Have you ever felt trapped in a situation where saying “no” wasn’t an option? Today, April Shprintz explores the counterintuitive idea that making it easy for someone to say “no” can actually lead to more meaningful “yeses” in your life, from sales and relationships to parenting and business. Buckle up, and get ready to rethink the power of “no.”
—
Listen to the podcast here
Make It Easy To Say “No” And More People Will Say “Yes”!
Hi there. I am so glad you’re here. I am excited to talk about this topic because it is so counterintuitive, yet it makes so much sense when you start to implement it in your life. When you are interested in making it easy for someone to say, “Yes.” The way to do that is to make it easy for them to say, “No.” For me, most of my experience with this has been in the sales world and in my company with selling services, which is acknowledging when you sit down with someone and you’re trying to figure out if something is a good fit for them, that it just might not be.
Make It Easy For People To Say NO
If it isn’t, no worries, you’ll part as friends. Making it easy for someone not just to say yes to working with me, but to say no if it doesn’t work with them. What I have found is this applies in so many different areas of life. Let’s think about this in a different way. Let’s think about if we were sitting down with someone in a really small room and we didn’t know how or when we could get out.
We sat down, they shut the door, and you’re just sitting there and you don’t know when or how you can leave. There’s one way that you’ll feel sitting there but what if you sit down in that room with a person, and maybe that front door shuts, but there’s a back door that they open and you know that you can leave anytime you want. You feel differently about being there.
The second part of that, and that’s so powerful, is instead of being there because you have to be, you’re there because you choose to be. You’re more engaged, you’re paying more attention, you are choosing to be in that moment, whether you’re talking about sales or you’re talking about someone choosing to be in a relationship with you.
Not because we’ve always been together, but because they could leave at any time but it’s good enough. It’s so much where they want to be. They are choosing to be there. Does this make sense? You could use it with your kids and get them to spend time with you, especially teenagers. When you make it easy for them to say no, you allow someone to choose to say yes, which is incredibly powerful and there are so many different ways that this shows up in your life.
Think about when people have chosen to say yes to you, no matter where in your life it is, they show up differently, they’re engaged differently, and the experience is better. Where in your life can you choose to allow someone to be able to say no so that their yes means that much more? I’ll give you one more example. Like I said, I love this in sales. I love this in my personal life. One of the areas that also comes up is in my work with entrepreneurs.
Stop Squeezing The Chick
When they want something to happen badly in their business, whether they want to make a sale, they want to do something for a specific client, or they want to hire a specific person for a specific role, I will say to them, stop squeezing the chick. What I mean is gripping to the idea that it has to be this way. It has to be this person.
That again is making it okay for it not to be that. Making the, “No” okay. The analogy by the way, is if you’ve ever been to a fair or a farming thing and they have those cute little baby chicks and you’ve ever seen a kid that gets one and just thinks they’re so awesome, they often want to squeeze them. If you squeeze the chick too hard, its little head could pop off. You could hurt it.
That is the analogy that I give people, “Don’t squeeze the chick.” Hold your hands open, let that thing, that person, that desire be allowed to leave, and say no if it wants to because it will make it that much easier for whatever it is to come towards you. Again, this may seem so counterintuitive, but hopefully, with all of those different examples, you’ll see a way that this already happens in your life and think about that experience and how much easier it is than the experiences where you’re focused on, “It has to be yes.”
You're limiting all of the beautiful things that can end up happening when you’re focused on having or getting a “yes.” Share on XYou’re limiting all of the beautiful things that can end up happening and you’re also pressurizing a situation that may make it more likely that the other individual involved will say no. Not to you as much as to the pressure. Try this out and let me know how it works for you. I can’t wait to hear about it. Here’s to your success.