The Emotional Abyss Between No and Yes

The Emotional Abyss between No and Yes

The Emotional Abyss. We're going to talk about that.  I might have mentioned on earlier podcasts a significant part of my sales skillset was developed while I was a salesman at IBM. One of the best training organizations in the world full of absolutely fabulous people.

One mantra that I heard during my training that was often repeated was,

the selling doesn't start until the customer says no.

Think about that.

The selling doesn't start until the customer says no.

Cause you don't really need to do anything if they're saying yes the whole time. But when they say no, now we've got to try and understand why.

No, why not now? Why not my service? Why not me? All right? So that's when the selling begins. That's when you start probing and asking questions and navigating this abyss.

Getting from no to yes confronts everybody in sales and life, and many get frozen by this chasm to the point that they convince themselves that they can't cross this chasm.

So we need to make a determination.

Is it an unwillingness or an inability?

 I would say that 99 times out of a hundred and probably 100 times out of hundreds, it's a reluctance to to cross this barrier. It's an emotional barrier we've constructed. , it's entirely construct of our own mind.

We fear. It's all about fear. We fear the abyss. We fear the reaction of the prospect and calling them again. So we give ourselves reasons why we can't cross it.

And the brain., It's your most powerful asset in in sales. Your mindset, the way that you think, what you believe in will determine your success, and it's a highly programmable computer, more powerful than ai.

 If you put the right kind of prompts, you know, in ai, you put prompts in there. For the AI to do stuff, you've gotta put prompts into your own brain because it can't tell the difference between a thought or a reality. So you can make up your own reality. You can believe that you are Wonder Woman or Superman, and your brain will believe that.

 If you believe it in inner deeply enough, you can do amazing things. So in the words of Henry Ford,

if you think you can or you think you can't, You are right.

So if you think that you can't cross this emotional abyss, the customer has said no, it's over and done with. I can't progress from this point. Then you will not progress from this point.

Whereas if you say to yourself, this is just a step in the journey of the relationship with my prospective customer and I need to help them navigate that journey, and I believe I can help and therefore you will.

You put thoughts, you know, the kind of thoughts that we're talking about.

 I do this. I mean, I say,

oh, I don't want to seem too pushy. I've called twice already. I've done other podcasts. If you've been listening to this series and, and customers buy on the fifth or the 12th occasion that you've spoken with them. So if you're going to call them a couple of times, you're not being too pushy.

You won't be getting up to 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 times. That's just the ante to be in the the stakes. But if you only call on average, the salesperson calls a couple of times, and that only leads to about 5% of the business. You're leaving 95% of the business on the table.

 I don't want to seem too pushy, is one thing we tell ourselves.

What are some of the other things?

Oh, I might offend them by being aggressive. They think that I'm going to be aggressive and I might offend them,  they're going to get mad. They're going to get mad if I call. They're going to shout at me.

Oh, and by the way, it's a Monday. Everybody's busy. No one picks up the phone on a Monday. No point me calling today. It's a Monday.

Oh, it's a Friday. Nobody's in the office on a Friday. They won't, they, they won't pick up.

It'll spoil the relationship we've built.

Well, look, the relationship, it doesn't yield in, in sale. It's not really a very productive relationship because you haven't added any value to your prospect. If you haven't bought your services, if you haven't delivered value, if you haven't transformed their ability to succeed in life in one way, shape or another. It's really not a relationship built on anything significant, so you're hardly going to spoil the relationship!

All of these objections that we put into our brain are nonsense.

You have a great product, you've got a great service, and you know it will add a huge amount of value to your prospect. It may be even change their lives. Certainly some of the training that I've given the consulting of, of changed the destiny of companies and of individual careers.

People have gone on to enjoy much more success. They were on the brink of failure and we were able to help them navigate their business transformation, drive additional profitability, better cash flow, which which kept them in business and allowed them to, to grow.

One of my mentors is Grant Cardone of the 10X system. He says, it's your moral duty to express your values, your duty, and your obligation, because if you really can deliver value, you would be doing yourself as disservice. You would be doing your prospect a disservice if you didn't express your proposal with vigor, with discipline, with, repetition

it's gotta be infused and communicated over time. People don't get what you do on the first conversation. They don't really understand. You've gotta take them through a process. So the real reason why we don't cross this abyss between getting a no to getting a yes is because we are fearful.

We're generally fearful about the emotional discomfort and distress that you will feel as well as your potential buyer will feel that lies between no and yes.

But here's the rub, if you can't handle the emotional journey is not just about this call, this sale, you're retreating from life. All decisions and change are emotional. People aren't robots. People make emotional decisions.

