“Interested” is one of the most common words that salespeople use
in their prospecting and selling activities. If you can eliminate
that word from your sales vocabulary and replace it with the word
“want,” your volume of closed sales will rapidly increase. In most
cases, just changing that one word can increase sales by up to 25
percent. This is easy to explain, and very difficult for most
salespeople to do. Here’s why.
Closing is all about mutual commitment. However, commitment can be
either positive or negative. Rather than ask for a commitment and
allow for the possibility that the commitment may be negative,
most salespeople avoid asking for a commitment. Instead, they ask
prospects if they are “interested” – because they don’t want to
hear “No.” And, their prospects often say they’re “interested” -
because they don’t want to say “Yes.” Then, you have two people
spending a lot of time with no commitment – except the
salesperson provides his time and expertise without compensation.
Those salespeople are hoping that they will be able to persuade
those interested prospects to buy.
Obviously, sometimes interested prospects actually do buy – but
not very often. On average, salespeople close 17 percent of their
appointments. In many industries closing rates are much lower.
However, most salespeople keep hoping that they’ll get better at
persuading interested prospects to buy. That’s referred to as
“Random Negative Reinforcement.” When you’re doing something that
has a small probability of producing a positive result, an
occasional payoff will get most people to keep doing it. The vast
majority of people who keep putting their money in slot machines
will lose all of their money in a short time. The lure of the
big win combined with a few small wins keeps them hooked. They
keep hoping that they’ll become more skillful and learn how to
beat the odds. That’s the principle that enables gambling casinos
to earn billions of dollars a year. That’s also the principle
that causes most people who go into the sales profession to fail
or continue while earning meager wages.
If you only spend your time with prospects that want what you’re
selling and who will make a commitment to buy if it meets their
requirements you have broken the pattern of Random Negative
Reinforcement. That can change your life.
But, how can you get people to make a commitment to buy during
a prospecting call? Stop asking them if they are interested in a
benefit of your product or service. Stop asking them if they are
interested in meeting with you to see whether they are interested
in eliminating their pain. Instead, describe your product or
service and tell them about a couple of its performance features.
Then, ask if it is something they want. If it is something they
want, they’ll also commit to an appointment. If it’s not
something they want, they’ll say “No,” or “I’m not interested.”
If you quickly terminate the call, it will save you so much time
that you’ll be able to contact many more prospects. That will
enable you to find more of those prospects that already want the
benefits of your type of products or services.
Now, you may say, “But I don’t have that many prospects that I can
afford to bypass anyone. I have to try to sell them all.” That may
be true. However, it’s also a matter of timing. The best time to
visit with a prospect is when they are ready to buy (or specify)
your type of product or service. If you visit with prospects when
they are not ready to buy, your chances of selling them then are
very small – and your chances of selling them in the future are
even worse. When that prospect does become ready to buy, they’re
much more likely to contact one of your competitors to compare what
they have with your offering. At that time, they’re much more
receptive to what the competitor has to say, because they’re ready
to buy. It’s then most likely that they’ll buy from a competitor.
If you wait to visit them until they are ready to buy, it’s most
likely that you will be the one who will get their business.
You should stay in touch with a large number of prospects by
frequently calling them all. For most industries, the best frequency
is every 4 weeks. Each time you call your prospects you should
present them with a different prospecting offer than the previous
one. That will minimize the likelihood of them being annoyed with
your calls. New information isn’t annoying unless it’s used for
manipulative purposes. Each time you call you must be willing to
accept “No” for the answer and be willing to move on to your next
call, quickly. Each successive time that you call your chances of
contacting the prospects that want to buy increases.
Happy Prospecting!
