Getting to 'No' | Hacker News Reader

Getting to 'No'

jacquesmattheij.com

62 pointshawke20 comments

This reminded me a little bit of Stephen Potter's "Gamesmanship" advice on how to become known as a master chess player: start with an arbitrary 4, 5 moves and then resign.

Before resigning, spend a lot of time muttering things like "I could go there, but of course he'd get me 10 moves later", etc.

It will seem that you are a genius, able to look far ahead into the game, processing a multitude of scenarios.

Knowing the boundaries of your expertise, knowing when to pass a job on to an entity that is more experienced and knowing which customers are a 'good fit' and which are not is a winning strategy.

Giving up on a game like chess before you've even properly tried is a losing strategy.

Playing with your customers as though the success or failure of what you undertake with them is a game is also a losing strategy.

I really don't see the analogy between playing games and running a business, if you approach your customers as though it is fine to learn on the job when you know in advance that you do not have the required knowledge or skills to perform the job then I really hope you will not be found wanting.

Likely you will end up in court for non-performance and likely you will lose.

You should take your business and your relationships with your customers a lot more serious than you would take a game of chess.

It's not a serious analogy by any means, nor am I suggesting that you should run your business or career in the same way Potter conducted his leisure hours (which were hysterical, at least in his telling of them).

It was just what came to mind immediately when I started reading your post.

I actually started reading thinking that you were going to talk about Jim Camp's "Start with No" negotiation technique, but your point was entirely different.

Can't be helped what you're reminded of, but recognize the differences here. Your chess strategy is a short-run winner but a long-run loser, while Jacques' business strategy is the opposite--a short-run loser but a long-run winner.

As I see it, "Getting to no" is achieved one of two ways.

1) you can connect them with the right fit. In this case you are forgoing the immediate sale, but even though you aren't the right fit for that person, at least you are good at something (connecting) and maybe will make a better sale from a referral, or even from them in the future should their business change.

2) you can try to price them out (raise your price). If they don't take it, then you don't risk your reputation by ruining their business with a bad-fitting product. If they do take it, the lost future sale(s) mentioned in #1 is compensated by the higher price.

If you try that against someone who knows how to play chess, he'll think you're an idiot. Even before the mumbling. Hell, one arbitrary move at the start and you have a good chance to look like a complete novice.

This is one of my all-time favorite anti-patterns. Whether it's Linus's "rejecting kernel patches is one of the important things I do" or Michael Porter's "strategy is about the things you choose not to do" or Miles Davis' "jazz is about the notes you leave out", no is an often overlooked but extremely powerful tool. quotes paraphrased

> Michael Porter's "strategy is about the things you choose not to do"

Steve Jobs went on at some length about this as well.

I recall reading that he said to the CEO of Nike something like "You make a lot of good products, and a lot of crap. Get rid of the crap."

Besides the word "no", the concept in this article is completely different.

Jobs and Linus were talking about being discriminating in the things they choose to do for the sake of the things themselves.

The article this thread is based upon is about building trust from potential clients by being honest with them and helping them to solve their problems altruistically rather than trying to line your pockets by taking on work that you're not qualified to do well. This is more of a real-life use of karma.

I disagree completely. The article is one example of the "sometimes not doing something is better than doing it" anti-pattern, it just is in the sales category.

Sure, at a certain level of abstraction, everything is related to everything. The situations in which you would use the design methodology of simplification really has nothing to do with the reason the original author of this article is recommending not taking on some client work.

On top of all of this, why do you use the term "anti-pattern"?

I don't think that word means what you think it means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

I still disagree :)

Who said anything about simplification? I think "the design methodology of simplification" is a) not what the article is about IMO, and b) orthogonal to the idea of the power of not trying to do everything that crosses your desk.

The anti-pattern is that in many circles it's essentially a best practice to do everything. Sales guys sell everything, even if it's not in the wheelhouse of the company. Software guys add features that they should probably have the courage to say no to. Musicians over-do their music (ie trying to show off). So that's the anti-pattern; people realize that sometimes saying no is better than the alleged best practice of always finding a way to say yes.

I will admit I certainly could've worded things better, but I was writing from my phone and that tends to decrease my willingness to craft better comments.

That said, the book "Getting to Yes" which is the inspiration for the article's title isn't at all about always saying yes. It's about principled negotiation. It is an amazing book; there's a reason it's standard fare in the MBA world. I would argue that someone practicing principled negotiation would say no in the situation of the article as well; in that sense the articles title is kinda just a cheesy headline (but still nice, it made me click on it).

One way of getting to "no" is to put forward a high price, particularly if it's something you don't actually want to do.

What I like to do is put a number at about double what I consider it to be worth. This basically reflects the fact that I'd be spending weekends working, but also isn't so high as to be insulting - we're not talking huge numbers here.

The upside is they might say "yes", in which case you're getting what you consider a good rate for your time.

The downside is that they might say "yes", in which case they may expect higher quality for the price that you put forward.

This is also troublesome if you don't know the going rate, and unintentionally put a low-ball offer in.

Clearly if you want to just say "no", and have no interest whatsoever, then telling the client "no... but" is probably a better option.

"The downside is that they might say "yes", in which case they may expect higher quality for the price that you put forward."

I have seen this in action at big outsourcing firms. It has almost always results is poor relations afterwards.

Right, that's because charging a really high fee for something that you don't know how to do puts you in the "dishonest" category very easily. Rarely do you want to pay some contractors to learn on your dime.

Hell, if someone is going to pay me to learn something new, I don't normally charge them EXTRA for the privilege.

That's the passive-aggressive way.

If you're not ideally suited to something, refer someone who is. I've wasted alot of time dealing with vendors who played these sorts of stupid games -- it's really frustrating, and lowers my overall opinion of the vendor.

The other downside is spending 25% of your engineering time over the next two years supporting a high-profile client with requirements that vastly exceed all your other clients. It's an easy way to get spread very thin.

I recently began experiencing and practicing exactly what this post describes. The startup I co-founded began receiving leads and of course not all leads are a good fit for our product. I'm a developer and have never been in a sales role previously, but when you are the only salaried employee and a co-founder, you do what needs to be done. So I've been following up with the leads and in a five minute conversation it becomes clear if our solution is the best solution. When I started, I made the mistake of trying to convince everyone that our product could do everything they wanted. Then I realized this tactic was not only exhausting, but ultimately would lead to dissatisfied, short-term customers. Once I made the switch to using the same techniques the OP describes, not only was the sales process far less stressful, but I found myself enjoying talking to people and just trying to help them. If our solution is a good fit, great, but if it isn't, I'm not going to BS you. I have been thanked over and over for being transparent and honest, something people apparently aren't generally used to when dealing with sales people. At the end of the day I'd much rather be a helpful person than a sales person.

You should definitely read Porter's "What is Strategy", it should blow your mind: http://hbr.org/product/what-is-strategy/an/96608-PDF-ENG (paywall)

It will help you develop a clear strategy for your company / product; once you have that in place it becomes very easy for you (or anyone using your activity maps) to decide whether something is a good fit or not. It's because of this book that we have a "Strategic Fit" rank which we use in our product management process. The only others are estimated time (cost) and estimated value (revenue).

Jason Cohen blogged about this effect surrounding Bill Erickson, a Wordpress consultant, who turns down clients when he knows he can't be sure they will have a great experience using his services:

http://blog.asmartbear.com/improving-the-worst.html

If you're looking to read up on negotiation, "Getting to Yes" (mentioned by Jacques) is good but a bit warm/fuzzy.

For a first book, try Wharton prof Richard Shell's Bargaining for Advantage: http://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation-Strat...

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