Ever a client ghost you after the inital meeting or phone call. At first they seem like they are “hot to trot” and ready to sign up, but since the call and since your last conversation with them, you have not heard a thing. Alot of time has passed now and you are wondering if they are still interested in your product or service.
I had a mentor tell me one time, “Yes and No’s are always better than a maybe in sales.” Alot of times clients or prospects will not want to hurt our feelings by telling us no. When in actuallity, I’d much rather have a No today than get a maybe or “let me think about it” for 6 months.
If I get a Yes or a No, then I can at do something with that. A maybe can drag you out and sometimes cause me to keep a calendar date open because we don’t know if the client will call back and want it then. Sometimes, I have stocked piled inventories of bales of pine straw bales when clients told me “I think I’m good for the order but …let me talk to my wife and I’ll let you know.” That, my friend, is a MAYBE. I have held bales in inventory thinking that they were going to call me and say “yes, please deliver them.” When in actuality, they had already chosen to not place the order but didn’t want to let me know because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
I recently had a situation where a client called and talked like he wanted our services. We had all of the information about the matter and we thought we were going to be hired for sure. We sent over the paperwork to get them signed up….and nothing. There was no response for 3-4 weeks. I called the gentleman to follow up and left him a nice message saying that I was following up on the conversation that we had and wanted to see if he had any questions. I mentioned the deadline that he said he had but guess what, he never called me back.
Yesterday, I “went for the no” and it worked. The idea behind this technique is that you want to frame your question to the prospect in a way that they say No…but what they are really doing is saying yes. For example, I sent an email to him after noticing that he did not return my call and 4 work days had passed. If someone doesn’t call you back within 24 hours of your voicemail, my experience has been that they are not planning to call you back. You must pivot and go in another direction.
I sent a nice email saying that we appreciated him reaching out and we are wanting to circle back around and check on this project. I’ve got the file here for XYZ and I was just wondering if you would like for me to close this file out and throw it away, or have you decided to keep this project moving forward. Either way, if you would please let me know, I’ would greatly appreciate it.
What you want is the prospect to say something like “NO, NO, No! Don’t throw the file away, I have been busy with _____ and just haven’t gotten around to it.” You go for the NO. Buyers LOVE to say No. By them saying No, what they are really doing is saying YES!
Now, just be aware that sometimes they come back and say, “Yes, we have decided to go with your competitor” or “Yes, we can’t afford it right now” or “Yes, cancel the order, my wife said she didn’t want it.” That is great! Be happy with that. Now you at least know where they stand! My experience though is that they will come back 9/10 times with “NO, please don’t close the file. I want to work with you. I have just been dealing with (insert reason).
They are in the defensive most times because they realize they did not call you back so you have the upper hand. They know that it is rude to not return phone calls. I gave them 4 days…so my email is not annoying. It is an opportunity for them to explain what’s been going on without having to talk to me over the phone.
Try it! Go for the NO when a client or prospect goes quiet. It is an awesome way to also show that you are on top of your game and you don’t let things fall through the cracks.