[E20] Fundamentals Week: Now Is Not A Good Time

Wrapping up two weeks of episodes talking about the Fundamental sales principals, ending on how the final stage – urgency – can fail and what it sounds like as a salesperson.

Ever heard:

• I need to think about it
• Now is not a good time
• I need to talk to my _______
• Call me in a few months

If you have, the urgency of the prospect buying right now was missing. Might have been them, might have been you.

In this episode I talk about what can trigger a lack of urgency and who might be at fault.

Episode 20 – Transcript

Welcome to the end of week 4 of The Sales Experience Podcast. My name is Jason Cutter and today we finish our walk along the sales Fundamentals path on the way to creating the most amazing sales experience for ourselves and our prospects.

So far we have covered rapport, empathy, trust, hope, and how urgency is the final key and will hopefully happen automatically. Make sure you to check out the previous episode for how urgency should work. But now, I want to talk about what it looks like when there is a lack of urgency and why it happened.

First let me say that not all prospects are the same. You could have done the first big fundamental parts perfectly, weaved in to your current sales process. You could have asked the right questions, uncovered their deeper levels of pain, and offered a solution that was perfect to help improve their life in some way. Then you get to the end, where you want to ask for the sale or move them forward with the assumptive close that of course they would want to buy your product or service. And the still don’t want to buy right now. That is a topic of another week of the show, but there will always people who wont buy right now no matter how well you did your job.

I wanted to cover that because there will be times where you feel you stuck to your winning process and the results didn’t come. Look for patters – if 5 people or 10 people in a row react the same way and don’t want to move forward, then you are doing something that’s not working. If one or two, every once in a while, say they ‘need to think about it’ that could just be them.

But, let’s talk about you and where you went wrong. You heard the dreaded ‘need to think about it’ or ‘now is not the right time’ response from your prospect. What happened? Well, you didn’t help them create the right level of urgency in their mind. If you are in sales, your reaction will be to try and find what you said right before their response. But from experience, usually there are things that weren’t done throughout your sales process leading up to that. It could have literally been your rapport step. Maybe you went too shallow with rapport, or too deep and built so much rapport you got into the friend zone. Any part of the sales fundamentals that were not done to the appropriate depth will affect the urgency step.

And keep in mind, since every prospect is different, there is no ‘right’ amount of rapport, or empathy, or trust building. Every prospect is different. As I mentioned in the rapport episodes, every sales person is different and what one rep does for rapport building will be authentic to them but totally unnatural for you if you tried it. And then every product or service being sold will have different, appropriate levels of the four fundamental stages. The hope phase for someone working at a funeral parlor will probably look a bit different than the hope phase for someone selling business software.

If your prospects are responding to the final parts of your sales process without the urgency that you would expect them to have, first examine what you are missing. As a sales leader when I had a rep who didn’t close the sale, and told me that the prospect had to ‘think about it’, my first question to each one was “What was their pain point or their goals?” Meaning – what problem would we be solving for them, and how would we be improving their life? Most of the time the rep couldn’t answer that question. They had glossed over diving deep enough during the discovery question phase, and weren’t able to find an actual reason – the prospect’s reason – for buying from us. This in turn meant the rep couldn’t really show the right level of empathy because the pain or goals or hopes or issues weren’t uncovered.

In every sales interaction that involves some discovery as well as providing solutions – so not just order taking – then you should know why your prospect needs or wants what you are offering. Every time. If you can’t answer that question then you will struggle in the urgency segment.

The other wide sweeping reason I see reps lose deals to the buyer not wanting to do it right now is that they don’t trust the rep. Somewhere in the sales interaction they have felt, heard and decided that the rep is the sales person they were worried about. The one who is only out for themselves, and not for the prospect’s best interest. Maybe there was no empathy, maybe the trust steps were skipped. Or they were done in the ‘trust me’ style of sales. Or maybe you couldn’t answer their questions and they don’t see you as a professional.

The prospect doesn’t trust you to be the one to help them. So they will either go buy from someone else, or just not buy at all.

The one thing I want you to get from this episode is that if you get the ‘I need to think about it’ or ‘call me in a month’ brush off, take a step back and examine the entire sales interaction with that prospect. This goes back to the mindset week, feedback, and watching film. Most reps, unfortunately, will have their ego kick in and they will blame the prospect. Instead, take ownership that there are things you did, or didn’t do, that could have created a different outcome that might have led to a closed sale.

That’s it for the Fundamentals Weeks. Hope these have helped focus your efforts. These five sales fundamentals aren’t meant to replace your current sales process. They are meant to go along with it. To enhance what the process you have been given or what you are already doing. Focus on these five ways to connect more with your prospect with the ultimate goal of helping them buy for their reasons.

If you have been getting value from the podcast, please subscribe. And go on iTunes and rate the how and leave a review. And most of all, share the show with anyone you know who is in sales. Let’s help each other get better at being sales professionals!

But until next time, always remember that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.