Omer (00:09.760)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is a show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to Richard Fenton, a speaker, coach and and author of the best selling book Go for no.
His latest book is when they say the Definitive Guide for Handling Rejection in Sales.
In this interview, Richard shares his personal story of how he initially failed at sales and how his experience led him to develop the Go for no philosophy.
He talks about the old and new models for success and failure and how to apply the Go for no mindset to achieve your SaaS business goals.
In other words, how to embrace rejection and turn no into a powerful asset to drive your success.
Richard also discusses the importance of overcoming the fear of failure, and he shares some practical insights on how to get past failures quickly and move on.
If you're currently struggling to get more people on demo calls, struggling to close more sales, or having a hard time getting investors to say yes to your pitch, then you might find this episode useful.
Also, if you feel like you need to build your mental resilience, then you might get some useful insights here.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Richard, welcome to the show.
Richard Fenton (01:30.690)
Hey, thank you, Omer.
Glad to be here.
Omer (01:32.690)
Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?
Richard Fenton (01:36.290)
Yeah, I do, and I'm glad you asked that because it took me a moment to really think of what it was.
And my favorite quote is, you can have anything in life you want, but you can't have everything in life that you want.
And that was a very great writer from 20, 25 years ago named Peter McWilliams.
And that has proven to be true in my life.
Any single thing that I want badly enough, I can marshal all my resources and focus toward it and get that.
But when you try to get everything, that rarely works.
Omer (02:07.610)
Love it.
I haven't heard that one before.
That's great.
Okay, so today we're going to talk about your latest book, when they say no, the Definitive Guide for Handling Rejection in Sales.
Richard Fenton (02:21.050)
And.
Omer (02:21.460)
And we're going to talk about how, or at least we're going to share some relevant lessons for early stage SaaS founders that they can take away.
And both things think about this as sort of a mindset thing and some practical steps that they can take.
Richard Fenton (02:35.540)
Right.
Omer (02:35.940)
I interviewed your business partner and your wife Andrea, several years ago.
I just had to look it up as episode 183 where we talked about overcoming the.
The fear of failure with your SaaS startup.
So that's also a great one to check out.
And so it's kind of a continuation of that theme and we're going to get a little deeper into that.
Before we do that, can you tell us about your background?
How did you get into sales and how did you come across this concept of, you know, the whole thing where we talked about with Andrea about, you know, going for.
Richard Fenton (03:13.220)
No, sure, absolutely.
And probably the best place to start is with my early sales career.
I was working for my father in the automotive fleet industry, which is the sale of corporate vehicles.
And, you know, I did odd jobs around the office and I was accounting SEC for a while.
And then one day he calls me into the office and says, you know, hey, I've got some great news.
And I said, what's that?
He said, it's time to join the big boys.
And I said, well, what are you talking about?
He said, he goes, you're going into sales.
He said, effective today.
He said, you're the Midwestern fleet sales manager for Long Chevrolet here in Chicago.
We've got an office set up for you downstairs.
Your business cards are printed, your phone is hooked up, your name is on the door.
And then he drops the bomb.
He says, and sitting on the middle of the desk is a phone book for you to look for prospects to cold call on.
Well, you know, I did like the little gulp, like, oh, my God.
And then, and then he gave me the.
He gave me the four word sales training program.
He said, go get him, tiger.
And, well, I had no sales experience.
I just.
And my dad, I have to tell you this, my father was a legend in the automotive fleet industry.
Number one seller of General Motors product in their history.
So not only do I have this new job with no experience, but I'm trying to live up to the expectations and having to function in the shadow of the number one salesperson in the industry.
So anyway, I go down to this, down to my new office and sat behind the desk, opened the phone book, looked at the names written in the phone book, and I sat there for a full month and didn't make a single sales call.
Never dialed the telephone.
And it was really simple.
Why?
You see, I had a fear of failure.
I had a fear of rejection.
I certainly didn't think that my message.
Hi, I'm Richard Fenton from Long Chevrolet and I'd like to sell you some cars.
I didn't think my message was as important.
Important as whatever it was that these people I was cold calling on were doing in that moment.
Well, as you can imagine, after 30 days of not making any calls, I knew I had to do something.
So I had to go back to my father and I had to say something that was the hardest words I've ever, you know, it ever passed my lips.
I had to tell my, you know, my sales legend father, I can't sell.
And Omer, he took it, actually surprisingly well.
He said, rich, he goes, gosh, come on in here.
He goes, you're right.
I never gave you any sales training.
He goes, come on in here.
You know, let's make some calls together.
Well, let's make some calls together.
It meant that he was sitting on one side of the desk, I was sitting on the other side of the desk.
And I'm going to date myself a little bit here, okay?
Because it was on a speakerphone that, you know, so I could only hear my father's one part of it.
And anyway, so he opens up his phone book, he runs his finger down the page, and he goes, and here we go.
ABC Rent a Car.
He goes, I've never called on them before.
Let's give him a call.
