. So just keep going along. And maybe we can literally bend, we can bend our will around this situation that's probably not going to work out and hope that we get the result that we want. So we'd rather just not make waves and just not get rejected. No matter how much the logical brain is like, "Hey, you're better off with noes," the emotional brain is in danger. And that's part of what we talk about in our book "Go for No," which is a short fable. And one of the things that we start off with in that book is a model of failure and success, where we teach people a new model. And the old model is where you're in the middle, failure is on one side, success is on the other. And we see those two things as choices like we should either fail and get rejected, or we should go for yes and have success. But really, we're on one side, failure, and rejection, hearing the word no is in the middle of the process, and the yeses and the success that we're seeking are on the other side. So it's all about moving through that instead of trying to avoid it, instead of trying to go around. And again, I think the why is I think it's biology. I think something else you mentioned at the beginning of this podcast was, I think it's cultural. And certainly, I do see that women have a tougher time. I think a lot of women that I have come into contact with over the years and have talked to, it's like they see when they hear go for no, they think what that means is okay, I'm going to badger you and twist your arm until you say yes. It's actually the opposite. It's no is a perfectly acceptable answer. The whole thing is we want to have the courage to ask. So it's very different than I think a lot of people think it is.

Mark Drager: So can we play with a few things? Because I want to, I understand the concept and I want to kind of stretch it out to just understand it better.

Andrea Waltz: Yes.

Mark Drager: So first of all, I mean, there's this whole idea in sales that we need to start getting people to say yes, right? I don't know if it's NLP or I don't know where it comes from, this idea of you get to the first yes, and it makes the second yes easier. And the third yes easier. So the idea of pushing till you hit a no, and then taking one step back feels like it will derail the momentum that we're building. What do we do with that?

Andrea Waltz: Yeah. So again, so much of this is counterintuitive, and I love that you're exploring these things. There's tremendous psychological safety in making sure that people feel like they can say no. In traditional sales for the last, I don't know, 50, 100 years, it's been all about persuasion. How do I convince you? And so what you have is a bunch of people in our society today who just see those clichés and they don't want anything to do with sales. Everybody thinks, "Oh, salesperson, they can't be trusted. They're pushy. They're aggressive," right? And they're going to mind trick you into saying yes. And Chris Voss talks about this in his book "Never Split the Difference." This yes-oriented type of salesperson, they're going to trick you into saying yes, where really if we provide that psychological safety of you can say no, it's actually a good thing. Make people feel like they have the agency, which they already know they do. We're not giving people permission to say no, they know they can, but when they feel like we have approved it, and that we know that, they're far more open to saying, "Okay, I'll take a look at what you have." In his book "Exactly What to Say," Philip Jones says there's a rejection-free script. He goes with a little line, and I love this. And I agree with this, although I kind of push back a little on the idea that it's completely rejection-free. But it's very true. He says one of the things that you can say to not be quote-unquote, rejected is, "Hey, this might not be for you." So right off the bat, with that phrase, you're kind of pulling it off the table as an option. If I say, "Hey, Mark, this might not be for you, but I've got a timeshare in Florida, you know, have you ever considered coming out?" Well, you might say, "Well, hang on."

Mark Drager: No. Great opportunity for a timeshare.

Andrea Waltz: A lot of gators out here. There's a lot of gators. But so you might say, "Well, hang on, Andrea, I'll decide. So don't say no to me." So suddenly, you become open-minded when you understand that I'm not going to pressure you. But if instead I say, "Mark, it's important for you to get away with your family every now and then just to reconnect." I mean, what a ridiculous question, right? And you see it a mile away. You go like, "Oh, no, she's cornering me. What am I supposed to say? No, I hate my family. I don't want to go anywhere with them." Right. And that's the difference.

And that's a really tough rejection because it's very personal. However, one of the things that we talk about when we think about taking no personally is that no is never about you, even when it's about you. It's about the beliefs and the background and everything about the person that you're dealing with. And so in those moments, it's tough. But you really have to remind yourself of that and really detach from those kinds of answers. I remember we did a "Go for No" movie several years ago, where we drove around the country, we interviewed tons of people. One of the people we interviewed was these amazing artists. They're based in Sacramento, California. Very modern art and furniture that looks like it was designed almost like Alice in Wonderland. Like crazy dressers that were red and had unusual shapes and purple mirrors. I mean, it was the coolest stuff. Richard and I loved it. We would have furnished our entire house with this stuff. It was so good if it wasn't so... it was really expensive, because it was amazing one-of-a-kind pieces, right? But you'd watch people walk by and comment on it. And the comments were painful. I felt bad for this couple even having to hear some of the comments that were said. And they told us, because we asked them, like, how do you guys deal with this? And they said, we just have to numb ourselves to it. We just have to remind ourselves that it's not personal, that whether somebody loves it or whether somebody hates it, neither one of those is necessarily correct. It just has to do with the person it's coming from.

