When Your Prospect Or Customer Says, ‘No!’, What Do You Hear?
Here’s another question that came up recently. “When your prospect or customer says, “No!”, what do you hear? How do you react? Rejected or challenged? What advice would you give to somebody just starting out?”
As a sales motivational speaker I see the negative consequences of sales and business people dealing with this badly every day so here is my advice…
It’s not what is said, it is your interpretation that does the damage. How many people every year die of snake bites? The answer is none. People die of the poison, not the bites. Salespeople are not undone by “No” but by how they interpret that “No.”
If someone says to you, “We have an existing supplier”… what do you hear and what do you think?
Do you hear, like most salespeople, “We have an existing supplier so we’re not interested. Go away!”? And then think, “This job is rubbish, no-one ever has a need for our services.”
Or do you hear, like sales superstars, “We have an existing supplier which means that we’re in the market place and already see value in what you do”? And then think, “All I have to do now is find a way to demonstrate how we can provide a better service.”
One of the keys to being a top salesperson is getting, keeping and cultivating a positive, sales mindset. This can be done by reading good sales books, listening to sales audios, attending sales seminars, mixing with sales winners, employing a sales coach, learning from sales experts, focusing on what’s good about any event….
To someone starting out, avoid negative mood-hoovers,whingers and whiners, associate with sales winners, make sure you get plenty of the good stuff. Protect your positive mindset like it is a pot of gold…
Because it is!
Football, Fantasy & Sales Success
Over the last couple of weeks I have been enjoying watching sports on the TV – most notably the football and the start of Wimbledon. After watching England play half-heartedly against the highly motivated US team and then appallingly against Algeria, they showed some flashes of inspiration against the Slovenians but then sat back in the last 10-15 minutes and were lucky to hold onto their win. One of the commentators said that he would forgive them that and I commented to a friend at the time that the Germans wouldn’t have.
Today, against Germany, we saw an English team bereft of team-spirit, energy, commitment or passion. OK, so they got robbed of a goal at 2-1 down but they didn’t deserve to be in the match based on how they had played and now they’re not. On several occasions, when they lost the ball deep in the Germans half, the English defence were so slow to react and so slow to get back, my Mum would have got there faster. I am sure many people will put up many “excuses” for the result and many others will blame anything, everyone and Capello but at the end of the day the least you would expect is players representing their country to chase the ball down in defence as fast as they can even if they had no chance of getting there. It is was the World Cup after all.
On the BBC commentary they mentioned our “world-class” players and that they wouldn’t swop more than a couple for members of the German team. Well, I would, I’d swop the lot, that way we’d be in the running still. And as for “world-class”…
It doesn’t matter how much talent you have, if you cannot make it work on the night, if you cannot get the result, then it’s irrelevant.
By contrast, look at the tennis match between Mahut and Isner. Two tennis players battling on for 183 games over the course of 11 hours and five minutes. The final set alone accounted for eight hours and 11 minutes of that time – 98 minutes more than the previous longest match on record. Now that’s commitment. Two men who wanted to win. Two men determined to succeed. Two men not prepared to give in.
Or what about Federer’s first round match where the defending champion was forced to mount a courageous comeback against Colombia’s Alejandro Falla? Having faced numerous match points in the third set he eventually won 5-7, 4-6, 7-6 (1), 6-4, 6-0. Federer could have slinked off into the night. He could have packed his kit bag and lost three sets to love. He could have claimed “illness” or some imaginary injury after such a bad showing but he hung in there, kept fighting, got a break and eventually came out on top. Likewise, Isner and Mahut, for three days running, went out on court and slogged it out. Giving anything less than 100% was not an option.
I’m not going to try and second-guess the mindsets of the English football team. Nor am I going to try and imagine what was going on in the heads of Mahut, Isner or Federer. I am going to quite simply ask you a question…
What do you want and how much do you want it? What are you prepared to put in to get it? How passionate are you about ensuring that your dreams become reality?
