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What’s the most common reason prospects stop communicating with you? They think your going to pressure them. They’re afraid that, even if it’s subtle, we’ll apply pressure to close the sale.
So how do we reassure them we aren’t going to pressure them? By staying focused on the truth of the situation rather than on getting the sale. And by using language that clearly reflects this.
Here are 5 steps to take when your preparing to call prospects that have stopped communicating with you:
1. Get Clear.
Review any notes on past calls and bring yourself up to date regarding the person and the situation
2. Let Go.
You may find it useful to just sit silently for a few minutes with your eyes closed, breathing deeply and consciously, accepting that this sale is probably gone.
Let it go, so that when you call, there’s no part of you hoping or pushing for it. You need to decide that it’s really not about the sale – it’s about learning for next time. And that’s a big leap, isn’t it?
3. Offer an apology
An apology is a very good way to eliminate any appearance of sales pressure. You’re calling to apologize for something that went wrong along the way that’s caused them to stop communicating with you.
Basically, you can’t do anything but start with yourself. Because if you go anywhere else, they’re going to think that you’re focused on just getting the sale.
4. Decide what to say
When you reach them (or if you have to use voicemail or email), you can say something like this:
• “Hi, Jim, it’s Kristen. I just wanted, first of all, to call and apologize. I’m not calling about the sale, or about the proposal or product. I’m only calling to try to get some feedback as to where we went wrong along the way that might have caused some drop-off in communication.”
• “Hi Bob, It’s Tom. I’m calling, not to move the sale ahead, but to apologize that we ended up not being able to connect. I’m assuming that you’ve probably moved forward with somebody else or decided not to move ahead with the project. And that’s fine, but I wanted to see if you could just help me learn, for the future, how we could have approached this, or your problem, in a different manner.”
5. Act as You Would in Your Personal Life
Remember to use a very natural tone of voice that shows you’re not hungry for the sale. Very simply, we’re talking about the kind of communication that most of us use in our personal life, and applying it to the people we deal with in our business life.
If you approach them in a natural, human way, they’ll probably explain the situation. Prospects will most likely respond with something like, “Well, let me explain what’s going on.”
When you’re not pressuring them to move the sale forward, they feel comfortable revealing to you what’s happening.
You may want to spend a little extra time letting them know that you really are okay with whatever happens. You can’t probe for the truth or force it to appear, any more than you can force a tree to grow faster. All you can do is create a safe space that allows trust and truth to emerge.
These 5 steps remove the focus on getting the sale entirely. This lets you re-build a bridge of trust so that you can reconnect at the level of human beings – not in the artificial roles of buyer and seller.
Part Five of a Ten Part Series. In this series, we explore all the different avenues of prospecting necessary for a business to succeed.
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Ari Galper
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Ari Galper, founder of Unlock The Game,
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the sales gurus don't know. To receive
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New Cold Calling and Sales Approach - Cold calling and sales guru and EvanCarmichael.com expert Ari Galper explains how the Unlock The Game sales approach can provide you with a framework for how to create trust over the phone when you are cold calling.
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