5 Tips For Salespeople (pt 3) – Go For The NO!
Notes
In Sales, Your Job is To Go For the No
Believe it or not, you should constantly go for the no from potential clients. If you’ve been in sales for any time, when you go for the no from the prospect your odds of closing the sale tends to increase. If you constantly go for a yes, your odds greatly decrease. This sounds counterintuitive, but it’s absolutely true.
You can work to go for the no by doing certain things during the sales process, starting with the initial engagement. When they first call, your goals it to find out if they in fact meant to call you, should have called you, or should not have called you. “Go for the no” simply means pushing prospects away from you so they feel comfortable selling themselves to you.
You’ll need to work into your conversation phrases like, “Tell me why we should be working together?” and “What makes you think we can do this for you?” These statements make the prospect tell you why you’re qualified to work with them and why they are qualified to work with you. Once you determine this is a good fit, you must start to work on pain. Refer back to two episodes ago where we talked about pain.
Related Episodes:
Top 3 Powerful Sales Tips For Introverted Salespeople
3 Sales Call Tips – Dealing with Hostile People
10 Additional Tips to “Go For No”
Podcast recorded on Squadcast.fm
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Music: "Clydesdale Funk" by Cast of Characters, written by: Dustin Ransom.
The Episode
Rob 0:08
Welcome back, everybody to The Slow Pitch. And we are on part three of the top five tips for salespeople. Again, this could be for beginners, intermediate, and advanced even. But these are the tips, I would, I would recommend anybody to get started into sales. So let’s get started.
V/O 0:22
You’re listening to The Slow Pitch Podcast, a podcast about selling less and closing more.
Rob 0:29
Alright, so far, we’ve talked about pain. We’ve talked about learning the personality types, and how that affects you and how you should be developing those skills that will help you understand who their personality style is, and adapting yours to match or speak to them in their language.
Rob 0:44
The third part of this series is to remind you to work harder to go for the no than to go for a yes, I know, it’s gonna sound very counterintuitive. If you’re newer in sales, like I’m supposed to, I’m supposed to close sales, aren’t I? So you’re telling me I’m supposed to work harder to say no, or to go for the no rather than it is to close the deal? That doesn’t make sense. No, it doesn’t make sense. But that’s why it works. So here’s the thing.
Rob 1:08
Your goal is to eliminate the people on your list every day, every day. That’s your goal. And until somebody says no, no, no, no, no, no, I’m serious. I’m buying basically, is what they’re saying, then you’re selling otherwise you’re not selling your goal is your initial conversations should be to try to eliminate so your questions are going to be about eliminating them. And I don’t mean by you know, started.
Rob 1:32
Here’s one thing I will say, I don’t like it when salespeople start out with Well, what’s your budget, it’s a little early to talk to me about budget, you don’t even know if I have a bleeding neck as I referred to earlier, right? You don’t even know if I’m ready to buy. You don’t even know if I’m just fishing. If I’m fishing, find out if I’m fishing, don’t ask me what’s my budget, because I’m not gonna tell you about the budget is right. Now it’s time to go for the no.
Rob 1:51
So think about it in terms of if your job is to eliminate a potential buyer, when they reach out to you. They’re obviously already done the research, they know who you are, they want to talk to you. They have picked up the phone, or they’ve emailed you and they say I want to talk to you. So you know, they’re halfway there. Right? The next step for you is to take that call, take that email and convert it to a no first or a yes.
Rob 2:17
So here’s how that’s gonna work when they call you some of your questions. Well, that’s interesting. You called her and reached out to us. Tell me why you Why did you call us I mean, you’ve there’s a lot of companies out there, what how did you find us? And why? Why us? And let them kind of start to tell you why. Okay, now they get they get you. Okay? All right. So, you know, you’ve confirmed that because they, they understand they’ve done the research, you can tell
Because those may be indicative of them not wanting to buy, right or not needing to buy. And on more than one occasion, I can tell you that very frequently. I will tell people, I don’t think you’re ready to buy at this time. And here’s why. But when you are, I’m happy to answer any other questions and just reach back out to me, it’s fine.
