“No” is the Second Best Answer You Can Give Me

Two lines of work I have always been impressed with – albeit only if someone excels at it – are salespeople and bartenders. Both toil in a similar capacity – trying always to up-sell a customer and keep them interested.

Face it, no one I know goes into a bar just to browse. They’re there for one purpose – to drink. Now how long they remain seated and imbibing adult beverages depends largely on two things – their budget and the company. A good mixologist will keep a customer engaged and by that measure their tips increase. It’s always a pleasure to watch them work.

It's different for someone selling cars. 90 percent of the time customers enter a showroom to browse. Often, they’ll visit three or four dealerships in a day to mine the best value. I’ve owned cars since the early 1970's and never have I gone to a dealer, pointed at a car and told the floor manager – “I want that in black and the V-8 engine.”

No, drilled down to the lowest common denominator, car buying is comparison shopping.

Now, fuse those two disparate sales strategies and that’s akin to trying to sell accountants without a succession plan on an upstream merger. You’ll experience more waffling than on Sunday mornings at IHOP.

Excuses fly in double digits about why they should not, but rarely do they face the 800-pound elephant in the room head on – they have nobody to continue running the firm. Period, end of story.

The usual bromide is “Let me think about it.” I used to work at a gym with a dynamic female saleswoman who had the perfect response to that – “I’ve never known anyone to get in shape by thinking about it.”

I respond with a more pointed interpretation when they say they want to think about it. I tell them point blank that while “yes” is obviously the ideal end game, “no” is the second best answer you can give me.

Straightforward and to the point. When I hear that, I don’t waste either party’s respective time, and simply move on.

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to their plight. Letting go is always hard – particularly a business you’ve nurtured from day one. But again, if someone is not ready to take that next step, a simple “no” addresses that in one economical syllable.

Any good barkeep or car salesperson will vouch for that.