Well, he calls them, gets the purchasing agent on the phone.
Ten minutes later, he gets an order for 20 cars.
And, you know, he takes the pad, he writes down all the cars, and he hands me the yellow legal pad.
He goes, he says, here, these are the cars they want.
And he goes, that's selling well, as you can imagine.
I mean, if I wasn't already feeling inferior when I walked into the office, now, I was completely convinced that I wasn't going to be successful at sales.
So, you know, I stood up, walked across the room, shut the door behind me, and that was the moment I decided to quit the car business.
And I say that jokingly, but not really jokingly, because I did.
I quit my job working in the car business.
And I did what I thought was the most logical thing.
I moved from Chicago all the way to Los Angeles to get as far away from the car business and my father's sales legend shadow as I could.
And then, interestingly, because you asked, what, you know, what's my sales progression?
Well, here's my next big job.
I take a job in sales, right?
Which makes absolutely no sense, except for this time.
I took a job in retail.
I took a job selling suits for a living for a company called Hart, Schaffner and Marks.
And I thought, you know, my problem is that I can't make outbound cold calls.
I have this problem starting conversations with strangers.
But in retail, problem solved, right?
Customer's gonna park their car, walk into the mall, come into my store, tell me what they want, I'm gonna give it to them, and I'm gonna be this enormous success.
So you can imagine my great surprise when two months in, I'm failing again.
And I come to the realization that my inability to sell in Chicago had nothing to do with my father or the car business.
It was me.
And wherever I went, I was going to have this problem.
This fear of failure, this fear of rejection, this lack of self esteem where I didn't think my message mattered, right?
I was always putting the customer on a pedestal.
But somehow my message didn't matter.
And I was completely certain they were going to fire me.
And I heard that the district manager, a man by the name of Harold, was scheduled to visit the store.
And I thought, gosh, if I could just have one good sales day, if I could just impress this guy this one time, maybe they'd give me more time to improve.
So Harold comes in.
We had donuts and coffee.
First customer comes in.
I walked up, you know, with my typical retail greeting.
Hi, how can I help you?
And the customer says, I'd like to buy an entire wardrobe of clothing.
And I thought, oh, here it is.
This is.
This is it.
This is my moment.
I am going to show Harold what a fantastic salesperson I can be.
And I proceed to take care of this customer for the next half hour.
He bought.
It was a whole wardrobe.
I mean, it was a suit, sport coat, slacks, shirts, ties, shoes, socks, belts, underwear, collar pin, pocket square.
I mean, the entire thing, right?
Came to $1,100, which might not sound like a lot in today's money, but this was 40 years ago.
It was a big sale.
I ring the customer up, I send him on his way.
And now I'm waiting for Harold to congratulate me.
And he doesn't say anything.
So I kind of sauntered over, and I got right next to him, next to the cash register, and he finally, you know, turned to my, you know, faced me and said, that was a nice sale, kid.
And I said, yeah, man, did you see that?
Eleven hundred dollars.
That was a good one.
He goes, yep, nice sale.
And then Harold would ask me the question that would change the course of my life.
He said, richard, out of curiosity, what did that customer say no to?
And omer, I'm going to tell you, it really ticked me off.
I mean, I'm trying to Impress this guy.
I just had an eleven hundred dollar sale and he's asking me this weird question.
What did the customer say no to?
I said, harold, were you not watching?
I said, that man bought a suit, a sport coat, slacks.
I'm running through the whole list of everything the customer said yes to.
And Harold said, whoa, timeout.
He goes, I'm not asking about the yeses.
The yeses are right there on the sales check.
What I'm asking is, what did he say no to?
And I stopped and I reviewed the sale in my mind and I realized that that customer hadn't said no to anything.
Every single thing I laid in front of him, he said yes to.
I said, harold, he said yes to everything.
And then Harold asked me the other great question.
He said, well then, how did you know he was done?
Well, I'll tell you how I knew he was done.
I was a young guy, I wasn't making any money.
I'd never gone into a menswear store and spent $1,000 on clothing on myself on a single trip into a menswear store.
So when you got to my mental spending limit, you were done.
I was selling from my own wallet, if you will.
And Harold said, you know, I watched you sell, kid.
And he goes, you're not half bad.
He said, but your fear of the word no is going to kill you.
But you know what he said?
I think if you could just get over that.
He said, I think you're going to become one of the great ones.
And it was interesting as I went into work that morning thinking that I was going to get fired.
And I went home that night saying, oh my gosh, have I entirely misinterpreted what my role is?
I thought my job was to get people to say yes to me.
Well, obviously that's part of what sales is.
But what Harold made me realize was that my job was also to get people to say no to me, to increase the number of times I got customers to say no, I don't want this, I don't want that.
And I made a decision.
The decision was to go in the next day and I decided that I was going to fail my way to success.
I was going to intentionally increase the number of times that I had customers say no to me with the faith that the number of times customers would say yes to me would increase automatically.
And that's exactly what happened.