How To Mess Up A Cold Call
A cold caller has been trying to get hold of me for a few days with the message, “I would like to invite you to an event?” We finally spoke today and he launched into a series of questions (which weren’t all bad) and then a reasonably well crafted and well presented pitch. This guy should be making a lot of sales but, whether he does or not, I bet that he does a lot of head banging on a daily basis and he could do a lot better…
Why?
Lack of research, planning and preparation. You might ask how I know he wasn’t prepared properly? Well, these two little gems to start with…
- His opening gambit, “I don’t know much about your company”. For that, read, he knows nothing.
- Having the nerve to ask me, “What are the main products and services you sell?”
Seriously, can you believe that? And to a sales motivational speaker too. He needs to attend one of my sales seminars!
Intrigued, I asked him how he got my details. The answer was not clear but it was something like, “Well, I have a list that came from research and my manager recommended you and I had a look and…” Oh, come on. No, you didn’t and no he didn’t and we both know that someone bought a list of numbers from somewhere and you rang it without a second thought. You’ve done nothing.
A lot of people think that cold calling doesn’t work anymore. A lot of people think that cold calling never worked. A lot of people think that cold calling doesn’t and won’t work for them. A lot of speakers are making a lot of money perpetuating this myth (watch out for my forthcoming video series where I set the stall straight on that one!).
The truth is that cold calling does not work for many salespeople. And it doesn’t work for several reasons…
- They’re not in the right state of mind.
- They don’t make enough calls.
- They don’t know enough about their prospects.
- They don’t personalize their calls for every individual.
- They don’t ask enough questions.
- They don’t know how they are most likely to be able to help that prospect.
- They don’t listen.
- They don’t tailor their solutions.
- They don’t offer up enough (any) value.
- They give up too easily.
Cold calling can and does work. I am not going to bore you talking about the clients that I have helped to explode their sales results, nor am I going to drone on about how I have helped individuals to create and sustain the lives they desire by being able to attend more proactive sales meetings and sell more when they get there. Instead, I am going to share with you the success a friend of mine, Clifton, who led a professional services sales team by running powerful sales meetings stemming from professional cold calling techniques…
They grew a division taking 700 meetings a year and turning £7m pa to a team running 1000 meetings a year and turning £25m pa within 2 years. On one specific project they had 250 meetings (gained through cold calling) and won £22m worth of revenues.
Cold calling doesn’t work when coupled with powerful sales strategies? As Bart would say, “Eat my shorts!”
But cold calling has to be coupled with powerful, proven sales strategies and it also has to be professional, purposeful and legitimate and this requires effective planning and preparation to even get off the starting line. If you review my list of the 10 reasons cold calling doesn’t work you will see that at least 8 of them (if not arguably all of them) could be addressed or massively improved by doing the right preparation in the first place.
I hope my cold caller reads this article. It might help him. It probably won’t as I don’t think he will think to check my blog, certainly not now… I’m just the guy who spoiled his morning and said that I wasn’t interested.
Check Out This Loser!
Check out this loser…
- 1831 – Lost his job
- 1832 – Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
- 1833 – Failed in business
- 1835 – Sweetheart died
- 1836 – Had nervous breakdown
- 1838 – Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
- 1843 – Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
- 1848 – Lost re-nomination
- 1849 – Rejected for land officer position
- 1854 – Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
- 1856 – Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
- 1858 – Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
Sorry! Did I say loser?
Meet Abraham Lincoln, elected President of the United States of America 1860.
Success in sales, in business and in life means playing the long game and that means cultivating two powerful attributes – tenacity and persistence. If you keep going after everyone else gives up and goes home then you are going to be very successful.
To be successful in 2009 you need more than your fair share of tenacity and persistence. In my role as a sales motivational speaker, sales training expert and sales consultant I meet a lot of successful and inspirational people and they all say the same thing…
There are only three ways to outsell the market,
1. Out work it
2. Out live it, or
3. Out smart it.
Why not all three?
Repetition Is The Mother Of All Skill If You Want Sales Success
“Repetition is the mother of all skill.”
