To Succeed in Sales, Learn to Say “No” More Often

I love salespeople. They are always an optimistic bunch, and it’s commendable. However, recent research from Pipedrive shows a concerning reality: because they spend too much time on leads that have no chance of ever closing, most salespeople struggle with prospecting. According to this recent study, about half of them fail to meet quota.

This type of statistic come about every couple of years to show us the error of our ways, but I feel like the status quo rarely ever changes. There's no silver bullet and no catch-all strategy. Change needs to happen in training sessions and at an individual level.

Salespeople are having trouble with the most important revenue-driving activities, like: prospecting, increasing conversion rate of their deals, moving deals through a pipeline faster and increasing the average deal value. In over 20 years of selling all kinds of products and services, I’ve learned that the solution is sometimes counter-intuitive: learn to say “NO!” more often.

When should you say NO and move on?

If you don’t have a great system in place for lead prioritization (and most companies don’t), you rely on your gut feeling to know which are the best leads. So when should you say “NO” to a lead and move on? There’s a few tell-tale signs that some prospects will only cost you time and money, and not bring in a lot in revenue.

1. When you meet a customer that’s trying to bargain right off the bat.

If a customer really wants to do business with you, he should be willing and able to pay for it. A good customer knows what he wants and is ready to have a professional business meeting without coming up with reasons to discount your product/service. A bad one shows up with a long list of reasons why you need to give him a better price. Unless your product has a hefty margin built into the initial price, you should probably think twice about doing business with him.

2. When you meet a good B2B potential prospect, but they can’t name a single customer they do business with.

This is a major red flag right off the bat. If they have a learned speech about their business, but they can’t come up with a name of customers they work with, that shows you they are either unprepared or their business just hasn’t taken off enough for them to be reliable. Now, every business was once a startup, I get that, but the truth is not naming clients is a sign that something is really off.

3. When they don't have a very good idea of what the business does or what the metric for success is.

As I said before, B2B companies are constantly racing each other to innovate and meet customer's needs before the customers even know they have them (read more about TOP 5 Competitive Intelligence Tactics You Should Use in 2019). By setting KPI targets and constantly improving business tactics, every B2B company should be able to get one step closer to success and growth of revenue. If your potential customer has no idea how effectively is his team achieving key business objectives, has no set of goals or comprehensive knowledge of what their business does, then they are not the right customer. This is where exploratory questions are gold for weeding out the bad apples.

4. When a customer says he’s interested in your product/service, but wants to customize it to his business without paying extra $$$

This type of client wants EVERYTHING, and it’s easy to undercut yourself when working with them. They know what they want, they know when they want it, but there is an ever-growing list of requirements that are ALL very important for their bespoke product/audience/market. I don’t have an issue with the idea of customization, but that should come with an extra cost. If you’re not ready to pay for all the features you want, then you’re just wasting my valuable time.

5. When you meet a customer who says he’s interested in your product/service, but misses meetings and never calls back

This is a bit of a grey area, I know. In most cases of a missed meeting you should definitely follow up multiple times. People are busy and a sales call from a vendor is not on their priority list. But if you don’t get through to them in a couple of weeks, then you should know when to cut your losses. This means he’s being unprofessional and you can’t meet quota if he’s not able to do the smallest effort to reach out to you or is ignoring his appointments.

Have you ever met these types of potential prospect and said “NO!”? What else would you add to the list?