Tips for Noobs: Not interested!

A month ago, we tried some targeted email campaigns to try to find companies that could use our sales training. We spent a good bit of time narrowing down the number of businesses to just a few hundred in our area using criteria around size, geography, standard industrial classification code and so on to make sure we were targeting companies that had high odds of needing our help.

We sent a short email asking if we could have a quick call to discuss how we might be able to make their sales go up — if they needed that. Not exactly a hard sell, and other than the 20 minutes of their time a call would take, not a lot to ask to explore more sales — something most folks agree on.

That’s the setup, but here is the surprising lesson I learned.

From this initial inquiry, I got four kinds of responses.

1. Let’s talk; I’m interested (this one is easy)
2. Not interested in your services! (take me off your list)
3. No response (neutral)
4. Your offering sounds great, but we are too small. However, you may want to take a look at what we do for your companies or clients?

Obviously, the message here is with every question posed to you, you have choices in how you respond. If we ignore “yes” for the time being, then our choices (2–4) are (2) rude; (3) neutral/nothing; or (4) a response that is friendly and may even offer something from you that can help them.

Being rude can only hurt you. Bad juju is one thing but in the future, you may be selling to that person on the email. Then what?

This goes for business, but it also goes for your general relationships. You have a choice in how to respond to every situation, and it only makes sense for your sake — and also the greater karma — to be nice to each other and look for some type of positive response to every situation.

For example, what if your company messes up a customer order?

Are you replying: “This company stinks. How can I ever make any sales with them screwing up the orders?”

Or: “Every company makes a mistake every now and then. This gives me an opportunity to show the customer how we fix problems around here.”

What if your manager changes your sales territory?

Are you replying: “No way! This is not fair as I have spent a lot of time getting to know this area.”

Or: “The manager gets to make the call and they are trying to max out the sales so he must know something. Maybe they are trying me out for something. I am going to attack the new territory and try to make it better than the one I have.”

Think about this in every sales (or other) situation for the next few days. Take a little breath between hearing a question/statement (breathe) and then respond with something positive. You will sell more, be happier and be more popular than ever!

Interested?

John Sterling is the Amazon bestselling author of  “Sales for Noobs” and CEO of NOOB School, an online resource for new salespeople. Previously, he helped build and sell Datastream for over $200 million. He has trained and hired hundreds of sales reps globally. Subscribe to his YouTube channel for new sales content every week. https://noobschool.org