Mark Drager: So one more question I have around this idea of embracing no, I used to have a sales coach who said, "Some will, some won't. So what?" Right? Just move on. It's not the biggest deal in the world. Some people might use this to play such a numbers game that they don't mind if they're pushing, push, push, push, push. No, no, no, no, no. I'm just going to keep going. And I'm just going to tear through people. There's a huge world out there. I don't mind if I upset people. I don't mind if I push them too far. Are there those others out there, who are perfectly happy to just take what you say, run with it, and go out there and rob, cheat, and steal?

Andrea Waltz: Yeah, so I love that you bring this up because I do remember this discussion on another one of your podcasts, as a matter of fact. And, you know, sales used to be the numbers game thing was for real, right? And it was like, just do more numbers, just do more activity. And one of the things that Richard and I talk about in our programs is the difference between quality and quantity. And what we find, though, is that people who really have a problem with rejection simultaneously have a quantity problem. They're not talking to enough people. And so from that standpoint, the numbers have to be there. And what tends to happen when this happens is, first of all, they've got procrastination and call reluctance and all these things, and then they'll try one thing. They'll try a particular script, let's say, or a particular message, and they'll send 10 messages out and look at it like, "Okay, that didn't work." Wait a minute. You can't—that's no, there's no data for that. You can't send out 10 messages and decide that message didn't work. You've got to send that out to 100 people, 1000 people, ideally, to then look and say, "Okay, of those 1000, how many said yes to a meeting? How many said yes to having some information sent?" Et cetera, et cetera, and on down the funnel. So from that standpoint, I think the numbers piece plays into it because we find that the quantity is missing in people who have a fear of rejection. They're not filling the pipeline, bottom line.

Now, can you take it too far? Absolutely. You see it on LinkedIn all day long, you know, people are doing, you know, 5000 DMs with these automation things. I think it's terrible. They're not customized, and that's why they're not winning. I mean, it's awful. And so there, you have to have that balance. And one of the things that—we have this cool diagram in a book that we wrote last year called "When They Say No," and it's how to deal with the noes once you get them, right? This graphic takes two considerations in mind. I'll just—I won't go too deep into it, but I'll just say this. You look at the results that you want, and you also look at relationships. So when you cross-reference those two things, what you want to be is you want to be in the quadrant that has a high concern for both results and relationships. And so when you are thinking of both of those things, that will allow you to both go for no in a quantity way but also do it in the most quality way possible.

Mark Drager: I've been speaking with Andrea Waltz, who is the co-author of the book "Go for No" and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you go to Amazon, you can certainly pick up the book and you can listen to it on Audible as well. Now, I do have one more question for you.I would love to know what your number one tip or strategy is for us to sell more.

Andrea Waltz: Yeah, so my number one tip is don't make assumptions. Making assumptions is like kryptonite for "Go for No," because assumptions kill sales. You assume what somebody is going to decide, do, or spend. Always just ask. The worst thing that you can get is a no, which in my book is not that bad. But when you make assumptions, then you really lose out on opportunity. So that's my tip.

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Resources & Go Deeper

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"Turning Rejection Into Resilience for Entrepreneurs" – Sanaross

This article focuses on how rejection, though personal, can be used as a tool for growth in entrepreneurship. It highlights practical strategies, including mindfulness and cognitive reframing, to manage the emotional impact of rejection and foster resilience.

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"How to Use Rejection as a Tool for Success" – Entrepreneur

This piece encourages entrepreneurs to view rejection positively and learn from it. It provides actionable tips on handling rejection to grow stronger and more resilient in business.

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"Overcome the Fear of Rejection by Leveraging Courage" – Global Leadership

This article explores how cultivating courage helps entrepreneurs manage rejection, focusing on mindset shifts and leveraging each 'no' as an opportunity for learning and growth.

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