Someone's always coming by the dealership selling "plate lunches." Good ole', waist-busting southern cooking such as Smothered Chicken with rice and gravy or Fried Fish and Crawfish Etoufee-these plates are so loaded down with food, you can literally hear the Styrofoam cracking when they hand it to you. 
Most vendors sell their dinners the same way; they walk up to a mass of salespeople and ask, "Does anyone want to buy a plate lunch today?" With a sample dinner to view, a few salespeople cave in, the vendor makes a quick buck, and they move on to the the next dealership-all vendors sell the same way, except for Miss Ginger. 

Miss Ginger walks through the dealership and asks the same anyone wanna buy a plate lunch question, but what separates her from the rest of the vendors is she waits. She doesn't move on after hearing a mass No from a group of people standing around.  As a matter of fact, she asks the question twice and sees it once more. First, she asks everyone who is standing there to buy a dinner; then she asks the same question to each person, and finally,  Miss Ginger will not move until each person looks her in the eye and tells her No....or Yes.  

Even though I've never bought one from her, Miss Ginger always asks me to buy a dinner. After what seemed like her 15th time asking me to buy and me declining, my curiosity provoked me to ask her about her technique. "Baby, it's simple," she said, "I'd rather hear a No than assume a No. Sure, I hear all of the No's, but I've realized that if I stick around to hear and see each person tell me No, I can sell a few more dinners. My house and my Cadillac are paid for because I've made it a practice to not run away after hearing the first No. I want to make sure everyone has a chance to taste a slice of heaven, so I ask each person once more and I don't move on until they look me in my eye and tell me their answer." With a cajun accent, she laughingly says, "Most people can't tell Miss Ginger No a 3rd time." 

No may be a universal word, but it doesn't have to be your universal answer. You're going to hear No today-hopefully quite often, but hearing the No's is only an embarkment toward making a sale. Seeing a No, however, is the expedition toward discovering a delivery. 

If you're going to find a future in Yeses, then you must first risk asking, hearing, and more importantly seeing the present No's. 

I'll see you next time on the Blacktop.