Rob 2:37
That’s your goal, you need to confirm that they’re going to be able to or want to move forward to the next step. And you’re going to confirm that several times. Your job is to not to assume a yes, your job is to assume a no to begin with. Go for the no. Stay there. Make them confirm and make them push you to go the other way. And they will confirm if they’re ready to buy. Now you they’re going to do it. And when you do this, this is part of the slowdown part, right.
Now, your next few questions are going to be about well, what can I help you with? How can I help you, and they’re gonna say, one of a couple of different things, you’re gonna say something like was SO and SO told me to talk to you, because they referred me over because whatever, okay, that’s great. And your response could very easily be, I’m not so sure that we’re gonna be able to do for you what we did for them.
Rob 2:55
But let’s talk some more, let’s find out. And what you’re doing is you’re always coming across as being I’m not so sure I’m not so sure. It’s kind of like dating, if you come into meeting that person for the first time, and you’re all gung ho about let’s let’s get married, you’re not gonna, that’s not gonna go very far. They’re gonna, like loop out. So it’s the same kind of a thing. Your job is to make them think, I don’t know if this is the right, because that’s what they’re already thinking.
Rob 3:20
They’ve called you because they think you are. But they’ve also called you to find out is this guy, or is this person? Is this company? Legit? Do they? Can they do what they say they can do? And they’re trying to find that out as well. And so some of the things you can do is ask them some questions to find out what it is that they did and why they like you. And then you need to start to find out whether or not to have any sort of pain. So I would go back to the pain piece and start asking some of those questions.
Your job is to do all of these things to get them to slow down. explain to you why they’re a good fit for you. Can you do the work? Yeah, probably. But are they going to do what they need to do to get to the next step? And if they’re not willing to do that, then you’re not on even footing if you will, right? You’re not working together to close the deal. It’s it’s you’re trying to push it and so the more you try to push it, the worse you’re worse position you are in keep that in mind. Again, this is a reminder, your job is to go for the no, not a yes. That doesn’t mean you don’t get a yes, that doesn’t mean you don’t work to get there.
Rob 3:46
At some point, what it means is your job is to keep pushing for a no until they say no, no, this is what we’re in, they confirm for you in their body language in their, what they’re saying and what they’re asking for, in what they want and their next steps. When you ask them, What do you think we should do next? After you’ve asked them a few questions?
Rob 5:22
And they say, Well, I mean, I’ve had this where I was sitting in a meeting, and we went through all the questions. They had pain. They had the budget, I could tell, you know, there were still things that they talked about and expected to be this much. And we went through all of that. And we got to the end. And I said, Well, what do you what do you want to do?
Rob 5:34
And they go, Well, how does this work? Like, how does one work? And they go, Well, do I do I write a check? Do you guys take credit? Like, how does this work? And I said, Will you mean like right now? Like you don’t mean you want to start working together right now? And he goes, Yeah, I do. Okay, so what does that mean? And then he he explained to me, while you say we could do this, we could do this? We could do this? And that’s what I want to do. Let’s do it. What? And you said it was about this much? What’s the number I need to run on my check? And I’m like, why not gonna argue with the guy right?
Rob 6:05
So he confirmed he pushed and he made the sale for himself. That’s the slow down part. It works every time. Remember, work harder to go for the no than to get a yes. And I don’t even have to say it. But remember, slow down and you’ll close more.
V/O 6:21
Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at (608) 708-SLOW. That’s (608) 788-7569. Or you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More.
Rob 7:11
Thanks, as always, for listening today. If you’d like this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at The Slow Pitch. We were mixed today as always by Johnny Polakis. And we were produced by High Gravity Studios. Music credits and other notes are in the show notes section on TheSlowPitch.com And we’ll be back with another episode soon.