Within a year, I became an award winning salesperson.
I went on to go into management and then eventually training, and then Andrea and I launched our own company and after meeting at LensCrafters where we were both in the training department.
So, you know, my, my history is one of, of failure, but it's also one of great serendipitous luck that I happened to run into somebody who took the time to explain to me that I was operating with an erroneous model that I was supposed to hear yes and avoid no.
And what Harold got me to see was you're supposed to hear yes and no.
It's a package deal.
You can't have one without the other.
So if you want to be successful, increase your failure rate.
It's very counterintuitive, but it works.
Omer (12:39.930)
That's a great story.
And it's particularly important because a lot of the times when we see books about sales and you think of these people who've written these books as being natural sellers.
And so for you to put that into context and share that story is important because ultimately it gives everybody hope that we can go out and do something.
And this idea of not getting a no from that customer, I think it happens a lot when you may have a founder who's going out and maybe talking to enterprise customers and, and they're testing their pricing so they're not quite sure how much they should be charging.
So they get to a point where, you know, they've, they've gone through the process, they've met all the right people and it comes to what the price is and they throw a price out there which maybe they're slightly uncomfortable with.
And often the customer's like, okay, great, sounds good.
Let's, let's do it.
And yes, you should celebrate that you closed the sale.
But then the question should be is if it was that easy to get a yes, how much did you miss?
What was the opportunity you left?
Richard Fenton (13:57.360)
Absolutely.
Matter of fact, I did a workshop for a company once and we went around the room and everybody was sharing their closing rates, you know, their closure rates.
And this one very belligerent person.
There's, you know, there's not always one, but a lot of times there's a heckler in the room.
There's somebody who's just not going to be with the program.
And he said, I never hear no.
He said, I never hear no.
I said never, never.
You close 100% of your sales.
I close them all.
And I was just in a little bit of a prickly mood and I said, well then you must be picking the low hanging fruit, my friend, because nobody closes 100% of the sales if they're going after High quality prospects.
I said, let me tell you this.
Go try to sell your product to the President of the United States.
Get on the phone and go after somebody big.
Just try to get through the gatekeeper first off, okay?
And you're going to hear a lot of no's.
So if you're shooting high enough, the number of nos you hear are going to be significantly more.
But your point about how much you can or should charge for a service.
We all think that somehow that if our price is low enough, everyone's going to say yes to us.
And that is just not the case.
People say yes usually because they see the value in the thing that it is that you're presenting, and they believe it's going to make their life or their business better.
I mean, that's why they say yes.
And if the, if the product or in your case the service is going to make someone's life that much better, they might pay two times, three times, five times.
What you, what you think is, is a lot.
And I'll tell you one other really funny story.
The very first customer we signed 20 years ago when we launched our business was the Limited.
And I signed a series of seven programs teaching their company to recruit.
And I traveled the whole country.
I finished the seventh program, the president wrapped his arm around my shoulder and he said, nice job.
I said, thank you, sir.
And he said, I got a little bit of feedback for you, though.
I said, what's that?
He said, raise your price.
He says, your price was so low, we almost didn't hire you.
We thought, what could we possibly get for that little of a price?
I mean, talk about getting a whack on the side of the head.
And we went back and immediately increased our prices, you know, by 35% immediately because just because one person said, hey, you know, if you, if you charge too little, people aren't going to value it.
So it's a very important factor in the process.
Omer (16:32.120)
Yeah.
I spoke to a founder a few months back who very similar story where they had pitched, you know, basically a deal to a customer and everything seemed to be going well, but they never heard from that customer again.
And years later, he found out that the main reason was because the price was too low.
And this customer was like, if this company doesn't really understand the cost of delivering a product and service like this, how can I rely on them?
And then that same founder, interestingly enough, also had a meeting with a customer at an event.
They were demoing the product and everything.
And the customer asked them, you know, how much would this cost us?
And they, they threw out a number which they were nervous about, but it was kind of like, you know, an annual price, but they threw this number out.
The customer heard that as a monthly figure and went, okay, so if it's that much a month annually, it's going to be that times 12.
Yeah, I think we can make that work.
And again, it's always like this.
There's just this, I think, is like the key lesson here, that it's really about embracing rejection is part of that process.
Richard Fenton (17:51.150)
Right.
Omer (17:51.950)
And we've already talked about some, several examples about how you can end up either underpricing yourself and potentially even losing that sale because of that, or you can leave money on the table.
Beyond that, are there any other consequences of trying to avoid rejection in the sales process?
Richard Fenton (18:16.600)
Well, first off, there's a lot of people who think that yes and no are opposites.
They think yes is good and no is bad.
We all love the sound of the word yes, right?
Yes is positive, it's empowering, is how we make money.
And then there's no negative draining the antithesis of yes.
And this is such bad thinking.
It is such bad thinking.
