Tired of HEARING NO ALL THE TIME? Then make it YOUR GOAL to hear NO and WATCH YOUR SALES SKYROCKET!!

9 replies
Hey Warriors,

One of the most frustrating things in offline marketing, and sales in general, is all the "No's" you will hear throughout the day. "No, the owner is not available"... "No, I don't want to meet with you"... "No, I'm not interested in your services"... Sound familiar? Well you are not alone! The cold hard reality of this business is that you will hear "No" a heck of a lot more than you'll hear "Yes".

The number of No's varies on how many leads you are contacting every day, but at a minimum you should be calling at least 20 new businesses every day if you want to have success in this business. Of those 20 businesses, you are going to hear 16 or 17 No's coming from everybody from the Gatekeeper to the actual Decision Maker. I don't care how good of a salesperson you are, you are going to hear more No's throughout the day than Yes. It is important to keep this in mind when you are prospecting and selling your services so that you don't get discouraged and give up. Understand these No's are not a reflection on you personally or even a reflection of your sales skills; it's just the nature of the game.

One of the things I have found that works for me and allows me to keep a healthy perspective on selling, is to turn No's into a game and make it a goal to hear a certain number of No's in a day. This works for a couple of reasons. First, it ensures that you are actually cold-calling and prospecting every day. The day you don't hear a No is the day you didn't work on gaining new clients. Second, it allows you to get closer to the Yes that you are looking for. In other words, every No gets you one step closer to a Yes.

To turn No's into a game, you need to find a list of leads to call for the day and then make a guess as to how many No's you are going to get. After you've called your entire list, see how close you were to your guess. Repeat this day in and day out and keep track of your results. Obviously you don't want to sabotage getting a sale just to meet your guess, but it allows you to take the No's in stride because you already were expecting them.

I've mentioned it in other posts, but it bears repeating here: Create your leads list from businesses who are already advertising. This ensures they have an active marketing budget and are serious about bringing in new business. It also works great for selling them a QR Code and Mobile Website, which is a very easy sell to somebody running an ad. ("I can turn your static print ad into an interactive piece of media by placing a 2D Barcode on your ad.")

I've searched for leads by doing a Google search of an industry (i.e. Dentists or Salons), then called everything that pops up, and I've found that to be a lot LESS successful than targeting businesses who are already advertising. Think of it this way- if you want to go fishing and catch as many fish as possible, would you rather go to a random spot in the middle of the ocean or at a man-made lake that is stocked with tons of new fish every morning? I'm going to go to the lake where all the fish are consolidated!

It may seem like you are limiting yourself to a small percentage of businesses if they are already advertising, but start looking around. Every time I'm at the grocery store, I look up front for advertising magazines-- you'll find plenty from Yellow Pages to Real Estate Listings to Car Classifieds. Grab these to call through later. Also pay attention to your "junk mail" that piles up in your mailbox. (Snail mail, not e-mail) ValPak's, Coupon Clipper, Red Plum... these are all great lead lists. Finally, start picking up newspapers in your area. I've found that both daily papers and weekly papers are a great place to find ads. Additionally, a lot of larger markets will have city related magazines that are another great source to find ads.

So next time you find your lists of leads, set up a game before you call them. Make a prediction on how many No's you will get that day and then start calling. When you are done calling, see how close you were to your original guess! Remember, the more No's you get means the more Yes's you will get as well. It's just how sales works.

-Ben

P.S. It should also be noted that a "No" does not mean a deal is dead. If the gatekeeper is the person who tells you No, then you need to put that business in a list for a follow up call over the next couple days. Don't just accept the No from the gatekeeper as meaning you won't get the business. The gatekeeper's job is not to make the final decision on a deal. So be persistent with getting a hold of the decision maker. It should also be noted that just because the decision maker tells you No to a meeting, they won't eventually buy your services. Put decision maker No's to a meeting in a queue to follow up on at a later date. Ask the decision maker if it is OK to call them back in a month or two to three months to see if their situation has changed. 9 out of 10 times they will say it's OK to call back. Then when you follow up you have an in-- "I'm following up on a previous conversation..." Ok, GO GET 'EM!!!

Questions, comments thoughts...?
#goal #hear #hearing #make #sales #skyrocket #time #tired #watch
  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    Ben GREAT ADVICE.

    I used to tell people, dont make your goal to close a certain amount of sales, make it to give a certain amount of "pitches", that takes the pressure off. The Sales will naturally follow, if the pitch is proven. "Just deliver the message".

