Why Your Prospects Are Saying No
Are you frustrated with hearing NO all the time from your prospective clients? Usually it is because instead of us leading them to a place of experiencing positive yes decision emotions we have let them remain in a state of fear or uncertainty.
Often the words the prospect uses to explain why they are not going ahead can be confusing as they attempt to articulate their unconscious feelings of fear or uncertainty. Almost invariably though the reasons they say no fall into one of the following categories:
Lets look at these four NO reasons a bit more closely so we understand exactly what is motivating them. The four reasons for a no are:
1. No Need – There are two possible scenarios here.
One is that you have spent time asking the right questions and analysing their situation only to discover that they genuinely do not have a need that your products or service can satisfy. If that is the case then your only option is to thank them for their time and walk away.
The second and more likely scenario is that you have not asked the right questions in the right way in the presence of strong rapport to unearth the prospects true and genuine needs.
If you are consistently struggling to have prospects recognise that your product or service will help them then it is likely you are not helping them to identify their true needs. If so focus on using the questioning model and developing your skills in this area more.
2. No Trust – If there is a lack of trust then the underlying emotion is fear. Usually fear that you or your company will rip them off, the product won’t do what you said it would, you won’t deliver it on time etc. It stems from a lack of certainty about you and your company and the products / service you represent.
The key to overcoming the no trust barrier is to focus on developing your rapport and communication skills. Developing an unconscious rapport is highly effective to removing a lack of trust in your prospect.
Another area to focus on is how you establish credibility in your presentation including providing background information on your company, providing your personal credentials, providing customer testimonials and offering them a money back guarantee of your service.
No trust is rarely an issue if you are referred into the opportunity.
3. No Urgency – A lack of urgency in your prospect is an extremely frustrating place to have them. Often this is where you will hear them say that they will think it over.
On the one hand a lack of urgency is good because you have gotten past the no need and no trust barriers. So you have skilfully moved them past the fear of dealing with you to at least having enough interest in you product or service to think it over.
The challenge of course is that they rarely think it over because there just isn’t enough urgency or drive to implement your solution.
To resolve lack of urgency you need to focus on identifying the pain of their current situation and of not acting. Once you know specifically what this is then keep pressing it as it will motivate them further.
Simultaneously you need to learn to mentally lead them to thinking about how great it will be once they have your product or service as the solution. So in effect you are using the pain of not acting to motivate them and then lead them mentally to experiencing the pleasure of having gone ahead.
4. No Money – From time to time you will come across those prospects who have a genuine need that is causing them pain, they like you and your company and have a sense of urgency about your solution … they just are not able to finance the solution.
There is no easy way around this challenge other than to provide flexibility in how you deal with customers. This is easier to do if you are a business owner of an SME and make all of the decisions. You need to assess every opportunity on the basis of its commercial merits.
Often no money actually means your product or service is more than they expected. Without the careful use of questioning you may never find this out.
Recently I was coaching a client who sold kitchen renovations. They were top of the range and nearly always more expensive than competitors. She was often faced with the ‘it’s too much we cant afford it’ objection and as a result was missing some sales.
We taught her to question this objection by asking how much to much is it. So if the kitchen was quoted at $15,000 the prospect might come back and say they only budgeted for $12,000.
The common mistake most sales people make at this point is that they think they have to make a $15,000 sale which is why they are losing sales. The reality is that the prospect has already spent the $12,000 in their mind to get what they want.
In this case the only sale that needs to be made is a $3,000 sale. This is easily dealt with by breaking the difference down and highlighting the added advantages of your solution compared to competitions.
So a question for you … if you are hearing NO regularly then which of these four categories is it usually falling in? I find that a lot of the time for most Small Business owners they get the same NO reasons over and over. When you identify them you are then in a position to be able to take action and make some changes.
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