Because what that leads you to believe is that when you get up in the morning and you put on your headphones or your head, you know, your, your stuff and you get ready to dial the phone or get on the computer, that when you get ready to do that, that you believe that your job is to get people to say yes to you and while simultaneously doing everything within your power to keep them from saying no to you.
And the reality is you don't get one without the other.
You don't get the big sales with the big client who's going to, you know, who's willing to pay what you might consider to be five or ten times more than you, that you know that that price.
You get out and you gulp.
Right?
Well, you're not going to get, you're not going to get those customers to say yes to you unless you're willing to have a lot of other people say no to you.
You've got to increase the quantity of your presentations before you worried about the quality of the presentations.
See, that's the thing here is this quantity quality dynamic.
A lot of people think I'm not selling enough.
I need to increase the quality of my presentation.
So I'm going to get my manual and I'm going to study the pitch and I'm going to look at the seven different objections and I'm going to Be perfect at handling every single one of them.
And I'm going to be so good that when I get on the phone, when I get on the phone with somebody, when I'm looking at somebody, you know, through the screen, there's no way they can say no to me.
The reality is sometimes even the lowest price in the world or the best product in the world, okay, people aren't going to buy it.
They just aren't going to say yes.
And your quality of your presentation will not create the right fit for the wrong customer with the wrong product.
Quality of presentation does not solve it.
Quantity of presentations solves it.
Now that does not mean that I am anti quality, Andy.
And I believe that you should do the best high quality presentation you can do every time with every customer.
But let me tell you this.
If you've got the perfect sales presentation that you aren't delivering, that is not going to be as effective as the worst presentation that you're delivering 100 times.
Because even at its worst, if you present your service to enough people, there's going to be.
Customers are going to say, wow, that's amazing.
That's exactly what I was looking for.
You know, sign me up.
So it's always quantity first, quality second.
And if you're going to go with quantity first, you've got to be willing to hear a lot of people say no to you.
And so get rid of this idea that it's like, you know, one or the other.
It's a package deal.
They're opposite sides of the same coin.
It's always the two together.
Omer (21:32.520)
Yeah, I think I remember when I spoke to Andrea, the one thing that resonated with me with this concept was almost turning it into a game and seeing how quickly you can get no's every week or every month.
Richard Fenton (21:44.760)
Oh yeah.
Omer (21:46.680)
When you think of it like that, it kind of takes away some of the pressure from the whole situation.
Especially if you're like super hung up about hearing no getting rejected, fear of failure, all of that stuff, and just saying, you know what, I need to get 20 no's this week.
The quicker I can get them out of the way, the better.
Richard Fenton (22:07.630)
Well, I'll tell you a very funny and short story.
We had a client named Mike and we were coaching him and he had set a no goal of getting 10 nos for the week.
He said, I'm going to get 10 nos this week.
Well, Friday afternoon, 4 o', clock, he's got 9 nos and he wants desperately to get the 10th no.
He's a high achieving goal Setter.
And if he set the goal to get 10 nos, he's getting 10 nos.
So he's like, well, who can I get a no from in this last hour?
And he thinks of this client who had said no to him every single time he called on him for five years.
He goes, ah, perfect, I'll call Bob.
So he dials the phone.
He gets Bob on the phone, hey, Bob, Mike.
Or anything, he goes, oh, my gosh, Mike, I'm so glad you called.
I'm ready to go forward.
Sign me up.
Now, the funny part is Mike said.
So I ended up getting a yes because I was going for no because I was trying to increase my number of no's and I got a yes.
And he said, my thinking is so changed now.
I'm not sure how to feel about this because I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad.
And that's really where you want to get to.
You want to get to the point where yes and no have the same equal emotional impact on you and that neither one is devastating you or even over relating you.
Omer (23:18.750)
Yeah, I love that.
And so that's this whole idea of rejection and going for no.
Obviously, that was the theme of the, you know, your other book and is kind of like the foundation.
That was my takeaway with this latest book.
But then part two of the book, which I think is the meat, is it really starts off saying when they say no, you're just getting started.
And you have, I think, 40 plus chapters, fairly short, with lots of, you know, stories, you know, ideas in there that, you know, people can take away and learn from.
And obviously we can't cover all of them.
But there were some themes in there that I took away that I'd like to uncover.
And one of them was this idea when people say no, that you should be spending more time listening and understanding the customer.
And so can you tell us about that?
Like, why is that important and what are some common mistakes that people tend to make in that situation?
Richard Fenton (24:17.650)
Right.
Well, you know, and it's funny because we have these 41 things in the book and there's a certain amount of overlap and they kind of connect to each other sometimes.
And so this whole idea of listening, well, in order to listen, you have to get the prospect talking.
Right?
You got to get that.
You got to get them speaking.
It's not just doing a demo and then saying, so, yes or no?
And they go, no, no.
Right?
No, it's to ask great questions, to learn about the business, to gather information that's What a consultant does, they ask questions, they review the answers, and then they make recommendations.
So you have to have good listening skills.
But a lot of times when people hear the word no, they hear never.