    "Dont kill me, Im just delivering the message". Just do that, and take that attitude. The rest will come.

    Dont worry about people who say no, "Hey, Im just delivering the message".

    If you can deliver the message (completely) to enough people, sales will follow.
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  • Profile picture of the author Deidra Renee
    This post is just what I needed to see. I absolutely BOMBED with the telemarketing volume 1 report lol I eventually just stopped calling. I said my goal was to call at least 50 businesses and I did that, but I cheated to get off the phone quicker, I was counting wrong #s, disconnected #s, etc..just so I could say..well I did DIAL 50 businesses lol so tomorrow I will plan on actualyl delivering the message to at least 50 people and see what happens. The good thing about today was I got hundreds of thousands of business leads for $27 and the information is actually up to date..so I guess the whole day didn't suck!
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    • Profile picture of the author John Durham
      Originally Posted by Deidra Renee View Post

      ...I said my goal was t o call at least 50 businesses and I did that, but I cheated to get off the phone quicker, I was counting wrong #s, disconnected #s, etc..just so I could say..well I did DIAL 50 businesses lol
      Thats what most people tend to do. Good thing you recognize and are nipping it in the bud.
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  • Profile picture of the author TCWalker
    Ben,

    You better slow down with all these fantastic posts you've been making, some may actually follow your advice and make some money. J

    All kidding aside, I think you've been putting out some no fluff, actionable information.

    Having said that, I noticed your lead in is selling QR codes and Mobile sites, but I haven't seen you mention much about up sells and ongoing services. I think I read you up sell facebook fan pages, but that's it. Would you be willing to discuss a bit more how you've been growing your business beyond just lead in services and what other services you've found to be the most in demand and profitable?
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    • Profile picture of the author Warrior Ben
      Originally Posted by TCWalker View Post

      Ben,

      You better slow down with all these fantastic posts you've been making, some may actually follow your advice and make some money. J

      All kidding aside, I think you've been putting out some no fluff, actionable information.

      Having said that, I noticed your lead in is selling QR codes and Mobile sites, but I haven't seen you mention much about up sells and ongoing services. I think I read you up sell facebook fan pages, but that's it. Would you be willing to discuss a bit more how you've been growing your business beyond just lead in services and what other services you've found to be the most in demand and profitable?
      Hey TCWalker,

      Thanks for your kind words. That's also a really good question about up-sells and ongoing services.

      As for the up-sells, there is only one that I do during the initial sale. I offer an analytics option where I provide the business owner with multiple QR Codes so that they can test the effectiveness of running different print ads. For example, if the business owner is running an ad in two different newspapers, they can put a unique code in each ad and then I track the scan rates for them. If newspaper A gets 60 scans, while newspaper B gets only 5 scans, it's a pretty safe bet that the business owner should scrap advertising in newspaper B and put his or her money into A. Obviously there are some other variables that could factor into scan rates, but it is a great way to get some initial information on which ad is more effective. The actual up-sell for this is that it costs an extra $100 to set up and then we charge a monthly fee of $99. For the $99 they get monthly reports on the different ads.

      If the client asks me about other things like Facebook or Twitter page creation I'll try to sell them on the spot for that, but our presentations are based around QR Codes and mobile sites, so that's really all we are selling the first go-around. I've found that most clients want to see how we are to work with on the mobile site before they want to jump into a slew of other things. This is the "relationship building" part of sales.

      As for ongoing services, it really varies across the board from client to client, as no two clients are the same. With that said, the biggest/most popular ongoing service we push, and that pretty much none of our clients already have, is SMS/Text Messaging.

      Other services we have done for clients after they signed up for a mobile site are full blown WordPress websites, Google Places, some SEO (actually only 1 client, a Heating & Air Conditioning Company, went on to do a full blown SEO campaign with us), and then FB/Twitter page creation. We actually signed up a few clients for a combo-pack of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr page creation. I've actually found these to be pretty time intensive in terms of managing them after creation and doing daily posts, so we found a local person who we outsourced all the management to. Paying him takes up a lot of the monthly money we get for the services, but it's worth it since I don't have to do anything but manage an e-mail here or there.

