Strategies To No
Part of ongoing success and longevity lies in your ability to decline less appealing opportunities. In other words, your ability to say no.
From employees to small business people, we’ve all taken on jobs, projects, or clients we wish we hadn’t.
If you seek positive outcomes for yourself and your business, you must walk from opportunities that don’t mesh and leave them for your more desperate competitors. Here’s how:
5 Strategies To No
Save your Money.
When you have money in the bank, you can be more selective. Debt makes you beholden to others. Debt sometimes creates desperation. Remember that thing they told you as a kid— that animals know when you’re afraid of them? Same goes with the marketplace. When you’re desperate, you can’t say no and the marketplace reacts accordingly by taking advantage of you.
Establish Multiple Revenue Sources
Maybe you have a “normal job” or maybe you’re an entrepreneur like me. Regardless, your ability to be more selective lies not just on money in the bank, but on your ability to cash flow. Ask any business owner and they’ll tell you about the stress of negative cash flow.
Insulate yourself by establishing alternate income sources. When the chips are down with one revenue stream, the others prop you up. I personally have experienced consecutive years of declining revenue from my primary business. Having income from alternative work and investments allowed me to stay afloat all the while saying “no” to less than appealing “opportunities.”
Cultivate A Deep Network
Most opportunities arise from other people. Your first boss from your last job who always saw you as a rising star is now in a position to throw you a million dollar contract. Are you still in touch with her?
In the era of social media, you may think your network is deeply cultivated but don’t kid yourself. Go through your LinkedIn connections and count those who actually do business with you or who’d even take a call.
Don’t get lazy about interfacing with other people. Stay in touch and remember: the opportunity highway moves in both directions.
Continue Learning
There was a time when the payphone repairman was so in demand he didn’t need to know anything besides pay phone repair. Where is he now?
You are probably amazing at something. But is that skill and knowledge set always going to be in demand? One-trick-ponies can’t say “no” when there are limited offers in the marketplace for that one trick.
Constantly Create Demand
Yes, I’m a marketer. You should be too, especially if you want to capture better and more profitable opportunities.
But demand creation isn’t purely marketing. You’ve heard of “word of mouth,” right? Well that’s generally BS. The world doesn’t randomly talk up you and your business. But happy clients do! If you’re smart, you amplify their voice.
And remember, marketing should be done daily and with discipline, not just when you’re in a slow spell. Coca Cola spends 11% of revenue on marketing. Unless you’re more famous than Coke (you’re not!), devote budget to demand creation so that you’ll have so much demand you can say no to business you don’t want.
Saying No
About three years into my aspiring comedy business in the mid 1990s I began turning down gigs. It scared me at first.
“Why say no to a low budget offer,” I recall pondering, “when you’ve quit your job and worked this hard to make the phone ring?”
Then I answered my own question. If you don’t say no to lesser business, you’ll be doing lesser business forever. That’s when I set about insulating myself from opportunities better left untaken. You can do the same thing by employing the Strategies of No.
Damian Mason is a Businessman, Agriculturalist, Speaker, Author, Podcaster, and Sayer of “No” when the opportunity doesn’t fit.Find him at www.damianmason.com