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.

Have You Read The Controversial Report …

‘Why Small Business Owners
Suck At Sales’

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PRESS RELEASE

A controversial new report on why small business owners suck at selling and how it is holding them back from success has been leaked!

The report written by Australia’s leading Attraction Marketing Specialist Rod Moore details why most small business owners fail to enjoy the success they deserve in business.

It all comes down to one thing says Moore … ‘A basic lack of sales ability!’. The problem with small business is that they let basically anyone start a small business even if they are not adequately equipped the necessary skills to achieve success in small business.

According to Moore one of the most important factors in success in small business is your ability to be able to firstly ATTRACT potential clients and secondly to be able to SELL them on your product or service. Without these skills small business owners fail.

The leaked report was available at ‘Download Leaked Report – Selling For Small Business Owners’ but may be removed at any time.

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• Setting Your 2009 Business Goals
• Growing Your Business In 3 Easy Steps
• Increase Your Revenue By 107% Through Incremental Improvements
• Moving The Free Line …
• The Secret To Using Direct Mail In Small Business …
• The Power Of Saying Thanks …
• Are You Networking For Sales or Raving Fans?
• Is Your Sales Presentation Costing You Money?
• Is Your Target Market Tweeting?
• The Two Economies And How To Take Advantage
• Five Tips For More Effective Networking
• Empowering Your Customers To Sell For You
• The Power Of Press Releases
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Niche Marketing Fears
• Overcome Your Prospects Scepticism
• Mastering The Marketing Of Your Business
• Four Key Areas To Differentiate Yourself
• Developing An Effective Marketing Plan
• How To Handle Objections Without Being Pushy
• Reaching Agreement When Selling

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‘How Much Do You Charge Per Word?’

Needless to say I was a little taken aback by the question … I had never thought of the copywriting work I do as being a certain amount of money per word. Seemed like a crazy idea to me … I mean if it is just words she was after I should have replied with $1 a word and handed her the dictionary. After all its packed full of words and I could have gone on a nice holiday.

It got me thinking though about you and your business. More importantly about how you view the work you do, how you value it and therefore how do you charge for it.

To many people in service based business charge for their services based on a rate per hour. Having come from the coaching industry I know that when coaches get together the conversation nearly always turns to the question of how much do you charge per hour.

This is akin to the question how much do you charge per word.

Here is what you must understand … your prospective customers do not want to buy words or hours of your time. What they want is a SOLUTION to their PROBLEMS!

So you must begin thinking about the VALUE you provide to your customers.

You need to ask them what it is worth to them to have the SOLUTION.

Knowing this information you then price your services based on the VALUE of the SOLUTION to the customer or client.

Let me give you an example from my business …

When interviewing prospective new clients one of the key peices of information I am interested in is the life time value of a new customer. So in other words if I help my clients develop a new marketing system that just attracts one extra client to them … what is that client worth to them.

Let us say I am talking to a Mortgage Broker who has an upfront commission of say $2,000 for each new client they bring on board. This means if I can help this Mortgage Broker to find just one new client then that puts $2,000 into their bank account … important information to know, right?

So in knowing this information I know that if I can help them find just 3 or 4 new clients then that will pay for my services. The way I then position it to my prospective client then is this … i explain to them that when we start working together if I can help you find just 3 or 4 new mortgage clients then I am free to you … and everything else after that is a bonus.

Here is the question … would you give me 3 of your clients and in return I develop for you a marketing system that will attract a life time supply of new clients?

Naturally they nearly always say YES!

Can you see how pricing your services based on the VALUE of the SOLUTION can be so powerful?

So how do you establish the VALUE of the SOLUTION you provide to prospective clients?

Well you ask them …

Lets suppose you are a Personal Trainer …. the type of questions you could ask are …

”What is it costing you not having the energy you need each day to enjoy greater success?”

A Recruitment Consultant could ask a prospective client …

“How much does it cost you each time you employ someone who is not right for the role? What does it cost you to replace them?”

A Taxation Consultant might ask …

“If I can get you $3,500 back on your Tax return … what would you do with the money?” and get the client talking about all the great things they could do that maybe they can not afford to do right now.

The key is to ask a lot of questions and have the prospective client establish the VALUE of your services for you. You need to know what are the right questions to ask of course so it requires a little planning and thought.

