Don't Confuse Courtesy with Commitment

If you're even half way good at selling, most of your initial sales meetings go pretty well.  The prospect smiles a lot and laughs at your jokes.  They engage in the normal dialogue around problem-solution.  They may even tell you openly they like what you're saying and are very interested.  Then why in heaven's name are they not returning your emails and phone messages to set up a second meeting?  You've told everyone, especially your boss, that you even talked about your kids and mutual interests.  You had a great meeting!  Unfortunately, you fell for one of the oldest cons in selling; the polite brush-off.

You confused courtesy with commitment.  Most likely, if you're truly honest, you allowed their courtesy to take the place of their hard commitments to you around the basic elements of effective selling:

• Did they clearly articulate "why" they are interested in moving forward...now?
• Did you really "hear" hard evidence of the severity of their pain?
• Did you gain concrete "agreement" as to the next steps and did you tell them you'd be sending a follow-up email confirming the agreement?
• Did you try to secure a specific date for the next meeting with an agenda already "agreed" to?
• Did you find out if budget was available? (see Five Most Important Sales Questions further down the page)

In today's environment many salespeople feel the need to soften their approach for fear they will alienate the few qualified leads they still have.  That could not be any more wrong!  In times like these, when leads are few, you have to qualify even harder for your prospects' true interests.  Why?  Because right now time is your biggest enemy, not your competitor.  If you waste time pining away for a prospect who was just being courteous because they couldn't bring themselves to tell you that the budget authority they told you they had actualy belongs to someone else; then you will not spend what precious time you do have on the more deserving prospects who are not only committed and responsible for "finding" a solution, but also have the "authority" to buy it!

Now is not the time to be timid.  In fact, be more aggressive; but make sure you're even more prepared than usual going into that first meeting. (We'll talk more about pre-call planning in a future post)  Who knows - if you spend more time in pre-call planning to find out what is really causing your prospect's pain, you may just find out they can be both courteous and committed.

Want to run a specific situation by the Saleshandicapper?  Just click on the Email Me link in the upper left corner.  I commit to get back to you quickly.