~ Tony Robbins, author of Unlimited Power
In sales seminars and sales training programmes I often talk about the difference between sales skills and sales techniques…
Sales techniques are something external to you, they are something that you hear or that you know. Sales skills are something that you own, they are yours through hard work and practise. And, what’s more, they won’t abandon you in even the toughest of markets.
When I speak at sales conferences many salespeople sit back, cross their arms and ask for “the advanced stuff”. They tell their boss that they don’t need sales training because they already know it, they’ve heard it all before…
Take open questions as an example. Any salesperson with more than about 5 minutes selling experience knows what an open question is – a question that requires more than a “yes” or “no” answer. We all know that open questions start with the words what, where, when, why, how, who which. But how many salespeople put undue sales pressure onto their clients by asking (self-centred) closed questions when they should be asking (well constructed) open questions?
“Most salespeople” is the correct answer.
The ability to ask great questions is one of the critical skills for being a sales superstar yet most salespeople fair badly at best in this area.
Think back to the first time you were taught about open questions. Did you understand it? I’m guessing that you did. Let’s face it, it really isn’t that complicated is it? Most salespeople hear it, think that it makes sense and move on. They hear it, they acknowledge it but they never practise it. They get it intellectually but because they never practised it, it never becomes a skill for them. It never becomes something that they own.
Put under pressure in a sales meeting or in a cold call, and with the adrenaline flowing, they revert to type asking controlling closed questions and “forgetting” to ask carefully constructed open ones.
As Robbins says, “Repetition is the mother of all skill.”
- If you want to be a great golfer you need to practise your swing, over and over.
- If you want to be a great pianist you need to practise your scales, over and over.
- If you want to be a great at anything you need to practise it, over and over.
- If you want to be a great salesperson you need to practise your sales skills, over and over.
If you are a salesperson and you want to outsell your competition and win more clients fast, you need to create an ongoing sales development programme for yourself that includes regular practise of all of the sales training basics.
Don’t wait for your boss to put you on a sales training programme. Don’t wait for your sales results to fall off a cliff. Don’t wait until it’s nearly too late to start. Start now and make regular sales training practise of your selling skills part of your daily habits. You’ll be amazed what you can achieve from a mere 15 minutes a day practising your basic sales skills.
If you’re a sales manager, sales leader or business owner then you need to think about how you can help your sales team to practise their core sales skills regularly. One-off training is not enough by itself. You need to create ongoing sessions and exercises for them to participate in, both individually and as a team. One company I know bought several copies of my Objection handling book Objections! Objections! Objections! and then “drilled” the answers in sales meetings. They added £1 million to their bottom line.
Not convinced it’s worth the effort? Not convinced you can get the same results? not convinced that you buy into this whole practise argument? What would Tiger Woods, David Beckham and Johnny Wilkinson tell you to do?
I rest my case.
How Robert Fed The Ducks!
For the last few days I have been having a long weekend staying in Grassmere in the Lake District. Beautiful. And for once the weather has been beautiful too. Mid afternoon today I was sitting drinking a tea in Bowness by Lake Windermere and a little family (Mum, Dad, two year old boy) arrived to have refreshments too. They looked hot, thirsty and ready for tea. Mum sat down and Dad asked her what she wanted. “Tea,” she replied. He then turned to the boy, “Robert, what would you like?”
The two year old, wearing blue shorts and a white t-shirt and still standing up puffed his chest out, looked his Dad in the eye and stated, “Feed ducks!” Dad looked straight back at him and asked again, “What would you like to drink?”
“Feed ducks,” came back the reply.
“We can feed the ducks afterwards Robert but we are sitting down for a nice drink now, what would you like?”
“Feed ducks,” Robert shot back decisively and like a boy who was not to be messed with.
“Robert, we are having a drink now so sit down and tell Daddy what you would like,” said Mum.
“Feed ducks,” retorted Robert.
“Robert, we are having a drink now,” said Mum, “If you don’t behave yourself there will be trouble.” “Yes Robert,” agreed Dad, “Decide now or you will be sorry.”
“Feed ducks.”
