Why Hearing "NO" Can Be The Best Word You Ever Hear

The word “No” has a negative connotation attached to it, so when I heard negative feedback or experienced a set back for the first time in my career, I was really discouraged. But hearing “No” is actually a positive, because it can lead us to adjust our thinking and course correct into the direction that we should be going. It can also give us the increased motivation that we need to accomplish our goals. In fact, I believe that hearing “No” could be the best word that you ever hear.

There are many successful business people that were told “No” or overcame great obstacles to be successful. Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks, met with 242 investors before he found someone willing to invest in Starbucks. Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” I’m pretty sure he had a few good ideas. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and started a business with Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data, which was not successful. Thankfully, they started another business after that called Microsoft. Oprah Winfrey started her career as an evening news reporter and apparently got fired because she couldn’t remove her emotions from her stories. For those of you who watch Oprah, you know that she turned that emotion into what sets her apart and makes her so successful.

Jimmy Dean once said, “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” Throughout my career, I’ve heard “No” quite a few times and have dealt with many setbacks and challenges, but they have made me stronger and helped me adjust my course. In fact, in my opinion one of the keys to success is to develop what I like to call, Selective Hearing. Essentially you take the negative that is being said and turn it into a positive in your head. When you hear negative feedback it’s important to assess the validity of the feedback to see if there is any truth to it because we should always be striving to improve. If you think there is little truth to the comment, than you should use my Selective Hearing technique. Let me give you a few examples. A couple of years ago, I was working on a very strategic deal. It was two weeks before the end of the quarter, and our executive leadership was expecting us to close this deal for the quarter. I was getting weekly emails from our President of Sales asking for updates, so the pressure was on. I had a call with the CFO of the customer to talk through their internal process for getting the deal signed. The CFO said, “There is no way we are going to sign this deal this quarter. We still aren’t sold yet on the value of the product and our IT department thinks that the tool will be too difficult to use.” The next day, the CFO went on vacation for 2 weeks. My team and I organized a hands on workshop for the IT team to build several of their internal processes with our tool and I met with several of the other executives to ensure they were supportive of our proposal. By the time the CFO returned from his vacation, he had a contract on his desk awaiting his signature and all of the other executives were supportive of the deal. The deal got signed and ended up being one of our company’s largest deals for the quarter. If we had taken “No” for an answer, we would have missed this opportunity. In fact, hearing “No” at that time was the best possible thing that could have happened because it made us realize that we still had more selling to do.

A former colleague once said to me, “You will never close one of the largest deals at your software company. Very few people ever get the opportunity to do this.” I thought to myself, “Challenge accepted.” Less than a year later, I closed one of the largest deals globally at my company.

Finally, one of the biggest challenges I faced was when I was working at Oracle in 2009 in the middle of the economic recession. I heard a rumor that Oracle was going to be laying off thousands of people at the end of the week. I had just won Sales Rep of the Year 1.5 years earlier, but I was now in an enterprise field role covering retail and I was the last person to join the team. I thought, “What if they employ the accounting principle LIFO (Last In First Out), then I will be laid off for sure.” I called my manager on a Thursday night and asked if I had anything to be worried about. His response was less than reassuring, so I jumped into problem solving mode. I was up all night calling through my network and lining up interviews. By the time the morning came, I had 4 interviews lined up at other companies just in case. Sure enough, I was laid off. I also made calls internally and I left a message for a previous SVP that I had worked for a couple of years earlier and he returned my call and mentioned that he was surprised by the news and he would see if there were any roles within his group. I got on the phone with the phone interview I had lined up and by the time I got off the phone from that interview, I had 5 missed calls and voice mails from another manager at Oracle stating that he has a role on his team and would love to hire me, but we would need to move quickly to get me on his team. I made more money in the 5 months that I was in that role, than I did the entire year before in my previous role and I was promoted to a sales manager at the end of those 5 months.

 Life is a journey of unexpected twists and turns, but sometimes what may look like an unfortunate turn of events, can end up being the best thing that ever happens to you. I once heard in a speech, that “No spelled backwards is On.” Whenever I hear the word “No”, I turn the word around, “Keep calm and carry on.” Hearing “No” or having a personal setback, could be the best thing that ever happens to you.