Does no always mean no in sales?

Controversial click-bait blog title aside, I wanted to explore rejection in sales. But please read on as it isn’t as depressing as I may have just made it sound. (Note to self: Must work on opening sentences in blogs).

Sales hack: Any kind of cupping of one’s hand is always a no no.

There are many sales clichés that are true and needing to have a thick skin to be a sales professional is one of them. If you’re the type of person who needs a lot of affirmation that what you’re doing is the right thing, then you might strike it lucky with an extremely patient, supportive and loving boss or you probably need to reconsider your career path.

“You have to have a thick skin to be in sales.”

If you expect prospects and clients to always welcome your approaches and requests for their time with a smile and open arms then you’re going to be quickly disillusioned - even if your product or service is likely to remove the biggest challenge they face or save them tens of thousands of pounds. And that is because there are variables and forces at play which no matter how many “gurus” tell you that if you control the process you can’t lose, you still can. Unlike a Jedi, the force isn’t always with you as a salesperson.

Sometimes “no” means something else in sales. And sometimes these “nos” are invisible or difficult to detect. But if we understand them we can minimise the number of times they happen and therefore lower the amount of rejections we get, leaving our precious egos and self esteem strong enough to sell another day. I believe that there are essentially three types of “no” so lets take a look at them.

The Timing “No”

You don’t even have to work in sales to recognise this “no”.

Think of the number of times that a friend, family member or company have contacted you and you’ve responded with something like “Oh, I’m glad you called because………….” A basic example of this is the numerous MOT reminder emails I receive a few weeks before my MOT runs out. The organisations sending these emails don’t know that I have my own reoccurring annual reminder in my calendar - but even if they did, their outreach is well timed and for convenience if they call or email me there is certainly a bigger chance that I’ll take the car to them than if they didn’t. This is low hanging sales fruit.

But if that company called me seven months before my MOT is due I’m likely to give them “the timing no”. So this isn’t a flat “no”. My car will need an MOT, just not right now. So by the sales person not making that call seven months early, they are saving themselves time and saving themselves being rejected.

Another example of this in the B2B world is when you’re making contact and you discover that the prospect has just signed an agreement with a competitor. The more recent this was, the more painful it is to the salesperson. But it is largely down to timing again. If this was your first contact with them then you may simply have been unlucky, but if it wasn’t your first conversation then this falls under the “poor qualification” section of self flagellation. If you spend the right amount of time qualifying opportunities then these types of “nos” can be significantly reduced and you can time when it will be best to discuss contract renewals.

The Silent “No”

I wrote a previous blog about ghosting a while ago and this is now more common than ever.

You go by the book or your gut, whichever has served you the best up to this point and then silence. The client who seemingly needed you more than oxygen and water only two weeks ago has now disappeared. Although they haven’t disappeared as after you’ve exhausted all means of trying to get hold of them you see that they recently liked a post on LinkedIn - so you know they’re still alive at least. So why is this happening?

One simple answer explaining the silent “no” is that priorities change. Your priority might be to sell as many of your widgets as possible but your prospect or client doesn’t care about that as they have their own list of priorities. If you’re selling B2B things can shift in minutes. A lot of companies describe themselves as operating in fast-paced environments and whilst sometimes this can be hard to believe, even if you’re a glue manufacturer the proverbial can hit the fan and all hands are required on deck.

It is easy to think that you’ve done something wrong with the silent “no” as you don’t get the closure you seek. Sales people have said to me that they’d rather know who they’ve lost out to and why than have to move the opportunity into a holding pen on their CRM system and watch it rot for weeks before finally clicking the dreaded “Lost” button and then not being able to say why. But if you reframe this silent “no” you can protect yourself. In most cases, particularly in B2B the following explanations apply assuming you’ve done everything right and your qualification was A1: -

a) Priorities have changed and they’ll come back when they’re good and ready

b) There has been some kind of personal situation or staffing change

c) The person/company you’re dealing with were stringing you along as some kind of pricing exercise - lesson learned

d) The person/company is too weak to tell you the truth - this is a lucky escape as dealing further with them would be just as painful

The Actual “No”

Sometimes things are really simple. You can’t win them all. Unless you’re in a very unique situation where you’re operating in a very niche market with the only solution, sometimes you’re going to lose out. And there are only really a handful of genuine reasons why this is the case. But reassuringly, the actual “no” is more often than not a blessing. The skill to ensuring that it is a blessing is getting to the actual “no” as soon as possible - which might sound like an odd thing to advocate.

But the truth is, selling can be an expensive pastime if you’re not maximising your close rate. Finding out at the last hurdle that you’ve not won is usually your fault. Harsh? Yes. True? Usually. The only exception to this is in a tender process where there is no option other than to do your best and then await a decision.

So here are some ways in which you can get to the actual “no” faster.

a) Work closely with your marketing team to ensure that the leads they provide are qualified. They can hugely help to filter out the “tyre-kickers” and save you a lot of time. The actual “nos” will be invisible to you as they’ll never reach you - perfect.

b) Qualify the shit out of the lead yourself in your discovery meeting. And don’t ignore red flags and gut instinct during this part of the process. Challenge the flags as they are raised. One example is if the prospect starts talking about price off the bat - if you’re not in a commodity market then this should turn you off quicker than picturing your parents naked. Unless you’re a fool you' shouldn’t be in the business of selling ice to an Inuit.

c) Work with your prospect on removing the barriers to the sale. You should know what they are if you’ve done “a” correctly. To add true value you’re in the driving seat to remove them. If there is a barrier you can’t remove and there is no compromise then you’ll get to a "“no”. Time to move on.

So this final no really does mean no. But even with some of these actual “nos” whose to say that one day they’ll not be in a position to say yes? Your proposition might change, their circumstances might change and I appreciate more than most that this isn’t an exact science.

Simon mentors and trains people new to sales and seasoned sales professionals who are open to continually learning and do things differently. He’d welcome hearing from you, if nothing else it helps him to stop focussing on the fact that he keeps having to write these end bits in his blogs in italics and in the third person.