Andrea Waltz: Fail Your Way to Success with the Co-author of Go for No!

Andrea Waltz is the co-founder of Courage Crafters, Inc. and co-author of the best-selling book, Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There. Andrea teaches people in virtually every business and industry how to think and feel differently about failure, rejection and the word, no. Today, “Go for No” is a well-known methodology in the world of selling and is widely recognized as the singular best program that deals with rejection in business.

What is the Go for No book all about?

Go for No! is a short fable focused on one message: if you want more yeses, you need to get more nos. We were taught and trained to be successful. And from a sales standpoint, to get yes. So this is a counter-intuitive message! When you are willing to fail (hear no more often) you will put yourself in a position to get to more yeses. In a way you could say it’s a “numbers game” but it’s actually much more than that. We believe that sales is built on relationships and that people aren’t just numbers. To sell courageously, you care more about helping someone else solve their problem and get what they need more than you do about the pain of rejection and getting a no.

The fable is about a young copier salesman named Eric. Eric goes to bed and has a weird dream – when he wakes up the next morning, he’s in a strange house with no idea how he got there. What he discovers is that the house is his: it belongs to a wildly successful 10-year in the future version of himself. And the story is the two of them coming together – with the “future him” as the mentor, and the current him learning the secret to failing your way to success, which is to Go for No. It sounds a little strange and maybe a supernatural because it is! We wanted to really give people a story that they could fall into and forget they were reading a typical business book. Through the dialog between the various characters in the story, we were able to share a lot of our Go for No lessons.

What is the biggest mistake one can make when starting a new business?

I think the mistake is not having complete clarity about the problem you are solving and who you are solving it for.

We made sure we did that in our first business when we helped retail organizations improve their sales. And now with Go for No, we are clear that we help salespeople change how they think and feel about failure, rejection, and the word no. There’s a lot of people who do sales training. We just happen to focus in on this one issue.

Too many people start with the idea that their product or service is for “everyone.” That makes sales and marketing very difficult. There shouldn’t be fear in starting in a niche area. You can always expand. But it’s harder to do it in reverse.

Lesson 1: Operate with the right model of failure and success. The old model is the one where you see failure and success choices. The new model is where you understand that failure is between you and success. Failure and being told no is part of the journey. It’s not to be avoided it’s to be moved through. And remember, just because you fail a lot, does not mean you yourself are a failure. Failure is an event, not a person.

Lesson 2: Celebrate your failures as much as success. If behavior is what will get you the result you want, then only rewarding yourself for results means that a lot of the right behaviors go unrewarded. Celebrate all your activities, including the failures and the nos!

Lesson 3: Be persistent. I almost listed this as the biggest mistake people make in starting a business – that is, lack of persistence. A major part of going for no is understanding that often a no does not mean never, it means not yet. Have a long term attitude. Continue to follow up with people who’ve said maybe or no in the past. In addition, our own experience with starting and operating a business is that everything takes longer than you think it will. Persistence doesn’t guarantee you success but a lack of it almost ensures eventual failure.