5 Opportunities for When Your Buyer Says No

When buyers don’t agree to meet you, it’s because they think the you will waste their time. The key to securing the meeting is for the seller to have a Valid Business Reason for the meeting.

The best reason for meeting is the Education-Based Briefing. In this post, we will discuss how Program on Persuasion’s corporate sales training leverages the Briefing into scheduling a meeting and ultimately begins the business relationship.

The Initial Call

A common mistake that sellers make when we call the prospect is assuming that we already have credibility.

What the Seller Says:

Asking buyers questions too early can be interpreted this way:

“I am a seller. I want to know if I can take your valuable time to sell you something which I have not given you enough information to say ‘yes’ to.”

The buyer almost has to say no. Sellers owe it to prospects to immediately and persuasively state their intent.

What the Seller Should Say:

The important thing to remember is that in fact, we are at the very Top of the Sales Funnel, and so we still need to tap into our corporate sales training’s Compliance Principles of Likeability and Credibility.

Keeping those Compliance Principles in mind, let’s talk about what we need to say on the initial phone call to the prospect to best initiate the business relationship. The sellers should not ask any questions until we have articulated the reason for their call and declared their intent.

We’ll create something like a script for the initial call, although it’s important to note that we will not read it to the buyer. We as sellers must be authentic, we must be genuine, but we also need a formula. Use words you would normally use, but stay on the message.

Transfer of Credibility

Before you call a target who does not know you, try to think of a mutual contact. If you both know a person who trusts you and has trust with the buyer, we can transfer the credibility.

A transfer of credibility works as a character reference, and it should be the very first thing you should say so that the buyer trusts the business relationship link. When the buyer answers the phone, you should say, “[John Smith] suggested I give you a call.” This should engage the buyer for at least enough time that s/he listens to what you have to say.

You won’t always have someone who can provide this transfer of credibility, but we often can think of someone if we search our network for him/her.

Script Your Request to Meet

In the event that we don’t have a transfer of credibility, let’s talk about how our corporate sales training recommends that we should start the call.

  1. We should immediately introduce ourselves with our name and company, and then we should ask for a certain amount of time—about four minutes—to talk with the prospect.
  2. Next, we should briefly set up our Education-Based Briefing in a few short, specific sentences. We give them a few pieces of valuable, relevant information. We state that the report is free. We mention that the briefing only takes about twenty minutes to present. Then we ask if they’re interested.
  3. Once we have called for an answer, we should prepare for the most possible objections. Remember Pareto’s Principle, the 80/20 rule. It states that 80% of the objections you receive will be the same two or three objections. If we can anticipate them—and we can—we should have a good response for them. If a buyer pushes back, don’t fold. Instead, handle the objection.

What to Do When the Buyer Says No

Often times, the buyer is testing to see how committed you are to the briefing and if you believe it is valuable.

Our corporate sales training provides a template for handling the objections, but here is one you’re likely to run into: “Hey Jim, I appreciate you calling but I don’t have time to talk—I am super busy.”

Here’s what we should do in the event of this objection:

  1. Seek Understanding. Do not interrupt. Listen to the actual words they are using. Demonstrate empathetic listening by articulating it back to them: “Bob, I understand that you’re busy and do not have time to meet with every salesperson that wants to tell you about their product—I get it, and I feel the same way.”
  2. Reframe the Conversation. Utilize the information that you have about the objection to assess the situation differently: “However Bob, this is not a sales pitch.  In fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with our products or even our company.  What we have found is exactly what you just stated. Business people like you are so busy working on your business that they don’t have time to research the market, not to identify trends or confirm what your intuition is already telling you.”
  3. Craft a Compelling Message. At this point, we should make the meeting (and beginning the business relationship) enticing and relevant to the prospect:
    “Bob, we commissioned a research organization to provide us with the empirical research, not just anecdotal stories, about market patterns, biggest problems, what your customers value most in an organization likes yours. It’s stacked with facts and trends that will surprise you. Obviously, we want to have a relationship with people like you—and we thought, what better way to begin a relationship than to bring something that YOU would find valuable? I promise I will not try to sell you anything on this call. I just want to start a relationship, so that in the future if you need another supplier to bounce an idea off of—we will already have a relationship.”
  4. Third Party Validation. Provide a reference to lend credibility to your claims:

    “We have shared this with other businesses like yours (mention the others’ names) and they said [tell them what they said], that this was definitely worth their time, that there was information here that they will use in making important decisions regarding their business.

  5. Close. Restate the original request: “So, what do you think, Bob? Can we schedule 20 minutes for me to review this with you?

What to Do When the Buyer Says Yes

When the buyer agrees to your call to action, it’s not over. The steps our corporate sales training recommends for setting up the first meeting are detailed below.

Some Questions to ask

In order to really dial-in your briefing, ask a few questions—but not too many. Too many questions risks pushing the buyer away and could damage the business relationship. Here are a couple questions you should ask before you get off the line.

  1. Who else in the organization would benefit by attending?
  2. What are the biggest challenges that your company is focused on right now?

The Confirmation Email

Be sure that you have the prospect’s email address. We want to send a confirmation email at the earliest opportunity. The longer you wait to send the email, the more likely it is that your prospect will forget you and your business relationship could suffer.

The title of your briefing should be in the subject line, just in case the prospect does not open emails from unfamiliar addresses. The second biggest thing that buyers look at when they determine whether to open an email is the subject line.

The body of the email should be short, but include these three elements. First, confirm the appointment. Second, give a few nuggets of information—trends or statistics—to demonstrate the briefing’s power. And third, include a testimonial about the briefing. (The testimonial should not be about your company or its products.)

Conclusion

When a prospect won’t agree to meet with you, it’s because they don’t trust you. They think you will waste their time. In order to convince the prospect to meet, and to develop the business relationship, you have to reverse that perception. Program on Persuasion’s corporate sales trainign shows that the best way to show your prospect that time spent with you is worthwhile is to offer something valuable, and the most valuable thing to your prospect is information about themselves.

 

Photo by Benjamin Child.