“Robert, if you don’t behave we won’t have a drink,” said Mum.
“Feed ducks.”
Various items were picked up off the table, Mum stood up and Robert and the family disappeared off towards the edge of the lake where they stood peacefully and Robert got to… feed ducks.
As a motivational speaker and sales training consultant I see a lot of salespeople every day who could do with a shot of Robert’s tenacity and persistence. In sales seminars, I see a lot of salespeople who could do with a jolt of Robert’s determination and purity of focus. Robert got what he wanted by deciding what it was and then taking action until he achieved it. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t pretty but it worked.
And a lot of salespeople and business builders that I know could do with being a bit more like Robert.
Too many salespeople spend their lives looking for a reason why they cannot ask for the deal, why now is not the time to close and why the client might say no. In my sales seminars, I teach cutting-edge sales techniques that take the pressure off your prospect and help them to make the right decisions for them. I help salespeople to get away from ABC (Always Be Closing) and apply truly consultative selling techniques and strategies…
But as Robert demonstrated, selling is all about tenacity and persistence and sometimes it doesn’t matter how you do it, you just have to take action.
How Important Is My Title When Selling?
Gavin
You came into our offices around a month ago to deliver a morning’s training and said we could contact you with any thoughts/questions we had following the day – hence me getting in contact! I am a fairly junior salesman, currently employed in a pre-sales role i.e. cold calling companies to set up appointments for the sales team. My question is around job titles – in your experience, what difference does a job title make to a persons’ success or indeed their perceived chance of success?
Just going on my own thoughts, the title for my role in my employment contract is ‘Junior Sales Executive’. I feel however that having this on my email signature would probably jeapardise my chance of success – might a prospect see that and assume that I am not senior enough to be dealing with? A further thought is the impression that there is sometimes a stigma attached to being called a salesman – ie nobody in my business calls themselves that on their business card – everyone is a ‘Systems Consultant’. Given my more junior role I describe myself as being in Business Development.
I wondered what your thoughts were? I think that its mostly something for the salesman rather than the prospect to worry about…
What a great question. What difference does a job title make to your success / perceived chance of success? I think that you already know part of the answer with your insertion of the word perceived… I will answer this in two parts…
1) To the salesperson themselves.
Many people, including many salespeople, have limiting beliefs about what being a salesperson means about them. Many people associate negative meaning to being a salesperson. When I speak at sales conferences I often ask attendees what the general public thinks of salespeople and they say things like “pushy, aggressive, slimy, sell their grandma…”. With beliefs like these it is not surprising that many salespeople would rather have a card entitled “account manager” or “account director” rather than “salesperson”.
Clearly, this is not reality. Whatever your title, this does not change who you are and what you can deliver. It does not change how much value you can add for your clients. It does not change your ability to build relationships, grow your network and SELL.
Many salespeople do obsess about titles and how a better title would help them to sell more but then again many salespeople think the same about their territory, their products, their prices and their education. These kinds of thought can have a huge negative impact on your psyche… don’t let them!
2) To the prospect.
Titles can sometimes make a real difference to prospects. Prospects have biases and prejudices the same as everyone else and can make snap decisions about others the same as you do. Some prospects might be turned off by the word “sales” and prefer to think that they were getting “service”. Others may like to think that they are dealing with someone senior and hence prefer a title that reflects this.
The reality of course, is that once you are through the door they will judge you on who you are and no fancy titles or strings of letters after your name will hide the fact if you are a no-hoper. It’s fair to say that sometimes directors have more success setting up appointments with directors than salespeople but then is this because they have the title or because they act like they have the title?
At the end of the day, by far the most important thing is having the right attitude and making the call about your client and not you. Most clients only care about themselves and their business. Why should they care about you or your title?
More thoughts…
You asked the question about the word salesman on the card and I think that some clients would see this as refreshingly honest and others as a turn-off. Conversely speaking, using something else when you are plainly a salesperson may well make no difference and could even make things worse… calling a lion a horse does not mean that you want to be feeding it sugar lumps, does it?
