Tom Hopkins - When Buyers Say No: Essential Strategies for Keeping a Sale Moving Forward

You wont win every potential sales opportunity. Even the highest-income-earning sales professionals in your industry walk away empty-handed at times. Its simply the nature of the business. Once you readily admit that, youll stop looking for the magic bullet for closing every sale. Then youll be in the right frame of mind to learn strategies that can help you win more sales than ever beforeincluding those where the buyer says no, not once but multiple times.

Selling is a gamea sportwhere the players prepare, do the best possible job they know how to do in the field, and take home the trophy of a closed transaction frequently enough to satisfy their drives for success and desires for accomplishment. However, when people dont win often enough, they leave the field of sellingsome battered and broken. The truth is that selling can be a brutal sport when you take it on without knowing the rules and nuances of the game.

The goal of this book is to help you sell victoriously more often than you do now. On the one hand, these pages will delve deeply into the nuances of presenting products and services to potential clients. On the other hand, youll discover how to quickly step away from the game in order to keep your mental bearings in the sales processand then never lose control of a selling situation again.

In short, this is a book of strategy. Youll learn how to use a sales compass thats called the Circle of Persuasion. With it, at any given moment during the sales process, youll be clear about the next step you need to take to stay on the path to a closed transaction. Youll also be able to make the right choice when a buyer presents you with the inevitableand often unexpectedfork in the road to a closed sale.

This book will not cover where and how to find new business or how to gain confirmed meetings with buyers. It wont provide you with any follow-up strategies, either. It is totally focused on the actual sales presentation, from the moment you begin to establish rapport to when your buyer gives you the final yes.

Always know that there can be any number of reasons why buyers initially say no to your offering. What you do when you hear them say it will make a world of difference in your level of success. In fact, when you learn how to use the strategies in this book, youll actually look forward to hearing the word no, not just once but several times in the selling process, because youll know exactly what each no means and what you should do or say next.

Too often, salespeople allow selling situations to become uncomfortable when a buyer is resistant or hesitant. They start to feel rejected or defeated. They mentally pack away their sales materials and start thinking about the next appointment. Unfortunately, those defeatist thoughts and feelings show in their demeanor and attitude, and the entire sales process comes to a screeching halt. The average salesperson ends up leaving those selling situations with his head down and his tail between his legs, after making a farewell request to the buyer for permission to stay in touch.

Keeping in touch is certainly better than being told never to contact the buyer again. However, just imagine how the average salespersons life would be different if, when he heard the buyer say