They hear the word no, and they think, oh, it's over.
I'm not going to.
I'm not going to sell this.
I'm not going to sell this customer.
Well, you know, no doesn't mean never.
No means not yet.
At least 9 out of 10 times it means not yet.
So what you really need to do is.
And in this case, when somebody says no to you, or even if they're throwing out a price objection or whatever it happens to be.
You know, a lot of people, a lot of salespeople act like they've just been handed a snake.
You know, like, oh, gosh, keep that away from me.
We say, well, you know, think of it as a gift.
They're giving you a gift.
Here's this little gift you got in your hand.
You unwrap it and you look and you see what's inside.
Because inside every no, inside every objection is a reason that the person has said no or offered the objection.
Your goal, if you're listening well enough, is to try to understand what that reason is and see if maybe, maybe they're just making a mistake.
Maybe they misunderstood what your service was.
Maybe they just don't get the value proposition yet.
And so listening to this and saying, like, well, here's.
Here's.
Would be one of our favorites would be to say, wow, I'm surprised.
Based on everything you told me about your business and what I know our service can do for you, I thought this was the perfect match.
Could you explain to me, tell me why you've decided not to go forward today?
So that question sets up the opportunity to listen.
And unless you're giving the, you know, the prospect, the opportunities to talk and to give you feedback, a lot of salespeople just like, oh, they said, no, I want to get.
I want to get.
Click.
You know, terminate.
No, no, no.
This is.
This is what.
This is what selling is.
Selling is asking questions, reviewing the information, finding out where the common ground is, and then constantly narrowing the gap.
And so listening becomes very important.
And the willingness to say, could you tell me why?
Is super important.
Omer (27:04.800)
Firstly, that's a great question.
And I think a lot of us who are not very good at sales, when we hear the no, we're like, okay, no worries.
We'll move on.
I think the reluctance that people have is they've said no to me and If I keep asking questions, I'm going to come across as annoying.
Richard Fenton (27:28.160)
Sure.
Omer (27:28.960)
What would you say to that concern that people might have?
Richard Fenton (27:32.560)
Right.
Well, first off, and this is not what people want to hear usually, but the reality is it's easy to step over the line with a prospect in terms of whether you're, quote, being pushy or whether you know you're asking too many questions or you just haven't clicked off.
But I would ask this question, and the question would be, how could you possibly know if you're selling to your potential if you don't step over the line every now and then?
You know, most of us are so afraid of stepping over the line, of irritating a customer, of making them think that we're being salesy.
We're so afraid of it that we're nowhere near the line.
We're, like, way backed up over here.
And the worst part of the line is it's invisible.
And it's different for every single prospect you're going to talk to.
And so the reality is, the only way that you can discover whether you've pushed hard enough is when you get to that point where the other person says, hey, listen, I understand and I appreciate what you're offering, but the answer is no or I don't want to go any further with the conversation.
And then you take your toe back and you just step back from the line.
We have to start to embrace the line.
We have to start to enjoy it.
Now, I'm not saying you should intentionally go out and tick people off.
That's not the goal.
But if your fear of ever ticking anyone off ever is an overriding aspect to your sales philosophy, then you're going to leave a lot of business on the table.
And it's worse than that.
If you've got a service that, that is going to make prospects life or business better, and you don't have the courage to step up to the line to get them to understand how it will improve their condition, then you're hurting them.
You're hurting them.
A lot of people think, you know, I don't like sales because I don't like doing things to people.
You're not doing it to them, you're doing it for them.
And if you think you're doing it to them, then you have not worked through the, the value proposition yet to understand what it is that your service does and how it will improve, how it will improve their business.
And, you know, I just want to make one little quick thing about cost.
You know, it's so funny it's like, you know, what's it going to cost us if we do this?
Well, you know, what's it going to cost you if you don't?
You know, when you sit down and you're looking at pricing and you're thinking, how do we price our product?
Well, the first thing I would ask is, if they don't take our service, we what's it going to cost them?
Because now you can start coming up with a price that's probably much higher than if you're just sitting here trying to come up with a price arbitrarily.
Omer (30:21.620)
The other theme, I think, in the book is about finding value and offering solutions.
Even when you hear no, I think a lot of us who maybe have tried to learn sales, the conventional advice is figure out what the objections are and then have a response to overcome those objections.
Finding value and offering solutions maybe is one way of overcoming objections, but I think it's more than that.
Right?
Richard Fenton (31:00.010)
Sure, sure, absolutely.
You want to elaborate on that just a little bit more.
Omer (31:05.470)
What's the importance in trying to find value, offer solutions?
Maybe it's the same thing as overcoming objections, but it's a mindset in terms of the way you approach it.
So I guess my question is, what's the difference in those two approaches?
Is it just mindset?
Is it just a different way of approaching it?
Richard Fenton (31:25.470)
Yeah, I think one of them is the first, which is, okay, Here are the 6 most common price objections that we hear.
And let's come up with a standard answer for each of these price objections.