If you can get to the point where your prospective client is telling you what you services are worth to them … ie what the solution is worth to them, then you can easily price your services based on the value of the solution.

Now the real key to making this work is having unshakeable BELIEF in you and the service you provide. In coaching clients I find that one of the biggest shifts I can make with them is installing greater belief in their worth to the marketplace. In doing so they shift their thinking from how much can I get per hour to what is the VALUE of the service I provide and how can I price my services based on this VALUE.

How can you apply this to your business?

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I am sure you have. Its an interesting thing to ponder.

What is it exactly that moves prospective clients to become paying clients for your service? If you could answer that question … if you knew specifically what it is that persuades your prospects to say yes to your service then you could double or triple your number of clients.

Its mostly unconscious …

If you were to ask most of your clients what was the trigger that motivated them to finally say yes to you … most of them would struggle to articulate it.

In this weeks Profit Minute Radio program we are going to talk about those unconscious triggers. You will want to listen in … it could help you to massively increase the number of clients you have.

Full details are here:

http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/profitminute

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How To Successfully Sell Your Service

Most small business owners do not consider themselves to be sales people or good at sales. They fear coming across as being pushy and as a result they have no sales strategy or at best an ineffective strategy.

In order to move your service based business to the next level you will need to implement the right sales strategy. Every business is different of course but there are some general rules that apply.

Here are five keys that will help you to improve your sales strategy for your small business:

1/ Only Sell To Those Who Want Your Service

There is little point trying to sell your service to those that do not really want it in the first place. A lot of small business owners spend way to much time trying to sell to a small number of prospects. You are better to spend your time attracting more prospects and only selling to those who indicate they need or want your service.

Sounds obvious yet you would be amazed at how many small business owners just do not have enough prospects entering into their marketing funnel.

Spend less time trying to convince and persuade and spend more time focused on attracting new prospetcs. Its a process of sifting and sorting.

2/ Let Prospects Put their hand up

When you have the right marketing strategy in place you will attract lots of prospects to you. Your next steps is to have the right prospects ie those most likely to use your service, put their hand up and indicate their interest to you.

Here is how we do it at Profit Minute. Our first goal is to attract prospects to us by giving away the free report ’7 Keys To Attracting New Clients’. This allows us to pull prospects to us and have them enter our marketing funnel.

The next step then is to have the right prospects put their hand up and indicate that they could use our Marketing Strategy Coaching to help them grow their business. We do this by offering a complimentary Sales & Marketing Audit which is a 45 minute consultantion over the phone valued at $297. This gives the prospect the opportunity to learn more about what is the right marketing strategy for them, and to find out how they could really accelerate their business by working with us.

Not all of the prospects who request the free report will go on to request the Sales & Marketing audit … those that do though have put their hand up.

3/ Sell in Person

To many small business owners today are trying to have their websites, emails or marketing materials do the selling for them.

This does not work effectively for selling services!

You need to do it in person … either face to face or on the phone.

4/ Add Value in Sales Presentation

You want to make your sales presentation a value added experience for the prospect. In other words do not just try and sell, sell, sell … there is nothing that will make your prospects run faster.

Instead provide a lot of value to the prospect in a way that they sell themselves on using your service.

When we conduct a Sales & Marketing Audit we help our prospects discover for themselves what challenges they have in marketing and what they need to do to improve in that area. As they think it through they begin to come to the conclusion that maybe they should consider using our services.

5/ Help Them Identify Their Go Ahead Reasons

Every prospect has reasons why they would go ahead and use your service.

Your job is not to sell your services to them, but to help them identify what those go ahead reasons might be. You do this by asking lots of questions.

Ask them questions that helps them identify the pain of their current situation.

Ask them questions that helps them imagine the pleasure of achieveing their goals after they work with you and use your services.

Ask them questions that identifys their core values … ie what would be most important to them if they decided to work with you.

Then when you present your services as the solution simply present it in light of what they have identified as most important.

So there are five keys to selling your service. Naturally this is a high level overview and every business will require its own unique sales & marketing strategy. If you are looking to take your small business to the next level then request a complimentary Sales & Marketing Audit today by clicking here.

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You can listen into the recording (or download the podcast) now at Blog Talk Radio.

Click the Blog Talk Radio button for more details:

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