I remember clearly one of the early conversations I had with Jim Camp, author of Start With No. Jim and I had become good friends very quickly. We shared a true passion about the power of NO. America’s number one negotiating coach, Jim passed away in November of 2014 and the world misses his practical wisdom every day. This day Jim and I were talking about the power of process versus outcome and what NO might mean along the way. One of Jim’s statements sounds in my head on a daily basis: “Stop trying to control the outcome, focus on your behavior and actions instead.”

What I have learned along the way is that NO is just a word, but one to which we give way too much implied power. It is a word that requires context to give it any substance. It can be a perceived wall maker, a conversation branch creator, or an absolute command. In the business of selling and or negotiating you have to get over the fear of hearing or saying NO.

Hearing NO in the selling process most typically means that in the conversations leading up to receiving the NO, you did a rather poor job of using great questioning to lead to understanding. Jim said something else to me that day: “Control what you can control, and forget the rest.”

In this case that means we can only control ourselves and our process and questions - we cannot control the outcome. At every NO, we have a chance to branch and continue. We have to become masters at understanding and using great questions that are led by an interrogative. The good questions start with who, what, when, where, why, how, and which. All of them are intended to create dialog, extend the conversation, and figure out more about the client than ever before.

NO is just not all that complex. We make way too much out of it in the selling process. It is our job to understand the points that create NO, and that is ok to get to NO, on both parties behalf. When one path ends in a NO, then create another path based on a different who, what, where, when, etc. question; each time gathering more understanding and information along the way. And each of those conversations create more curiosity that enables further conversations. This all comes back to the basics of Question Based Selling with Tom Freese and conversational layering principles - deliver a bit of credibility that creates some curiosity and gets you the next mini-invitation to continue the conversation. And it can all START with NO.

In the beginning there were people who made stuff and people who needed stuff. Then there were the peddlers of stuff who helped the makers and the buyers find each other.   The peddlers of stuff were very successful for hundreds of years, because both the makers and the buyers needed them.  Stuff was bought and sold and everyone was okay.  Then things changed.

Today’s business landscape is rapidly and radically changing and people and organizations are struggling to keep up.  Product information was once the golden nugget that every salesperson owned and shared only with those people who they chose to enlighten.  The salespeople were once the Kings and Queens of data and information and they reigned supreme.  The true product that the salesperson offered up was the information that the client could not easily find.  That was then.

Consider this: between the beginning of time and 2003, 5 exabytes of data were created. In 2013, 5 exabytes of data were created each day.  In 2014, 90% of the total data and information in the world had been created in the last 2 years.  And the prognosis is that the amount of data and information in the world will double every year shortly, and then every 6 months, and on and on.  This commoditization of data and information has totally changed the value that a salesperson must deliver today.  This rapid change in the creation of information is closely tied to the shifting trends in the nature of work and business. Some futurists estimate that close to 50% of jobs will be extinct in 20 years.

The jobs on the endangered list are not just the obvious ones like travel agents and the milkman. Accountants, air traffic controllers, utility engineers and teachers are all at risk – and so is the sales professional.

The sales professional is on the verge of extinction. Up until now the salesperson was the keeper and deliverer of information, but now they are not really needed for that anymore.

So what do they do?

The good news is that there are clear and valuable answers to that question.  In recent months and years there have been a number of sales methodologies presented to bring relevance to the field of selling.  The Challenger Sale is the best of those in my opinion.  The basic tenets of Teach, Tailor, and Take Control only come from an in-depth understanding of the true value of insight and how best to create and deliver it.  Done poorly it is just another substitute for commoditized information.  And even in the domain of insight there are key differences that you can make.  We will explore those as well as many elements in this journey.

The key difference in the work that Hendre Coetzee and I have done over the last several years shows us that methodology shifts are not sufficient.  To stay relevant and avoid obsolescence you will need to make a mindset shift FIRST.  Only from there can you properly attack making a shift in what you DO.  The specific actions needed to make the shift will be detailed in the book and in the works from Hendre and myself.

Shifting mindset AND methodology is required for completely reversing the erosion of the sales professional’s relevance in a highly commoditized world.