Prospects Who Can’t or Won’t Say No

Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

When we think about prospects who can’t or won’t say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don’t reply back after they’ve gotten all the information, it’s basically two pieces of the same puzzle. When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can’t drive them to the yes. Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time.

David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing prospects who can’t or won’t say no. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David. Great to be with you again. You know, there’s so much to cover about how to deal with prospects. You really have to be thinking in depth about, who are these clients who can’t or won’t say no?

Do you even recognize that? Because that’s going to affect how you spend your time. Will you be working with them? Are they worth the time? Things like that.

David: Yeah. And it ties back exactly to our last podcast where we were talking about prospects who don’t respond to you.

We’re actually talking about clients who don’t respond to you. And then we got carried away with clients. We said, okay, we’ll talk about prospects in the next episode. And this really ties together nicely because in many cases, the people who can’t or won’t say no to us are the very same people who end up going radio silent and just ghosting us.

When we’re trying to get a sale closed.

Jay: Yeah, and I think it’s, again, we need to track and keep records. We need to be able to know, like, I have a system where I get a reminder. Hey you know, it’s my CRM. The last time I spoke with a potential client, I made a note. Remind me about this client in five days, if you’re running through a lot of potential prospects, you’re not going to remember your last conversation.

You’re not going to remember, are they one of these clients that we’re talking about? So tracking and, searching for this particular concept, are they saying no? Can they say no? A very important part of the process.

David: Yeah, and that’s where I think the notes that we keep for ourselves inside our CRMs or wherever we document that stuff are so important, because if we’re just saying follow up, follow up, follow up in our notes, that tells us nothing.

So a lot of times it’s really good in our next set of notes to say, spoke with Joe yesterday, he indicated he’d have a decision by such and such a date, so that when you contact him on that day, you say, hey, listen, when we last spoke, you said you have a decision today at 1230. What are you thinking? Right.

And you can move forward from there. But when we talk about people who can’t or won’t say no, I think this is where I’ve had several epiphanies along the way, because I think in sales, our desire is always to get them to say yes. But, in reality, sometimes we are better off getting them to say no. Because these non decisions are just killers.

And sometimes people, they just can’t bring themselves to say they don’t want to do it. Whether it’s fear of missing out, or they don’t want to hurt our feelings. I don’t know what it is, but I know that whenever I run into it, I find it extremely frustrating, because I’m a pretty direct communicator.

If you and I are having a conversation, I will tell you exactly what I think. I mean, I won’t be rude about it. I won’t be obnoxious, in most cases, right? But I’ll be very direct because I feel like I owe that to every person I talk to.

If we’re talking about working together, I want to make sure that people are extremely clear on what we’ll be able to do and what we won’t be able to do. And we can’t do anything until we get to that agreement.

I mean, I say this all the time, whenever two parties to an agreement want to put something together, they’ll figure out a way to do it. If one of them doesn’t, they won’t. And very often the one who doesn’t is the prospect.

And when they’re too afraid or timid or shy to say no, it is a huge time waster.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And you can’t be wasting time, right, on people. You just can’t be doing it. So, we’ve identified progress points, right? So I’ve had an initial discussion with them. I’ve followed up. Have they responded to my follow up or are they ignoring me?

First follow up is an email. Second follow up is a text. If I’m not getting any communication on those first two methods, they’re going into my drip program, right? I mean, instantly. I’m not going to waste my time with those people. I can’t waste my time with those people.

David: Yeah. And there are multiple steps to this as you indicated.

If we haven’t even made a sales presentation to the person yet, if they don’t know what we offer and how we offer it and what it costs and all that sort of thing, that’s very early stage stuff, and we have to decide our tolerance for pain in terms of how many times am I going to reach out to have those conversations?

Once we’ve made the presentation, once they have a clear understanding of exactly what we’re offering, and they’ve expressed interest in it, when they start not responding then, then I tend to make more efforts than I would in the early stages, because now I just basically want them to say, “yes, I’d like to do this” or “no, I would not like to do this,” right?

Because those are really the two best answers. Those are the answers that allow everyone to move forward one way or another. When people just don’t respond or they can’t or won’t say no, they can’t bring themselves to say no, but they can’t bring themselves to say yes. Then where do you go with that?

Right? You’re scheduling out appointment after appointment. And I think at that point, it’s really important for us to understand what is causing that delay. What’s going to happen between now and two weeks from now that’s going to change the situation. And sometimes It will be a money thing. They’ll say, “okay, well, I’m expecting something to come in so that I’ll have the money to be able to do it in two weeks. Contact me back in two weeks.”

And sometimes you do that. And then it’s like, “oh, well now it’s going to be another month or two.” And they keep putting it out. And at some point you have to determine whether or not what they’re saying is even viable anymore, or if they just can’t say no, won’t say no, have no idea of what their cashflow is actually like.

And that’s important too, because if they don’t know what’s coming in and when it’s coming in, then that creates potential friction, not just for them, but for you as well.

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I do sales calls every day now. And I’ve just been thinking about my interaction with those people.

We’re a premium product. We’re not trying to be the low cost. We’re like the Mercedes of our industry. We have more knowledge. We’re very focused on our niche. And so people get very excited when they’re on calls with me. And then I’m like, yeah, let me show you our pricing model.

And there is typically some sticker shock. Right? And when that sticker shock happens, I can tell, they don’t want to tell me that they were shocked by our prices.

There’s a pride thing. And so they’ll be like, “yeah, let me look this over and I’ll get back with you.” And they’ve already decided, and I know they’ve already decided that they can’t use us. They’re not going to use us, but they’ll follow up with me. They’ll do all those things, cause you know, I feel like I’m good enough that in 20 minutes we’ve established kind of a relationship. And so now it’s a little bit more personal. And so like you pointed out, they don’t want to hurt my feelings saying, “Hey, you’re too expensive,” when that’s exactly what I want to hear. Just tell me, and let’s both move on with our lives.

