Should you take ‘No’ as final in Sales?
In any sales deal there comes a point where the potential customer will tell you about the deal: Yes or No.
Never ever take the first time No.
- Ask for an explication.
- Challenge the decision taken.
- Determine if there is an alternative solution or a compromise.
- Try to reach a higher placed officer in the company.
- Offer a different product.
- Offer additional services your competitor can’t offer.
- Make a single one-time offer.
- Introduce fear.
Checking your website
In order to know if there is still some interest lurking around at the prospect company, you could verify the visiting activity of the company on your website.
If there are still visitors the deal could not be completely lost.
Then the quest is to find your advocates within the company.
In any case it will give you additional hope and reasons to continue.
More than just the missing the deal
Now you need to know how deep or how much you want to offer to get the order.
It is not solely the winning of this deal, but also the stronger your competitor can become due to winning this order:
- Another important reference
- A larger production volume allowing for lower purchase pricing or costs
- An additional geographic sales area
- The possible recurrent future revenue
- The possible follow-up orders
- The prestige of winning over your company
- The defeat weighs on the sales team
Thus instead of taking the ‘No’ you will need to weigh the pro and contra of losing this prospect.
To sell or not to sell?
Anything is allowed if you really want this prospect to become your customer.
When the customer says ‘No’ and for reasons that can reach beyond the prospect, the real selling starts as the opportunity and part of the market has been lost.
Did you ever win a customer after losing the sales deal?
One of the first rules of direct sales is to never accept the first, “no”. The job of the sales staff is to find out the reason for the rejection and that takes work. Some individuals are more forthcoming with their reasons for the rejection that others. But as you begin to peel away the reasons, you may find out that after a good discussion, the customer will say, “yes”.
Every customer needs to be investigated and to be listened to. The reasons for rejection can be unrelated or based on false or biased information.