      We also have done some custom QR Code/Mobile Websites that involve mCommerce. For one particular client we created a mobile website where people could reorder a product that needs to be replaced every 2 months or so. Our client put a QR Code on the main (non-replaceable) part of the product so that people can scan the code and then order the replacement directly from their phone. In all honesty we haven't seen this take off as much as I'd like, but I think the whole concept of buying through your smartphone is in it's infancy stages so we might be a little ahead of the curve on this one.

      Anyway, we don't really have a strict formula for selling ongoing services, it really just depends on the client and what their needs are. I've found that by keeping in touch with clients, they end up telling me some things they've wanted to work on and once they tell me, I go for the close on that. It isn't a specific strategy of 1) Sell them a mobile site, 2) Wait a week and sell them FB page, 3) wait another week and sell SEO... It's just doesn't make sense to fit every unique client into one sales funnel.

      In terms of growing my business, I've actually been focused on getting larger (read: higher paying) clients and doing custom QR Code implementation. I don't want to go into too much detail here because there are some outstanding deals that haven't closed yet, but think of the possibility of having QR Codes in parks and hiking trails where people can scan them and get information about where they are, the wildlife, plant life, etc...

      We also have a different entity (different company name) where we provide Reputation Management services for suppressing negative websites (like RipOffReport) in search results. We have a few clients for this that provide a nice chunk of monthly money, but it's not something that I actively solicit every day. I've found the sales cycles to be much longer for this type of service and I like the momentum of getting sales every week.

      I hope this answer your question, but let me know if you need any clarification or have any more questions!

      -Ben
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  • Profile picture of the author LongTail Silver
    Another purpose of going for "No's" rather than "Yes's" is that when we do get a couple successes under our belt, we tend to feel self-satisfied and complacent and stop pushing ourselves. Let's say my goal for the week was to make 4 sales and I got lucky and made 3 for 3 on Monday. Chances are, now I'll take it easy, thinking I have the whole week to get that 4th Sale. But in reality, I'm selling myself short, when I could have had the chance to do more.

    This is a fascinating topic and one that is explored in a very entertaining and inspirational way in the book Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz. Takes about an hour to read, but it could seriously change your life.

    Amazon.com: Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No...Amazon.com: Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No...
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  • Profile picture of the author TCWalker
    Ben,

    Interesting stuff. I like your QRcode with mobile selling strategy, it gets the prospective client involved and and they can SEE how it all works.

    As far as up selling other services, I'm not surprised to hear facebook twitter isn't as profitable as many make it seem, it really does take time updating those pages/tweets with quality content. I think a high enough price needs to be charged to make it worth it. At same time I'm surprised to hear you haven't sold much SEO. My assumption is business owners you've been dealing with just don't see the value in it.

    I agree, one should ultimately really put in the effort in getting those businesses large enough to afford the value we can provide to their businesses. Let's face it, those small mom and pop businesses are good for smaller, quick services but they aren't going to make you rich. And this is part of the reason why I've been somewhat hesitant in spending my time pitching small mom and pop businesses and selling offline IM services to them, because I know most just don't have the budget to take advantage of the marketing systems I can offer. I've done B2B sales so I know a lot of these guys are barely making ends meet.

    I'm going to have to brainstorm your parks and hiking trail idea and see how it can be monetized, great stuff!
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    • Profile picture of the author Warrior Ben
      Originally Posted by TCWalker View Post

      I'm surprised to hear you haven't sold much SEO. My assumption is business owners you've been dealing with just don't see the value in it.
      It's not just business owners that don't see the value in it-- it's also me, which makes it difficult for me to sell. The reason I say this is that for a lot of local keywords, there just aren't that many monthly searches done. We're talking about 20 or 30 monthly searches. It is hard to acquire new customers for the business with such low search volume. One thing to remember when looking up search volume on Google's keyword tool is to put in "Exact Match" and not use broad match. I see people quoting Broad match search volumes and it greatly increases the number of expected searches. The reality is that a lot less people are searching for the exact phrase.

      Another thing that I've found is that many business owners have been sold on SEO in the past and have seen very poor results, if they even saw results. Because of this they are very skeptical of SEO services, even if you've built up your credibility with other services. They don't want to pay thousands of dollars for something they've tried in the past and hasn't worked.

      Additionally, for many local searches, Google Places shows up higher than the search results, so it is much better to rank in Google places, and not for their specific website. This is why I do more Google places rankings than SEO.

      Don't get me wrong, there is still money to be made in SEO, but I don't think it is the best solution for most small business owners and it's why I don't actively push it on my clients.

      -Ben
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