David: Yeah, I’ve had situations where I’ve given someone a price and then there was this real quiet silence. And I’ve said to some people like, did I scare you off with that? I mean, I’ve literally used those words. Did I scare you off with that? And nine times out of 10, they’ll say, “no, I wasn’t expecting that, but…” and then you continue the conversation from there.

Again, I think just being very direct in our communications, and just being very clear. Because I think when we try to couch what we’re saying and like I’m afraid to ask if they think the price is too high and they’re afraid to tell me if the price is too high, it’s not good for communication.

So I find that just by asking them questions and just being really direct, does that sound like a lot to you? Does that sound like too much? Does that sound like too little? And “well. It doesn’t sound like too little,” yeah, and they’ll tell you.

And you’re far better off having that conversation rather than saying, yeah, let me think about it for two weeks, because there’s no thinking going on during those two weeks.

I had a conversation with someone that I had spoken with previously, and we had made arrangements to talk two weeks later. And I didn’t even want to do it at the time, because I thought this is futile. But, you know, we all make mistakes, right? And sure enough, two weeks later, when I called back, he said, “Oh, I thought we were going to be talking at the end of the month.”

He didn’t even know when we were supposed to be talking again. And I basically said to him, I said, yeah, I had a feeling there wasn’t going to be a lot of thinking going on during those two weeks. I said it sounds like we probably don’t have a fit with this. And then at that point, since I kind of said it for him, he was able to agree.

And I like that. I mean, I prefer that because if I schedule another call in two weeks and he spends another two weeks not thinking about it, and I spend another two weeks thinking I’m having a conversation that could lead to a sale, then all of us are wasting our brain energy and I’m just not about that anymore.

Jay: Yeah, I really love this idea of being direct. It’s something that is hard for me. But being direct, like you said, will save you both some time. And look, they call me for a free consultation, but they fully expect that at some point during that call, we’re gonna enter some type of sales process. Right?

And so me thinking that I can’t go there is, like you kind of mentioned in our last podcast, there’s some fear there, I think on my part.

David: Yeah. And for me, it also boils down to a respect issue. Respect for our own time, respect for the other person’s time. And if you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t respect their own time and they don’t respect your time, for me, that is a huge red flag.

I mean, if I’m able to pick that up early on in the conversation, I’ll tend to wrap up those calls pretty quickly because, when somebody treats you like that as a prospect, how are they going to be after they have paid you money and they’re expecting you to operate on their terms and their terms about the way they do things is terrible.

You just don’t want to put yourself in that position.

Jay: Yeah, this is a great point. And I think it’s a good point for another podcast. It’s like, do you really even want to close that sale? Right? Because you can identify early on sometimes in the process, this person is going to be difficult. So is it worth the money?

We have discovered that when we give, and this is the weirdest thing, and we should talk about it further, that when we give people a discount, they’re more problematic along the way. And I don’t know why that is, David.

So we’ve decided for our own sanity, we don’t give discounts. Because we’ve learned that that type of customer, the whole way, it’s going to be difficult, and they’re paying us less money for us to deal with that nonsense.

David: Yeah, and I think it can be that, it can be a discount, or, in some cases, it can just be any sort of compromise that we make in the process that is really different.

Jay: Yeah.

David: Because they look at that and they go, “oh, okay, I can do whatever I want now.” And when you run into a situation like that, it’s just not conducive to good business.

Now there are other people, and I’ve had situations recently where there was somebody who really wanted to work with us,was really y determined to do it, but was struggling with the financial component.

And we were able to put together a payment plan that made sense for him and he was able to move forward with it and he’s been great. And I’m so glad we did that.

We’ve had other situations where I’ve done something similar for somebody and then they ghost you, right? It’s like you’re basically trying to work within the parameters that they’re setting up.

And sometimes I do this as a bit of a marketing experiment. Because if somebody says, “I can’t afford this,” and it’s like, “okay, well, let’s say we put together payment terms in place that will work for you. You know, would you do it then?” “Yeah.” “Okay.”

And then you put it in place and then they don’t move forward. So, some people are full of it. You’re just going to have that. I mean, that just happens in business.

Some people are going to be great and they’re just going to be honest with you up front. We don’t always know the difference until we have those conversations and we either offer what we’re thinking about offering or we don’t offer it. And then everything flows from those decisions.

But when we think about prospects who can’t or won’t say no, and we think about people who tend not to respond to us, prospects who don’t reply back after they’ve gotten all the information, it’s basically two pieces of the same puzzle.

When we run into these situations, our goal needs to be driving them to the no, if we can’t drive them to the yes.

Because the maybes, as we know, the maybes will kill us all the time.

Jay: Mmm. Powerful. Driving them to the no or driving them to the yes. I love that, David. How do people find out more?

David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have these conversations with you. And if you’re in a situation where you’re looking to grow your sales and profits and you’re stuck somewhere along the line, if you have a lot of people who are ghosting you, there are things you can do to keep that from happening.

If people aren’t saying no to you, and you know they should be, there are ways to do that as well. Sometimes I look at it almost like musical chairs, where the music stops. Somebody is going to be without a chair. Sometimes you have to stop the music and find out who’s not sitting down so you can continue to interact with those who are going to be better suited to working with you.

So TopSecrets.com/call. Let’s have a conversation.

Jay: Great analogy. Thank you, David.

David: Thank you, Jay.

Need to Get Better at Driving Prospect to the Yes OR the No?

If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow:

1. Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help.
2. Need Clients Now? If you’re already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here.
3. Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry.
4. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here.
5. Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you’re serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here.