Getting more yeses by listening before pitching

Executive overview

Most people try to get yes by perfecting their pitch. The real lever is listening — deeply enough that you can offer people what they already want.

This workshop delivers a practical framework for getting more yeses in business situations: sales, hiring, vendor negotiations, and partnerships. The core exercise asks you to prepare by thinking through what the other person cares about before you make any request.

Offer people what they want, and they'll say yes.

The four leadership skills

• Inspiration — breathe new life into a situation; you must inspire yourself first, especially when things are going badly
• Recruiting and commitment — getting yes to your proposals; the focus of this workshop
• Planning and execution — once people are on board, direct action and handle breakdowns; start from the end state and work back
• Coaching — bring people to higher performance through a deliberate process, not just instinct or frustration

Yes is most powerful when it sits inside a bigger leadership context — not as a standalone tactic.

The core principle

• People say yes when they hear what they want
• Great leaders are better at offering people the things they already want
• Deep listening is more valuable than any pitch or proposal technique
• Your job in a conversation is to get fully into the other person's world

The preparation exercise

Before any important request, work through these questions:

1. What's your inspiration — why does this matter to you?
2. Who specifically are you asking, and what do you know about them?
3. What do you want from them?
4. What are they like — temperament, pressures, priorities?
5. What are they likely concerned about?
6. What might they be interested in responding to?
7. Write your proposal from the angle of what they want, not what you want

Then: make the request, listen carefully to the response, thank them, and watch for openings to adapt. Repeat steps 2–4 within the conversation if needed.

What people noticed in the exercise

• Getting to the point too slowly
• Over-seriousness; losing the human connection
• Talking without pausing — no room for the other person to respond
• Reinforcing negatives instead of building on positives
• Information-dumping instead of creating space
• The real issue often surfacing only at the very end, because questions weren't asked early enough

Letting the other person set the frame — including the budget — often results in them offering more than you'd have asked for.

Four follow-on practices (one at a time, a week or two each)

1. Misplaced attention Your attention drifts to fears about yourself: being too impatient, too pushy, too eager. Those fears are always present and won't disappear. Notice when attention is on yourself, set it aside, and put it fully on the other person.

2. Projecting no Going in expecting rejection shapes your body language, tone, and expression — and the other person responds to that. Build a real, credible internal story for how and why they might say yes. That shift changes what you project and what they hear.

3. Being bold Ask for dramatically more than feels safe. People want to be heroic — a big request gives them the opportunity. Daniel Burnham: "Make no small plans, for they have little power to stir the hearts of men." Take any request you're planning and consider asking for ten times as much.

4. Embracing rejection No is inevitable. The emotional reaction to no is what derails conversations. Notice the reaction, roll with it, and look for another angle or another person. After enough nos, a yes appears — and when rejection doesn't faze you, your whole presence changes.