How to prevent leads from wasting your time by Kent Summers
The following is a summary from:
At the end of a sales process, people can respond to you in one of the following ways:
“Yes” → send them an agreement.
“Yes, but” → give a concession and send them an agreement.
“No, but” → Don’t waste time, because you have to contort yourself to close the deal, and even then, you’ll close only a few.
“No” → don’t waste time trying to convince them.
Ghosting you → This is often preceded by misdirecting, lying, delaying and making up reasons for a couple of months, eventually to ghost you. This wastes a huge amount of time, and after investing so much time, you’ll be crestfallen to end up with a no, ending up with a therapist. In sales, “no” is the second-best response.
Ghosts will take up most of your time, which you should be spending with the “yes” and “yes but” people.
Why do leads ghost? The common reason is an ulterior motive — to get knowledge or practice from you to build internally or with another company, or to upskill themselves when they have free time. Other reasons for ghosting are conflict avoidance, or they’re brought up that saying no is bad, or they’re embarrassed, or they’re rude by nature. Salespeople are perceived to be liars who’ll say anything to get the deal, but buyers are actually the liars, for their own agendas and ambitions:
“I’m not sure who the right person for you to speak is” can mean “no one”.
“Management has decided that…” means that this person is not part of management, he has no idea what management is thinking, and that you’re talking to the wrong person.
“It’s not in this year’s budget” means that it’s not a priority.
“We would like to partner with you” means “I don’t have access to money”.
If in the third or fourth call, they say unprompted “We love you guys, and I like what I’m hearing” you should wait for the “but” — they’re not moving forward with you, but they want you to like them, so they’re giving you a compliment. An unsolicited compliment in sales means you’re screwed.
In certain cultures like Japan, when people want to say no, they say “yes”.
You can’t detect these signals, because they’re subtle and situational. Instead, the way you prevent a conversation from dragging on is by giving them an off-ramp. Such as “I notice you’ve been unable to respond for the past month. It looks like you have a lot going on on your side. Why don’t we revisit this conversation after two months?” If you offer it, people who aren’t really interested feel safe taking it, but they don’t proactively suggest this course of action.
A lead who has high chance of converting would respond to this off-ramp by saying, “No, we need it right now because <reasons>. I’m sorry I haven’t been responsive. Let me clear my calendar so that we can get this sorted out quickly.”
The off-ramp you offer must be psychologically safe for them. For example, if you say, “It looks like you can’t afford this, so should we talk once you can?” it would be awkward for them to take the off-ramp.
Another off-ramp would be beginning your first conversation by saying, “Let me tell you about what we do, and if this doesn’t sound like a fit right now, feel free to say so, and I’ll let you go.”
Other off-ramps are questions like “Have you considered doing it in-house?” Or “Have you considered hiring a cheaper alternative to us?” Or “Is it important that we work on this now? Why not after six months?” Make them justify the project to you. If they say “We didn’t think of that”, they’ve taken the off-ramp, so ask them to think of it and call back if it’s a priority. On the other hand, if they say, “No, those options don’t work because…” they are likely to convert. Another off-ramp is “Have you quantified the benefit of this project? Or the loss if we don’t do this?” People want to quantify the value of a project before they approve it, and if they say they haven’t, suggest, “There’s a possibility it’s not important, so why don’t you quantify it and if it’s high enough for you to go ahead, call me back?”
If the purpose of the project is to improve efficiency, ask them, “Why can’t you continue doing things the way they have been doing them. Yes, it’s inefficient, but it gets the job done, so why bother? Maybe management won’t be persuaded to spend money to solve a problem they’re already solving in a different way (by throwing more people at it)?”
When you offer an off-ramp and people don’t take it, they trust you because you’re not selling your service at any cost. You’re confident rather than desperate. Everyone gives the highest weight to their own words, and when they hear themselves say that we should go ahead with this project, it strengthens their resolve. Offering an off-ramp separates the wheat from the chaff.
If you liked this, understand the other points Kent Summers makes here.