Latest / Closing the Deal with Fexingo: Sales, Negotiation, and Revenue Conversations for Operators / The Sales Rep Who Won by Asking for the No
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a sales story I've been turning over in my head for a few weeks now, and it involves a rep who won a seven-figure deal by doing something that sounds almost insane on the surface. Luna: Okay, you have my attention. What'd she do, walk into the meeting and insult the buyer? Lucas: Close, but not quite. She asked for the 'no.' Actively, explicitly invited the buyer to reject her proposal. Her name is Jenna Cortez, she sells enterprise SaaS — think supply chain optimization software. She'd been chasing a manufacturing company for about six months. Demos were good, the champion was bought in, but procurement kept stalling. Every call ended with 'We're still reviewing.' Luna: The classic gray zone. No yes, no no, just indefinite deferral. That's the worst place to be in enterprise sales. Lucas: Exactly. So Jenna scheduled one more call with the procurement director, a guy named Marcus. And instead of pitching, she opened with: 'Marcus, I've been thinking a lot about this. I think the right answer for you right now might be no. And I want to give you permission to say that out loud.' Luna: Wow. That's bold. Did he say no? Lucas: He laughed. Then he sat back and said, 'Okay, fine. No. Here's why.' And then he unloaded six real objections he'd been sitting on — budget timing, integration risk, a competing internal project. Jenna hadn't gotten any of that in the previous pitches. Once those objections were on the table, she could actually address them. She closed the deal three weeks later. Luna: So by giving him permission to reject, she got the truth. It's almost like the no is a pressure-release valve. When you stop trying to force a yes, the buyer stops defending and starts revealing. Lucas: That's exactly the mechanism. And there's a nice psychological framework behind it. It maps to what Robert Cialdini calls 'commitment and consistency.' The idea is that people feel internal pressure to align their actions with their stated commitments. When Jenna invites Marcus to say no, she's asking him to commit to a position. Once he's on record saying 'no,' his brain wants to justify that position — so he produces reasons. Those reasons are gold for a sales rep. Luna: Right, because otherwise he could just keep saying 'we're still reviewing' forever. That non-answer costs him nothing. But saying no requires a justification. Lucas: Precisely. And there's a secondary effect: cognitive dissonance. If Marcus has been polite and engaged for six months, then suddenly says no, that creates a mismatch. His brain wants to resolve it. So either he changes his mind — or he gives you the real objections so you can fix them. Either way, you get movement. Luna: I've seen this work in a much smaller context. I had a vendor once who kept emailing me about a demo. I kept ignoring. Finally she wrote, 'I'm going to assume you're not interested unless you tell me otherwise. Is that fair?' I felt compelled to respond. I ended up scheduling the call. Lucas: That's the same principle, just softer. You're giving the person an off-ramp from inaction. The key is that Jenna's version is more direct — she actually uses the word 'no.' Most reps are terrified of that word. They think it's final. But a no that surfaces real objections is infinitely more valuable than a maybe that never resolves. Luna: So when does this tactic work best? I can imagine it backfiring if the buyer is truly on the fence and you push them toward no. Lucas: Great question. It's not for early-stage prospecting. You'd never open with 'I think you should say no.' That's absurd. Jenna used it at a late stage, after significant engagement, when the signals were mixed. The buyer had enough context to make a real decision. If you try this too early, you're just throwing away a lead. Timing is everything. Luna: So the prerequisite is genuine interest and enough information for a decision. What about the risk that the buyer just says 'okay, no' and hangs up? Lucas: That risk is real, but it's lower than you'd think. Jenna's research showed that in enterprise deals where the buyer has already invested time in demos and meetings, they're unlikely to flat-out reject without explanation. They have too much ego invested. They want to justify their time. So when you give them an out, they often take it — but they also explain why. And that explanation is your path forward. Luna: It also changes the power dynamic. Suddenly you're not the desperate rep trying to close. You're the confident advisor who's okay with either outcome. That paradoxically makes you more attractive. Lucas: Exactly. And Jenna told me that after the call, Marcus actually thanked her. He said, 'No one ever gives me room to say no. I appreciate you making this easy.' That's the counterintuitive result. By asking for the no, you build trust. You signal that you respect their agency. Luna: I want to dig into the phrasing. Jenna said 'I think the right answer for you right now might be no.' That's careful. It's not 'I think you should say no.' It's 'I think this might be the right answer.' That's a hypothesis, not a directive. It invites the buyer to confirm or correct. Lucas: Yes. The language matters enormously. You want to lower the buyer's defenses, not trigger them. A framing like 'I've been reflecting on