SDRs to VPs - 3 Things You Should Get Good at Saying No To … Quick

What did you do yesterday at work? Monday, back on the grind, what was your schedule like? Were you overwhelmed and the week had just started? Were you stressed about pipeline? Were your palms sweating because you had a meeting for which you weren’t prepared? 

Did you shake your head yes to 1 or 3 of these things? Don’t sweat it. Say no to them in November. 

Say no to over committing. Say no to wasting time prospecting with no outcomes. Say no to not preparing. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re in your first year of sales or tenth. If you say yes to any of these three things on a regular basis, you are probably stressed out 99 percent of the time and you’re not going to be successful long term. You’ll burn out, develop imposter syndrome, and miss out on real opportunities.  

We’ve almost all made lists of things we want to start doing. Let’s make a list of things we should STOP doing.

Say No To Over Committing Yourself

The quickest way to stop overcommitting is to achieve the power of “no.” I’ve never met a successful person who didn’t calendar everything. It’s hard to say no when someone asks why and you can’t tell them specifics. By calendaring everything, you have a plan of execution, and it’s much easier to say no or ask the person giving you work to help you reprioritize if their ask is actually that important.

PREVIEW: THE STOP DOING LIST

The biggest sin in business is to over promise and under deliver. And we never plan to under deliver. We just said yes to too many things. Easy fix? Say no! 

Say yes and deal with the failure or say no and deal with the 15 seconds of awkward surprise you might get. I know, we can’t help but want to avoid the awkward and disappointing “no,” but just like anything else, it just takes practice.

There was an interesting study done on saying no to temptations that simply tested the use of saying “I can’t” or “I don’t” to oneself or the temptation. What they found was “I don’t” is a psychologically empowering way to say no, while “I can’t” undermines your sense of power. It’s all about mindset. A way to use this in your regular day could look something like this:

Instead stead of saying I can’t and feeling like you somehow weren’t capable:

“I can’t have that report to you by Friday. It won’t be finished.”

Say I don’t and take the reigns:

“I could have the report to you by Friday, but I don’t send like sending incomplete work. Can I get it to you complete on Monday?”

Say No to Bulk Random Prospecting

Many AEs struggle to find the time to prospect. So why when you do have time would you waste that time prospecting without purpose? Randomly sourcing from contact data solutions like DiscoverOrg or ZoomInfo and hoping the more people you contact the more responses you’ll get is not going to get you meetings and it’s a huge time suck. So stop.

While you’re saying no to wasted prospecting in November, say yes to:

1. Do your research and create a list of top 100-200 prospects in LinkedIn Sales Navigator
2. Connecting with ALL of them but DON’T send a message.
3. Using the LSN feature “lead shares” everyday in the morning and afternoon to see if any of them posted.
4. For the ones that did, comment some insights. The majority of people on LinkedIn (99%) still aren’t sharing content regularly, so it’ll be low lift.
5. Once you’ve interacted on two+ posts, and they’ve connected with you in return, then drop them a video or voicemail in their DMs saying you’ve enjoyed the content. Don’t be sales-y.
6. Did they post again? DM them saying you’ve appreciated the content, some reason it’s relevant, and ask to connect and talk about if there is any alignment between what they are posting about and how you help/fit in.

These 5-8 things a day will change your prospecting game. It’ll take you less time than your current prospecting efforts and possibly give you 3X to 4X more new meetings. November is only 30 days. See how it changes your game.

Say no to 0-50% Preparation

When did it become the norm to not prepare for meetings? Do we even care about research or prep anymore? You can get more and more meetings, but if you don’t spend time properly prepping, prospects know it. 

External (and internal) meetings demand you prepare if you want the best outcome versus showing up and winging it. I don’t even just show up and wing it, and I’ve been doing this since ‘03. 

Not preparing doesn’t actually save you time and it definitely doesn’t save you money. It was a waste of time running a bad call and that bad call cost you a deal. 

So again, as you say no this November, say yes to at least 15 minutes of prep for every 30 minutes of meeting - and answer these questions:

1. How do they make money? How can I help their business?
2. What do the people I’m meeting with actually do? How can I help their world?
3. How do they talk or portray themselves publicly? Does this tell me how they prefer to communicate?

Have any other “no’s” you’d like to share to help make NOvemebr more successful? Drop it in the comments and help your fellow Sales ghouls out.