323 How To Reply To The Buyer’s “No”

What are the chances of getting a “no” to your offer in sales?  Probably around 70% of the time, this is what we will get. Given that type of frequency and hit rate, you would think that salespeople would be masters of dealing with this type of response.  You would be wrong.   The chemicals kick in and sales people lose all reason. 

I was reminded of this recently when we were conducting sales training.  It is hard to create a new habit for salespeople. They have egos and they are easily entrenched in less productive ways of doing things, because that is how they have always done it.  Stupid, is what I would call that, unless you are really shooting the lights out with your results.

The issue is when we see the body language signaling a negative response the fight response starts and then we hear the words and we go into overdrive.  Our brain is on fire concerning the thousand good reasons that no should be a yes.  We are delving deep into why the client is wrong and we are right.  WE are rapidly processing our line of attack to counter the argument they have proffered.  What a complete waste of time. 

Instead we need to get smart.  Stop the chemical reaction from getting out of control.  Throw the Breaker Switch, like we have with the electricity in our houses, if the power load gets too dangerous.  Shooting your mouth off in sales is even more dangerous.  That intervention comes in the form of a cushion.  No, we don’t put a cushion over our mouth, so that no words come out.  We put it over our brain instead.  We offer a very neutral response to the buyer, that neither agrees with nor inflames the situation.

The point of this neutral statement is to give us critical thinking time.  Are we using this critical thinking time to dream up a killer response that will shut the buyer down in their tracks and turn that “no” into a “yes”?  Nope.  We use it to stop the chemical rush and regroup.  We need to go into question mode.   

When we hear a “no” it is a headline, like we have in newspapers.  A short form of reply that gives the key details and no more.  We want to know what is in the article accompanying that headline.  Why is it  “no”?  So we sweetly and gently ask, “May I ask you why you said “no”; or “your price is too high”; or “we are happy with our current supplier”; or “we have no budget for this”; or the thousand other dubious reasons buyers give us for declining our genius offer. Give me the article accompanying the headline, so I can understand how I am supposed to answer this rejection.

 Now we have to be patient.  We hear the reason and again we are sorely tempted to go into counter attack.  We know can tear that shabby reasoning apart and want to bombard the buyer with a million reasons why they should buy.  Hold your horses there pardner.  What if this isn’t the killer objection?  What if a more vicious version is lurking in the long grass, ready to bite us at the first opportunity?  We need to keep digging. 

After we hear that reason, we sweetly and gently ask, “Apart from that are there any other concerns for you?”.  They will usually have another one.  Again we don’t go into rambunctious reply mode.  We ask why that is a problem for them, just like we did the first time.  They tell us and again we must be patient.  We must keep our power dry, hold the line, keep our nerve.  Again, we venture forth on our seeker journey and sweetly and gently ask, “Are A and B your only concerns or do you have another? If they do, we still don’t rush in where angles fear to tread and blurt out our killer retort.

We sweetly and gently ask, “You have mentioned A, B and C.  Of these which one is the most pressing concern for you?”, and then we shut up and don’t even breath, let alone speak.  They make a choice and now we open up both barrels and answer that concern and ignore the other two.  Usually, if we successfully deal with the main concern, the lesser concerns fade away like the dew on a spring day.

When we were doing some role play practice in the training, it was interesting that the person playing the buyer gave a reason for not buying and the seller was starting to jump in.  We tied them up and physically restrained them so they couldn’t answer right then and there.  Okay, that is an exaggeration.  Actually, we just asked them to keep digging, to follow this procedure and not answer yet, until they know what to answer.  Sure enough of the A, B and C reasons given, it turned out that it was C that was the concern of most import.  “A” was price by the way and “C” was quality in this case. 

We don’t know what to answer until we know what to rebuff.  Hold off on answering the pushback, until you know what is their key concern. Don’t be fooled by smokescreens, wild goose chases and other buyer subterfuges.  If we do this we will be a lot more successful closing the sale and building a strong relationship with the buyer.