I mean, it's better than nothing.
It's better than.
It's better than, you know, or not just price objections, but any objection.
It's better than not having any way to respond.
And we say in the book, you know, you should never be surprised when you get an objection because you've heard these things again and again and again.
So to be surprised by it, you know, is a little ridiculous.
But if your answers are always just standard cookie cutter things that you can read off of a piece of paper, you know, well, based on what you've said, Tom, you know, and then you, like, read some statement that's not going to be as effective as deciding who you represent.
When you're on the.
I. I always say the word phone.
When you're presenting to a prospect, you have to think of like, you know, who.
Who's involved in this deal?
Well, the four parties are you, the prospect, the company you represent, and the prospect.
And the company the prospect represents.
Right.
Generally, we have these Four parties involved.
And I think the reason that most people can't overcome objections is because they keep trying to.
Salespeople can't.
Is that they keep trying to represent their company and they keep trying to do what's in their best interest.
I like, Instead of a 2, 2 configuration, I want a 3, 1 configuration.
I want as the salesperson to say, my job here is to be an assistant buyer.
My job is to get on your side of the desk with you and to look at the offer my company's making.
And based on everything that I know about your company and your needs is to help you make the right decision.
Even if the decision is, no, don't do it.
Because if you can get on the other side of the desk, if you can become the assistant buyer to the people you're selling to now, it's all about value.
It's all about asking the question, well, how much value is this going to bring to the company if we do this?
And so this whole idea of just this cat and mouse back and forth, let's all fill our roles and then.
And then hang up.
It's sad is what it is.
It's sad that people don't realize that you're really, you know, that if you're selling correctly, you should always be doing something in the customer's best interest, not just your own company or yours.
Omer (33:59.950)
I think the, the best salespeople that I have experienced have, have done exactly that you feel like, or I felt like I'm talking to an advisor, somebody who's helping me think through the problem, understand it better, kind of evaluate the different options, kind of like that consultative approach, and it doesn't feel like selling at all.
And, and so typically, when that's happened to me, I'm more likely to open up, I'm more likely to talk about the situation, and as a result, I get more, you know, more value back in terms of somebody who's helping me think this through.
So I think that's.
That's a, you know, a great example.
Just generally, like, I think in terms of, you know, kind of making this a little bit more practical.
What are some ways that, you know, people listening to this, if they're in a situation where they've heard, no, what are some things that they could be doing to find that value and try to at least help the customer?
Are there a set of questions or one or two questions that can help them move in that right direction?
Richard Fenton (35:17.750)
Yeah, I can't give specific questions because every time we do that, we find out that Everybody's business is so different that we actually lead some people astray.
The questions are not effective.
But if you think about, especially with a SaaS service, I don't know of any SaaS organization that does a demo, whether it's in person, live, or whether it's a group thing where you're watching a video, whatever it is, where they don't capture the email and the prospect's name.
I mean, so why do we capture the email and the prospect's name?
We don't have to.
We could just say, hey, click here.
Watch this thing.
We don't need to know who you are.
No, we always get that information.
Well, why do we get the information?
And the answer is to follow up.
The answer is to stay in contact with that individual.
Because the chances of somebody actually signing up for a service at the, at the very first contact is pretty slim, actually.
You know, in, in baseball, if you hit, if you hit 300, you're in the, you're in the hall of fame.
That means seven out of 10 times you're not getting on base.
I venture to say that in your industry, it's a lot worse.
I would have to say that the success rate is probably lower in many cases.
And so if you're offering a free service, maybe you're signing a bunch of people up for the free, but I'm talking about the actual paid product.
And so the question really becomes, how do you provide value?
And the answer is, if you've asked great questions and you understand this prospect, you should be able to contact them again and again and again in the future.
And I don't mean every day, and I don't mean every week, but I certainly do mean probably every four to six weeks, maybe, maybe every two months with something that's not me, me, me oriented.
So it can't be, you know, oh, us.
Let me tell you some more features that we have.
No, it's gotta be you, you, you.
It's gotta be, hey, I thought of you because this is something we learned about our industry or something we learned about your industry.
It doesn't even have to be about the service.
It can be just general information that might be of value to that person.
Because the thing that I think most salespeople don't put enough emphasis on is this thing called klt.
Know like and trust.
All things being equal, people want to do business with people they know like and trust.
Well, you get to know somebody through contact, you get to like them through the quality of the contact, and you get to trust them over time.
And so if you're not making regular contact with somebody, you're not leveraging knowing, liking and trusting.
And so you know, my attitude, our attitude is really simple.
Six months is going to come and go.
Whether you contact this prospect every six weeks or not.
The question is at the end of six months, if you contacted them every six weeks and in a customer centric way, will they know you, like you and trust you more?
And the answer is yes.
And so that is my number one thing.
If you're going to bring value, it's literally deliver value.
Literally find things that will help that individual's business and deliver it even if it isn't directly related to the service you're selling.