our conversations, and I wonder if the honest answer here is no' is softer. It's exploratory. You're not telling them what to think, you're inviting them to be honest. Luna: And you have to be genuine. If the buyer senses you're doing a scripted tactic, it'll backfire. It has to come from a real place of wanting to understand. Lucas: Absolutely. Jenna's success came partly because she truly believed that a no now was better than a maybe in six months. She was willing to walk away. That authenticity is what disarmed Marcus. If she'd been faking it, he would have smelled it. Luna: So let's talk about the flip side. When does this approach fail? Lucas: It fails when the buyer isn't emotionally invested. If you've only had one call and you try this, they'll say no and never think about you again. It also fails if you have a weak value proposition. If the product doesn't solve a real problem, the no is just a no. The objections won't be fixable. And it fails if you're not prepared to handle the objections you uncover. Jenna had to go back and rework the implementation timeline and the pricing model. If she hadn't been able to do that, the no would have stuck. Luna: So it's not a magic wand. It's a diagnostic tool. It reveals whether the deal is savable or truly dead. Lucas: Exactly. And that's valuable in itself. Sales reps waste enormous energy on deals that will never close. If you can surface a real no early, you can reallocate your time to better opportunities. Jenna's approach is as much about pipeline hygiene as it is about closing. Luna: Speaking of pipeline hygiene, I read a study recently — from Gong, I think — that said deals where the buyer says 'no' explicitly at some point in the process actually close at a higher rate than deals where they never say no. Something like 15 to 20 percent higher. Lucas: That's fascinating. I hadn't seen that number, but it makes sense. If a buyer is willing to say no, they're engaged. They have opinions. A silent buyer is often a disengaged buyer. The no is a sign of life. Luna: There's also a behavioral economics concept here — the 'endowment effect.' Once a buyer invests time in evaluating your product, they start to feel ownership. Saying no means losing that investment. So they resist saying no, but they also resist saying yes. The 'ask for the no' forces them to confront that tension. Lucas: That's a great connection. And it ties back to what Cialdini calls 'scarcity' — the idea that when something might be taken away, it becomes more valuable. By offering to walk away, you're implicitly creating scarcity. 'If I don't buy now, I might lose the opportunity.' It's subtle, but it's there. Luna: So for a rep listening right now, what's the one takeaway? Should they try this on their next stalled deal? Lucas: I'd say: pick one deal that's been stuck for at least three months, where you have a champion but procurement is dragging. Schedule a call with the decision-maker. And in that call, after the usual pleasantries, say something like: 'I've been thinking about where we are, and I want to ask you directly — is this something you realistically see moving forward, or is the honest answer right now no?' Then shut up. Let them fill the silence. Luna: The silence is key. Most reps talk too much when they're nervous. If you ask that question and then pause, you force the buyer to respond. They can't just deflect. Lucas: Right. And if they say no, you ask 'Can you help me understand why?' Then you listen. You might save the deal. Or you might save yourself two months of wasted effort. Either way, you win. Luna: I love that framing. You win either way. That's the mindset shift. You're not hoping for a yes. You're seeking clarity. Lucas: And clarity is underrated in sales. We get so focused on the number that we forget the value of knowing where you stand. Jenna told me that after that call, her whole team started using the technique. Their win rate didn't change dramatically, but their cycle time dropped by about 20 percent. They were cutting dead deals faster and focusing on live ones. Luna: That's a real operational impact. Shorter cycles mean more reps capacity, better forecasting. It's not just a clever trick. Lucas: Exactly. It's a systematic approach to pipeline management disguised as a closing technique. Luna: By the way, if you're getting value from these episodes, our listener support really helps keep them ad-free. A couple of dollars a month on buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo makes a tangible difference in keeping this going. Lucas: Yeah, it genuinely does. And we don't run ads, so that direct support is what lets us keep diving into stories like Jenna's instead of selling ad slots. Luna: Absolutely. So back to Jenna — she mentioned that after the close, Marcus told her the 'no' question was the reason he finally engaged. He said it felt like she was on his side, not just trying to sell him. Lucas: That's the ultimate compliment. You've aligned your incentives with the buyer's. You're not adversarial. You're collaborative. And that's the foundation of any good negotiation. Luna: So to wrap up: asking for the no isn't about being negative. It's about being honest, creating clarity, and often, paradoxically, opening the door to yes. Lucas: Well said. And if you ever find yourself in a stalled deal, consider it. The worst that happens is you save yourself some time. The best that happens is you close a deal you thought was dead.