SportsArt Blog

Why Are Your Prospects And Customers Saying NO?

Posted by Dan Lier on 3/20/15 12:44 AM

Today’s success track is about turning a no to a yes. As a powerful influencer, whether it be sales or leadership, if you’re the recipient of a high percentage of “NOs,” then you are not asking enough questions to create the reasons for your customer to say yes.

Today I’m going to share with you four quick steps to increasing your sales numbers and your leadership capacity.

1. Ask Questions To understand what your prospect’s needs or motivation, you must ask questions. You should be asking questions about their business, their interests and their challenges. You need to understand what excites them, what disappoints them and why they do what they do. Those who take shortcuts in this area simply short themselves in sales commissions or leadership capacity.

2. Create Conviction. I like the phrase creating conviction as it indicates movement and a “must have” sense of want. Others may use the phrase build value. I like creating conviction. How do you create conviction? By showing your prospect or person of interest what’s possible and asking them how that would affect their business or their life. Asking them how they would feel, or what they would do differently if they had your product in their life. Have them feel the pleasure of having or using your product or service, and experience the pain of not experiencing your product or service.

3. Asking for the business. Asking for the order or getting a commitment from your prospect on what they are going to do. You can ask questions and create conviction, and in order to move forward, YOU must ask for the order. You can move forward with an assumption. You can present an alternate choice close. You can use a 3rd party story along with social proof; the bottom line is you must ask for the business. If you truly believe in your product or service, ASKING for the order comes naturally.

4. is one of my favorite strategies. Make it easy. Make it easy for people to do business with you. I learned this strategy years ago when I first started my selling career in the insurance market and now I use it everyday in the speaking industry. One of colleagues from my early career, Don Barden, a fantastic sales professional and a good friend, recently elaborated on this strategy in his best-selling book, The Perfect Plan. Make it easy for people to move forward with you.

As a speaker, often times my competition is asking for list of “needs” in order to book them for a speaking event. My strategy is to make it easy for my customer to move forward with me. My prospects are looking for a speaker to have in impact on their sales or leadership team. The last thing they want to do is have to worry about a long and elaborate “needs” checklist from the speaker. Make it easy.

A quick review: Ask Questions… ask a lot of questions. Create conviction. Ask for the business and make it simple. Start today and implement this quick 4 step strategy and create more YES’s in your business and your life.

This article was originally posted on September 13, 2014 by Dan Lier on http://www.danlier.com.

Topics: Leadership