It turns out that you can judge a book by its cover. In this case, Go for No! in which the premise of the book is summarised in the title. If you want success, don’t chase the yes—chase the no. It’s only from chasing no that you will get sufficient learning to enable the yes’s to occur.
We can often fall into the trap of failing to ask for something because we’re afraid of a negative response. This bold assessment that we know what the other person will say (how often do you know what you’ll say) stops us from creating the opportunity for them to say either ‘no’ or ‘yes’. How dangerous is it to hold back on a question because we can’t afford to hear no, yet by doing so we don’t allow the very yes we so desperately need.
This book describes why setting a target to achieve a certain number of no responses will automatically generate the required number of yes responses.