Omer (38:33.790)
We often hear this idea of delivering value and many, many people struggle to figure out what that value is.
But I think you hit the nail on the head that if you are asking questions, good questions, and you're really trying to understand the customer, their business, their situation, their needs, it's actually not that hard to find opportunities to provide value if you're just very superficially contacting someone, didn't really take the time to ask the questions or understand them.
It's very difficult to then say, I'm going to keep having touch points with them for the next six months, 12 months, whatever with value.
Because I don't know what that is.
Richard Fenton (39:22.430)
Yeah, absolutely.
And a lot of people confuse, they think that when they lower the price, they've delivered more value, which is really kind of funny.
And all you did was cut your profit.
Your, you're not really delivering more value.
Value is what they get out of your product after, right, they purchased it or what you deliver at through the relationship.
Cutting the price does not increase the value.
Omer (39:49.540)
Another thing from the book that, that I think I had taken away was this idea of keeping a long term perspective that, you know, you, you kind of need to find a way to balance the short term and the need to close the sale with the importance of long term and building relationships with customers.
I want to understand that a little bit more like how to find that balance.
Because at the end of the day, if you're running a business and especially if you're in the early stages, revenue is more important than ever.
And so, you know, you're always focused on short term.
But just give us some perspective in terms of why that long term view is also important.
Richard Fenton (40:38.540)
It's very easy to constantly be trying to, I'm just saying, move towards free, you know, to think like, okay, we'll just, we'll Just get them started, let's just get them in for free.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
You know, I saw a company recently has 75 million free SaaS customers and 5 million paid.
Well, I know that that 5 million paid is in part because of the 75 million free.
And I understand that when you're walking through the mall and the person standing in front of the Panda Express and they offer you a free taste of the Kung Pao chicken, that you're not going to taste the chicken and immediately walk over and buy it.
You might not be hungry that day.
And so we have to understand that when people say no to us and when we make a presentation, they've gone through the demo, we've recontented them several times, we have this feeling like every time they say no to us that we haven't gotten closer to the yes.
But just like I said, with the know like and trust, you're always moving the ball down the field, you're always getting closer.
And so my question about this long term idea of the way you've envisioned the business is, and I'll give you a very quick story here, Andrea and I called on a company, Discovery, Discovery Network for seven years and they said no every single time.
And then after seven years, they finally hired us.
So the question is, were all of the nos had no value and then the yes was finally valuable?
And the answer is no.
Every single contact, every single touch.
And so in your industry in particular, especially when you're dealing with a high priced product, you know, the $99, 299amonth thing for individuals, that's nothing compared to your enterprise software and some of these very large clients.
Just the number of people who have to be involved to sign off on the deal.
It's not just even getting one person to know like and trust you, it might be getting five people to know like and trust you and then they've got to go sell it to another 15 people.
And so if you do not have a long term attitude about this business, then at best you're going to maybe scratch the surface of the income potential.
If you're planning on staying with a company for over a year, you should make huge progress with a certain number of people that you're contacting regularly.
And if you're doing that with enough people, then it has a cumulative snowball effect.
It's not something you see happening as it's happening.
Right.
It's kind of like falling in love.
You know, you go out on a date, you go on another date and you go on another date and you just think, you think, hey, I'm not sure if there's going to be anything here.
And then suddenly one day you're in love.
Well, how did that happen?
Right?
It didn't happen because it happened like this.
It happened because it happened gradually over time.
So you have to have a long term attitude about this.
And if you don't, then, you know, then I question, and I'm just going to be very blunt, I question if you're in the right business because this is a long term business, if you're going to do it right.
Omer (43:56.780)
Going back to that story you originally shared about your father and that call he made in front of you then closed, right?
You know, a sale for 20 cars, just that one example.
But just generally in terms of, you know, you knowing him, how much of his ability to sell was the mindset, which is really what we've been talking about today versus sales techniques.
And the reason for asking you this is somebody listening to this early stages of their SaaS business and they may be thinking about that similar question, okay, how much do I need to learn about sales?
How much do.
Is it a mindset thing?
Probably the answer is like a bit of both.
But you know, how do you look at that?
Richard Fenton (44:51.790)
Well, I'm glad you asked that question and I think it is a very important one.
My father was the quintessential sales natural.
He was somebody who could start a conversation with anyone, anywhere, anytime, about anything.
He didn't need steps, he didn't need process.
He didn't have the, you know, the six ways to overcome the objection or the doorknob and the puppy dog clothes.
I mean, he didn't have any of this.
He was natural at it.
But what's interesting about that is that when it came time to try to teach me to sell, he was totally ill equipped because he didn't have a process.
There was no way for him to say you do this first and you do this second, you do this third.
And if they say this, you say that.
And that's where it really comes down to the understanding that selling is part art and it's part science.
A lot of people think it's mostly art, that the majority of salespeople are naturals.
They're not.
Very few people are sales naturals.
Most people need the process.
They need to know the seven steps of the sale.
