Getting to No

Nearly 30 years ago, immediately after returning from volunteering with the Peace Corps in C?te d’Ivoire,? I taught 10th graders for a couple of years in the Atlanta Public Schools.? My course offerings were Global Issues and Intercultural Communication, each one a semester-long course for which I developed the curriculum from scratch.?

One of our texts for the Intercultural Communication course was Fisher & Ury’s negotiation classic, “Getting to Yes”.? I think that more than a few parents grew weary of how eager the students were to deploy the strategies they learned in class in their at-home negotiations about curfew and other priorities of youth, but I learned along with the students some of the many ways it is possible to get to Yes when you take time to understand the fundamental concerns and motivations of the person across the table. The entire Getting to Yes approach revolves around four key concepts:

• People: Separate the people from the problem
• Interests: Focus on interests, not positions
• Options: Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do
• Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective criteria

When my business partner and I started a homebuilding business 7 years ago, we spent thousands of hours on phone call after phone call, trying to get potential clients to Yes on the question of buying a home in Guinea. The more conversations we had, the better we were able to understand the core concerns of the West African diaspora, and the better able we were to respond to those concerns. By 2017, we got to Yes often enough to cross the $1M revenue threshold.?

But, like many eager entrepreneurs starting out, we were so hungry for sales growth that we said Yes to some clients who, in retrospect, were not a fit for the product and service that we are delivering to the market. Their expectations diverge from what is possible.? As our business matures and we look at the $2M revenue threshold and beyond, some of those hasty Yes’s from the early days are rearing their heads and causing us headaches.?

As uncomfortable as the discussions that arise with difficult clients can be, we are thankful for the opportunities they have provided us to be able to spot potential problems early, and take steps to mitigate them. One of the most important mitigation steps we employ these days is knowing when to quickly get to NO on something a current or potential client is demanding.?

When we find that a good faith effort to focus on people, interests and options fails in the face of a client or prospect with unreasonable demands, we go to the objective criteria. This may be the information we publish about our homes, the language in the purchase contract, or sometimes the governing law under which our contracts are executed.? For example:

• Will we provide ongoing routine maintenance on a home more than 5 years after the buyer moved in?? NO. Any resources we dedicate to solving problems that homeowners should be addressing themselves is that much less we can dedicate to producing new, high quality homes that deliver tremendous value for more clients going forward. This is why our contracts clearly place responsibility for routine maintenance obligations on the home buyer.
• Will we bend over backwards to provide a pleasant homebuying experience, and the most favorable possible terms, for a client who is verbally aggressive with and abusive to our client service representatives or field staff? NO. A prospect who reveals themselves to be unreasonable and unpleasant during contract discussions is giving us a good indication of what it will be like to be in a relationship with them over the course of a 10-year home financing. Time and energy poured into responding to unreasonable requests and temper tantrums is time and energy our team doesn’t have to service new clients who are ready to benefit from the value that we can offer them. This is why we use the same published price list, features set and options pricing for all of our clients - and our contracts are clear on the fact that we have the right to cancel a contract and return a client’s deposit when necessary.
• Will we jam enough modifications into our new $10,000 Richmond model to make it look and feel like our $40,000 Columbus model? NO. There is a reason that we offer multiple floor plans at different price points - it helps our construction teams grow increasingly efficient and effective at delivering high-value products for a buyer base that desperately wants those products.? This is why we provide clear documentation of what you get – and what you don’t get – with each model and version of the several floor plans that we offer.

Despite our best efforts, sometimes getting to NO leaves a prospect or client feeling angry. That’s how irrationality works. But if an angry client makes good on a threat to say something nasty about us on social media, or among their in-person friend network communications, even that outcome provides us with an opportunity to better focus our sales and service efforts going forward.?

For every negative comment from an angry, irrational prospect we can point to dozens, even hundreds of public testimonials praising our work and our dedication to our clients.? This dynamic gives new prospects the opportunity to see who has experienced doing business with us, who is pleased with that interaction, and who is not.

Because our target market is full of people who know each other at least peripherally, the potential client can review the good, the bad and the ugly and reflect on what they know about the satisfied and dissatisfied clients. Most of the time, they will realize that the satisfied client group is more aligned with how they see themselves. For those sympathetic to the position of the angry irrational client, it becomes an easy decision to say "no" to doing business with us - and that is a decision that saves us time, heartache and money.