Smart salespeople don't let NO deal them a knock out blow!

It is often said that there are 3 important words in a salesperson’s world of work:

·      YES – this is a great word for a salesperson to hear especially if it means you have won the deal

·      MAYBE – this is a terrible word for a salesperson to hear as it means you are typically left in no man’s land. Is the deal dead or alive, are other vendor offerings still being considered….

·      NO – this is a good word for a salesperson to hear. NOTE: I did not say it is a great word – BUT, at least you have received a decision from your prospect. A no is a gift if you use it wisely. We’ll explore the power of no further in this article.

Over the course of my career working with salespeople in the tech sector and eventually becoming a full-time quota carrier myself, the word “no” has generated many different reactions from the recipient. I have seen salespeople do the following

1.      Take it personally

2.      Become the “victim”

3.      Get angry and blame the prospect e.g. they (prospect) don’t know what they are doing. That’s a crazy decision not to buy from us!

4.      Get angry with their own organization and blame their colleagues for not doing enough to help them win the deal e.g. the product isn’t good enough, finance did not approve a big enough discount…..

5.      Get angry and blame the competitor for winning the deal e.g. they must have sold at a loss to win market share.

6.      Take responsibility for losing the deal and doing something positive with it e.g. learning from it or seeing it as a challenge to try and turn something around

7.      Accepting the no as a fait accompli and doing nothing to learn from it

Here’s some advice for dealing with a no from your prospect – avoid negative behaviours:

·      Do not moan about it

·      Do not bad-mouth the prospect

·      Do not bad-mouth the competitor who won the deal

·      Do not take it personally

·      Do not give up

But make sure you do……..

Understand the lost prospect’s lifecycle of IT purchases and key buying trends……

Businesses today are either IT/Technology companies OR their organization is enabled by IT. With the rapid advancement of technology most organizations have realized that to remain competitive they need to refresh aspects of their IT/Technology landscape every few years. Given the pace of technological improvements in the last decade alone – these refreshes can happen on average every 3 to 5 years. For example, most corporations depreciate hardware assets such as employee laptops/desktops over 3 years.

In addition, more and more organizations are comfortable procuring hardware, software, managed IT services and cloud services (SAAS, PAAS, IAAS) from multiple vendors to meet their IT infrastructure and business application needs. For IT services purchases, contract terms can range in duration from months to years. Buyers demand flexible terms to exit IT services contracts e.g. usually with 1 to 3 months notice even for the longest of contracts, and potentially even shorter exit terms from vendors who fail to achieve agreed Service Level Agreement targets. This means that vendors must work hard continuously to meet their customers’ IT services requirements and provide solutions that demonstrably produce improved business outcomes. Those who don’t can be replaced quickly and frequently.

Armed with all this information, savvy salespeople will handle the “NO” from their (now former) prospect in a smart way.

How do smart salespeople turn a NO from a prospect into a possible yes?

They simply position themselves for the future!

If your prospect has notified you that you are not the winning vendor for a particular deal then I encourage you to:

Call the prospect and thank them for giving you an opportunity to compete for their business. As mentioned above, on average today’s tech purchases are usually for a maximum 3 to 5 year term. That may seem like a long time but when you speak with the prospect tell them that you will be available to help with any future needs they may have. Ask for their agreement to send them relevant marketing updates from your company. Ask for the duration of the contract award and ensure you record this information in your CRM system so that you can get advance notification of when their business will be tendered in the future. Request a calendar appointment to meet with them again or alternatively schedule a call within the next 3 to 6 months to check back in again on their then current needs…….

BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM……..

If they refuse any of the above then simply move on to the other opportunities on your pipeline – but taking the above steps could build future pipeline for you with this “currently lost” prospect.

If you are an IT services provider I encourage you to also call your competitor who won the deal and wish them well. Why? Well there is a severe skills shortage for IT professional services people globally; perhaps they will need capacity to deliver some of the services to the end client and you may be able to offer some people. Offer your services to them – you might get rewarded with a subset of the contracted work. (I have seen this happen in practice!)

If you are an IT services provider and had been bidding for a public tender that was awarded to one of your competitors do not immediately give up on this being a totally lost deal. There is usually a lot of contract negotiations that need to happen after a public tender is awarded. I have seen first-hand a situation where a multi-year IT services contract was awarded to a large system integrator by a European based public sector organization. Part of the post-tender award contract requirements included a clause whereby the Intellectual Property (IP) for any specialist IT services delivered by the winning vendor would remain exclusively with the public sector organization. This proved too onerous a clause for the winning vendor and they withdrew. The public sector organization then approached the second placed vendor, who although extremely disappointed not to win the original tender award, had no issues signing up to the IP clause and ultimately won the deal.

So why is a NO a good word for a salesperson to hear from a prospect

1.      It gives you back the gift of TIME. Your prospect has given you a decision – you can now choose to spend your time (that otherwise you would expend on checking in on this prospect) on other deals in your pipeline

2.      It gives you a chance to update your pipeline and make it accurate. Sales Managers prefer to deal with accurate, honest pipelines from their sales teams. Ensure to include the reason why you lost this deal for future analysis.

3.      It is a learning opportunity. Can you get feedback from the prospect on why they did not give the deal to you? Was it a product gap, was it a pricing gap, was it your track record of delivery, was it a skill gap in your salespeople? Use this information to fine tune your offering for your other pipeline opportunities.

A final word for sales leaders…..

Prepare your sales team for rejection. Sales is an extremely competitive career and there are very rarely prizes for coming in second (unless the purchaser wants to have a multi-vendor based solution or multi-party services framework).

·      Help them avoid slipping into the negative behaviours mentioned above

·      Ensure they ask their prospect for the reasons why they said no

·      Provide coaching / mentoring / training to the salesperson if there is a selling skill gap

·      Help the salesperson position your company to be considered for any future opps with the prospect

·      Help the salesperson position your company to do business with the winning vendor

·      Coach or mentor your salespeople on how to deal with “no”. Consider offering them formal resilience training courses.

So, if your prospect says NO to you, could you maybe, just maybe, use some of the tips shared in this article to turn it around to a YES - if not now, then sometime in the future?

Please share your stories of turning No to Yes in the comments section to build the knowledge base for sales professionals.

About the author. John is a very seasoned technology industry business leader and has helped indigenous Irish technology companies and US technology companies scale their businesses globally. His areas of speciality include helping companies “sale to scale” by building sales teams, Channel partnerships, Alliance & Technology partnerships and establishing business operations (including sales, product development, technical support, shared services functions) across different continents to support international markets, customers and partners. He can be reached at [email protected]