They need to know the closing techniques.
And when you build on the science part of it, and you do that long enough, eventually it turns into Art, it's like artists.
We think that artists just splash paint on the canvas and oh, my heaven, look.
They're a natural artist.
No, most of them had to go to school and they studied art and they learned how to do line drawings and they learned how to mix the colors.
And then eventually they developed their own style, and that's where the art emerges.
And so I encourage anybody who's listening to this to understand that, yeah, you can be actually discouraged when you watch a sales natural do what they do because you can think that somehow you're defective, like I did, that you don't have talent because other people are so good at it.
Well, you've got to start somewhere.
You start with the process and you just keep doing it until you feel comfortable.
And eventually it does turn into art.
Omer (46:41.760)
Love it.
Great.
That's a good place to close.
Let's move on to the lightning round.
I've got seven quick fire questions for you.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Richard Fenton (46:54.890)
Go around and ask everyone you know whether you should do something or not and what their advice is.
Take all of those index cards, lay them on a desk, then put them all together, throw them in the garbage can, and do what you were going to do in the first place.
Because your gut's almost always better than other people's opinions.
Omer (47:13.380)
Love that.
What book other than yours would you recommend to our audience and why?
Richard Fenton (47:18.900)
I would recommend the Go Giver by Bob Berg.
And I think it's very, very germane to the conversations we had today because the Go Giver concept is give, give, give, give, give, and then people will give back.
Omer (47:32.900)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Richard Fenton (47:37.930)
Well, I would say willingness to fail is number one.
But I would also say being excited about something is probably right up there with that.
Omer (47:49.530)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Richard Fenton (47:52.810)
Oh, boy.
You asked the wrong person.
And I say that because I tried every productivity tool, I tried every possible habit things, and I found that waking up in the morning and doing what I feel like doing motivates me to do more.
I don't recommend that approach for anybody else, but in my particular case, I wake up each day and I just kind of let the day take its way with me.
Totally against the norm.
Omer (48:19.780)
Yeah, I love that.
I've been a productivity nerd most of my life and recently have been reading a book called 4000 Weeks Time Management for Mortals, which basically Breakdown says if you live to 80, you're going to have about 4,000 weeks.
And just that realization alone makes you realize that you can never achieve everything that you think you want to do.
And it's completely changed the way that I think about productivity.
It's much more about what's really important to me rather than a list.
So I'm glad you said that.
What's in your crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?
Richard Fenton (48:56.970)
I don't know if it's a business idea so much as I've been thinking about writing a book called the Death of Truth, because I'm not sure where to look for the truth anymore.
You don't find it in the media.
You don't find it on the Internet with ChatGPT.
I'm not sure that anything we learn is the truth.
And so I'm toying with that.
Not a business idea, but it is something I'd like to work on.
Omer (49:18.570)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Richard Fenton (49:22.660)
Gosh, the first thing I was going to say was that I used to be a marathoner and most people wouldn't realize that now that I've got an extra £50 on my frame.
I'll just say that I won a Toastmasters International Humorous speech contest about 25 years ago, and that was probably one of the highlights of my life.
Omer (49:47.060)
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Richard Fenton (49:50.390)
Actually walking.
I don't think there's anything that I enjoy more than just, you know, putting my.
Putting my gym shoes on, getting out of the house and just walking around.
Whether it's around the neighborhood or, you know, down, down, down the street doing window shopping.
I think walking is probably my greatest passion.
Omer (50:08.790)
Great.
So the book is called when they say no.
The Definitive Guide for Handling Rejection in Sales.
And folks can pick that up on Amazon and the usual places.
If people want to learn more about EOS and Andrea's business, where can they go to learn?
Richard Fenton (50:27.010)
Yeah, they're checking out the book.
Go to when they say no book dot com.
If you want to just check out us, go to goforknow.com just the way it sounds.
G-O F-O-R-N o dot com and we've got a quiz that you can take on the website that shows you what your no quotient is.
In other words, your willingness to fail in order to succeed.
It's free.
You can come and watch some of the videos we have on the website.
Just to kind of, you know, see us in action.
And if you want to contact us for any reason, and we invite you to just write us@infoofornow.com Great.
Omer (51:03.590)
Well, Richard, thank you so much for joining me and sharing some of your wisdom with our audience.
I think both the new book and the previous one, the Go for no book, are both great resources, certainly for rewiring our mindset, especially if you love to avoid rejection, which I'll put myself into that category.
So every time I go through and look at that information, it changes my perspective.
And it's.
It's actually not like I always thought it was much more about being okay, you know, you need to overcome this fear of rejection by being courageous and Bob bomb.
And, you know, and actually it was like, no, it's a lot easier than that.
It's just.
Yeah.
So.
So thank you for sharing that with us.
You know, I appreciate your time.
Give my best to Andrea and wish you guys the best of success.
Richard Fenton (52:00.180)
Right.
Thank you, Omer.
Omer (52:01.780)
My pleasure.