They get emotional, and especially when they're in a sales process because they're having to think about something new. They're having to think about change, and they're going to have to make a decision. And  they're fearful about it and it causes stress and anger. So yes, they get very, very  emotional.

And here's the thing, it's not the customer who stops the sale. Salespeople stop sales. Salespeople make sales go, or salespeople make sales stop, right? It's not the customer.

So yes, when you call your prospect, they may be busy and they've just come out of a meeting. Nothing to do with you. Nothing to do with the area that you are trying to help them with, and it's made them absolutely mad.

I mean, most business owners,  they're stressed, they're having to deal with multiple things, and it's very unlikely you are going to catch them at a time when they're totally relaxed, feet upon the desk thinking, oh, I've got a little bit of time. I'm relaxed. I can consider, you know, the fate of the world and make momentous decisions.

No, you're going to be interrupting them. They're going to be short. They're going to be wondering why you're calling, and they're going to be irate, impatient, and often illogical. And this is this emotional angst that lives in the abyss. And your mission as a salesperson is to hang in there long enough so you can get to the yes side.

let's accept  that our customers are going to get emotional, what do you do?

Think about it this way. If a baby starts crying, should the parents cry too?

Well, of course it sounds ridiculous. The parents don't cry. Of course not. They're the soothing voice of calmness.

They speak slowly. They communicate with the baby. They offer TLC and understanding, and they're a calm and that calmness soothes the crying baby.

A key trait of the successful closer is to be able to remain calm during the emotional storm that lives in the abyss. In the abyss.

Now, I'm not saying be detached.

Not detached, but calm and interested.

You need to acknowledge their issues, but don't inflame them.

You need to connect with them, but don't do the drama.

Don't get into the emotional. Just be stoic, rational, calm, soothing, and let them rant. And when they're talking about something, it may be the price, it may be something else, it may be the time of the day.

 I understand.

I'm with you.

I, agree with you entirely.

And they're, and they're, and they're going on. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep.

And you, so, yep.  I understand. I hear you. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

And then you might say, And what else is on your mind? And they'll, I've gotta tell you about this as well.

And they unload on that.

I understand. I hear you. I'm, I'm with you. I see. I can see why that would , be annoying. I can see why that's important.

Is there anything else on your mind?

And eventually the, the prospect gets all of that emotional release out and you've been calm, comforting. Interested and connected through all of that, and eventually you'll be able to get back into a normal conversation.

Now you can focus on the close.

Would you like to begin the work on Thursday or Friday?

Would you like to pay with Amex or Visa?

I had a very real example of, of this when , when I was with ibm. I was selling to a company and one particular prospect, he was a little reticent about A piece of equipment that I thought he should invest in because I think he had better economic return for his business.

And I got an opportunity to meet with his boss  at a business function. And I said, Hey, I think  there's an opportunity really to to improve your business if you did this. And then knowing that, his boss would call him and say, Hey, I was talking to the guys from IBM and they think they've got an interesting proposal on the table.

Well, my, my prospect was absolutely livid that we'd apparently gone over his head and insisted he ranted on the phone with me and he said, I need you and your, branch manager to get down here.  I'm going to tell you what I think. And I was terrified.

I, I saw this emotional abyss in front of, I know I was going to be torn off a strip. Not only that, but in front of my boss, so it was all going to go pear-shaped.

But my boss was a great salesperson and so we drove down there and the prospect said, I can't believe that your, your salesperson went behind my back to the boss.

And he ranted and ranted and my boss Peter, said, I understand,  I hear you. Is, is there anything else? And he went off on another different tangent and he said, is, is there anything else that you're concerned about? And he asked this about three or four times and eventually the client calmed down enough that we were then able to have a rational discussion.

And ultimately he did think that it was the right idea. We did make the sale, but I observed in person how having this calm demeanor, In front of an angry customer, and just staying in there and being present and being connected allows you to weather that stress, that storm, that emotional rollercoaster to the point that you can then get to the yes side of the abyss.

 What I'm want you to take away from  this week's podcast is you need to understand that the buying selling process is a rollercoaster emotional journey, not just for your customer prospect, but you yourself.

. Don't fear the ride it's going to happen.

It's a natural course of events because people are emotional and people make emotional decisions.

But if you remain calm and interested, you will win friends. And when you master this skill, you'll never fear picking up the phone or making that difficult sales meeting cuz you know whatever response you get emotionally, you can deal with it by being calm, listening, staying connected, and helping them go to the next step.

 I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. We'll see you next week.

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