Overheard a project manager say "no is a complete sentence" during a client call and it totally clicked for me

She shut down a scope creep request in 3 words without apologizing or explaining and the client actually respected her more for it, has anyone else tried just saying no without the usual fluff?

3 comments

3 Comments

abbyf7918d ago

Oh man, that's genius! I had a client once who kept asking for "just one more tiny revision" after we already agreed on the final version. I finally just said "no, that's outside the scope" and didn't add any excuses or extra words. She paused for a second, then said "okay, fair enough" and moved on. I spent way too many years overexplaining myself and apologizing for boundaries that were totally reasonable. It really does work better when you just state it plain and simple.

charlie19817d ago

Yeah I used to be all about the polite overexplaining but this definitely changed my mind.

noraroberts18d ago

Thats a REALLY good point but honestly sometimes overexplaining is just politeness gone too far. It's a fine line between being helpful and letting people walk all over you.