Thank you, sir, may I have another
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Sales, in a rough economy, is not fun. Its hard, as you get a flood of recections, to not recall the famous paddle scene in Animal House. As you get rejection after rejection, you have to stand up, and try to get the next sale – no matter how much losing that last sale hurt.
But… isn’t the whole point of QuotaCrush to get LESS rejections? Indeed it is, but the facts remain that in a bad economy, no matter how good your sales process is, there are customers that just cannot get the budget for your product – regardless of how much more efficient it will make them, how much money it wil save them, or how much it will increase their own sales.
Think about your own life. In my own house, it would probably make a lot of sense for me to replace the windows. The old ones are much less efficient than new ones would be, and I’m pretty sure that most of the gas between the panes is gone. I probably would get an ROI on the window investment in about 4 years. I plan to be in my house for more than 4 years, so rationally, this is a purchase I should make, right? Well, like most of you, I make money on sales and I know that if this economy turns south again, sales may drop in my clients, and I may have an income drop – so I will delay the replacement windows until I feel a little more secure that the economy is indeed headed towards a recovery, and I’m not going to need my savings for other things.
Your prospects are going through this same type of struggle as they decide whether or not they should purchase your product. What this means is that you need to have a bigger pipeline, patience with clients, and more creativity in how to price and sell your product.
Unfortunately, its indeed a numbers game. Different prospects will be at different points along this scale, so you need more prospects to make more sales. While this truth always exists, it is especially true in hard economic times because, like my example, what seems perfectly logical is not often what is driving the decisions. Clearly, we want more companies to think long-term knowing that the economy will, at some point, turn around, but unfortunately, for us salespeople, that is not always the case, and we have only limited power to change their thinking. So, you need more prospects so that you can find the ones that will buy – despite the economy. And.. if you do your sales job correctly, when the economy DOES turn around, you can close everybody who was on the fence.
So as you get paddled by your pipeline over and over again, its important not to lose momentum and not get discouraged. Find the reason that you are doing this and focus on it.
The three faces above are the real reason I’m in sales. I have goals to build my company, to help entrepreneurs build their own companies, to help salespeople, and of course to make money. But, the real reason that I take the constant barrage of rejection that accompanies sales is for those three people (oh… and my wife too 🙂 )
So… in order to not get discouraged by all the rejection, you need to find your rock, and focus on it. When that happens, you will find it much easier to deal with the rejection – and also keep you focused on your end goal.
