Sales Lesson of the Day
Posted by Rick Roberge on Mon, Oct 03, 2011 @ 07:20 AM
Some people don't and won't like you. Some might like you, but not agree with you. Some might agree with you, but not like you. A few years ago, I wrote a short article titled, "Who Hates Rick Roberge?" and got a few answers. Let me tell you about this past week.
Last Sunday, I prodded an opportunity that Frank and I had 'stuck' in our pipeline. They replied with a counteroffer. I replied with, "No thank you." Frank replied that I should have talked to him before I blew the prospect up. He reminded me that many people counteroffer. He suggested that I should have answered "I don't think that we're on the same page yet. Let's talk tomorrow." He told me that he doesn't like the, "get lost unless it's my way approach." He ended with, "I still love you dearly." The client signed up on Wednesday.
On Monday, I saw an email from a CEO to their channel partners that said that small customers are too much work. You can get 5-10 times as much money out of a big company and that the only reason that a channel partner CHOOSES to sell small customers is because they can only impress and close small customers and cannot impress CEO's of larger firms. I happen to work with small clients and if this were written to me and I were a channel partner, I wouldn't be a channel partner long.
On Tuesday, I had a sales call scheduled with a prospect that I met at HUGS. We both had a hard stop at 11:30. I had a meeting. The prospect had a call with one of my clients. I closed by saying, "Talk to my client. If they say nice things, we can finish later." At 8:05PM, I sent an email, "You never called back. So, can I assume that my client had nothing good to say about me and that I can close your file?" They replied at 8:29, "I have a meeting w/another sales trainer tomorrow. I will get back to you once I make my decision. Probably early next week." To which I replied, "Funny. No need to call back. We're done." As luck would have it, they didn't think it was funny. At, 9:19, they replied, "Wow how arrogant. I will be sure to tell Hubspot about this." So, I forwarded the string to Hubspot and cc'd the prospect. Then they forwarded part of the string to my client that they had talked with, but my client forwarded it to me. So, I sent the parts that the prospect had edited out to my client and the prospect.
Then, on Friday, I saw this blog post about increasing sales and was reminded that one out of four isn't a bad average when that one out of four is in your sweet spot and is a home run. Thank you to everyone that contributed to this blog post.