Episode 582 - What if the potential customer or client says NO?

In previous episodes we've gone over how being tech savvy can help with different parts of the sales process like looking for who to talk to, starting conversations with potential customers, finding out their wants and needs, and discovering if our product or service CAN INDEED be helpful to them.

The final cap off for the series was to say that in all our communications, we should have a CTA which is the ask, feedback, request, or further action you'd like the potential customer to take.

This is because business communication is usually geared towards a specific end or goal.

When communicating with potential customers or clients AFTER we have made a proposal, a reasonable CTA is to "ask for the sale" or ask for some other form of commitment to move the business relationship forward.

Most people don't want to "ask for the sale" because they have a reasonable fear that the customer might say NO.

Because of this fear, most business people are okay with hearing things from the potential client like "let me think about it" and "let me get back to you later".

Is it such a bad thing when the customer says NO?

It actually is a good thing when this happens.

If you "ask for the sale" and the customer says NO, then it means you've missed something from an earlier part of the sales process.

If this is the case, you are better off hearing about it now, rather than three weeks down the line when the customer says "I'm sorry but we decided to go with someone else" or "I'm sorry my boss/ husband/ wife/ colleague etc decided we should go in another direction".

If you hear NO now, you have the time to come up with another course of action, or look for another potential customer to have a conversation with.

If you hear NO three weeks from now, or three months from now, it means you wasted enormous time and “opportunity cost” that you could've used to invest in other profitable opportunities with your time.

So if a NO today means that we missed out something critical in the sales process yesterday, how do we go about diagnosing that situation?

That will be the focus of a future episode.


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