As for the junior thing, yes this could effect your clients and their impression of you particularly initially. If this is an internal title does it really need to be on your cards? This is probably not in anyone’s interests really.
So what does all of this mean?
- Your title may effect people’s impressions about you and may awaken their personal prejudices and preconceptions.
- Your title may effect you and your self-worth but you must not let it. You are not words on a piece of paper.
- Anyone with any title can sell anything and you must not get hung up about this.
- You don’t need to give a title when cold calling… I never have.
- Why not consider not having no title at all? Or like some companies having multiple titles for differing circumstances?
But mostly, don’t fight with reality – you always lose. If you are stuck with a title get over it and get on with it. Anyone can sell with any title at any time and analysing these things for too long may negatively affect your mindset and your sales results…
The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Week 12, The Final
The final of the Apprentice. Cool, professional Kate versus passionate, entrepreneurial Yasmina. Their brief, design and pitch a new brand of chocolate. Sir Alan said they were his best candidates ever and that it was his hardest decision yet. Either could have won. Yasmina did.
So that done (!), I thought I would sum up some of the core sales training lessons from this year’s Sales Apprentice…
On sales motivation and mindset…
- Top sales performers perform, they don’t talk about performing. Sales is not about what you say you’re going to deliver. Sales is all about what you actually do deliver.
- Sales success is all about action. Success in sales does not come to those who watch the game. Success in sales comes to those who pick up the ball and play their hearts out, right the way to the final whistle.
- Maintain your focus because sales superstars are focused. They know what they want. They work out how to get it. And they take action to achieve it.
- Sales success is about taking responsibility – responsibility for yourself, your sales activities and your sales results.
- Sales success is directly related to effort.
On prospecting…
- Know your client, know your client, k-n-o-w your client.
- Set objectives for all sales activities and prospecting calls.
- Get proactive and get your prospecting done. Procrastination and lethargy are the enemy of successful new business winners.
- Get yourself in the right mental state for cold calling. Attitude is your ability to access your skills.
- Know where to expend your energy. Working smarter is the route to success.
- Know your product. Know your product. Know your product.
On selling…
- Under promise and over deliver. Delivering on your promises is essential in any business.
- Develop trust and credibility if you want top class client relationships.
- Always give 100%. Nothing short of 100% if good enough if you want to be a sales superstar.
- When negotiating, sound like you believe in what you’re saying and plan your negotiation tactics and strategies.
- Sell on value and not price.
- Maximize the impact and effectiveness of your sales activities.
- Understand your clients, their markets and their needs. Your sales presentations need to be matched and tailored to suit their wants and needs and not just your own.
- Ask better questions. Listen harder. Seek to fully understand your clients.
- Know that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.
On presenting…
- To make powerful and persuasive sales presentations you need to know your stuff, you need to know what you’re presenting, you need a solid and proven structure.
- Know your audience. Know your audience. Know your audience.
- Do your preparation and planning.
- Have a call to action. People need an incentive and encouragement to buy now.
- Practise. Practise. Practise.
- Give 100% and be yourself.
On sales leadership…
- Watch out for sales terrorists in your business who focus everyone on the negative and undermine your business. In today’s turbulent economy you cannot afford to have negativity like this in your teams.
- Utilize the skills of your team effectively. Different people have different strengths and different weaknesses and using these to best advantage is key.
- Be approachable and personable so that your team will communicate with you, confide in and support you.
- Encourage involvement and participation and create team spirit.
- Take responsibility and make decisions.
- Judge the reality of a situation not just what you believe it to be.
- Learn to delegate. Being a great leader is not about being able to do everything yourself.
- Get the right salespeople into your business to build high performance sales teams and get great sales results.
So that’s it for another year. What did you learn and what are you going to do differently to get the sales results that you want?
Get The Sales Superstar Mindset, Video 3 Of 3
Part 3 of Getting the Sales Superstar mindset. Sales success is about both skills and attitudes. In this the third video in this three part series we unlock the keys to the sales mindset for achieving sales success. Sales training tips and strategies for developing the mindset of a sales winner.
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