By Hank Trisler
I asked a question on Twitter yesterday: “What is the biggest mistake salespeople make when dealing with you?” Got a fascinating response from Ricci Neer, a very moxy lady from Austin, TX. She said she disliked being pushed. She told of attending a networking event and encountering a network marketeer who was far more interested in selling her on the opportunity than on the product. The woman tried three times to close her on something in which she had no interest. Ricci says, “Not sure what part of ‘I'm not interested in the opportunity’ she didn't understand. Pretty much talked herself out of a sale. Sadness.”
I’m thinking the problem is not that the saleswoman was too pushy, but rather that she was pushing in the wrong direction because she refused to listen. Ricci wanted to buy the product. Why not let her, and then talk to her about the opportunity after she had used the product? We don’t view people as pushy who are trying to get us to do something we want to do.
Sometimes, however, we need to provide a gentle shove to get the customer moving in a direction that is in their best interests. The feelings of being “too pushy” are familiar to any of us who have chosen to sell for a career. We want to get the job done, but we don't want to feel like a pushy pest in the process. This conflict is basic in our job, so let's face it head on.
Here's the bottom line: If you don't feel like you're pushing too hard, you're either an insensitive boor, or you're not pushing hard enough. It is by the very nature of a salesperson to help buyers make decisions that they would not make in our absence. That's why they pay us the big bucks. If we don't make sales, they might as well sell their products through vending machines or catalogs. Without providing a little push, we are extraneous, useless.
You will lose at least ten sales by not pushing hard enough for every sale you will lose by pushing too hard.
Why, then, does it feel so bad when we push a bit too hard? Because that's the only time we get feedback from the customer. When we push too hard, the customer conveys his negative feelings of being pushed both verbally and non-verbally. Being sensitive, empathetic human beings, we pick up on these signals and feel bad about our behavior.
When we don't push hard enough, we get no negative feedback, but the customer goes away without buying. Everyone involved feels good, but a sale is not made.
The central issue then becomes: Do you want to make a lot of friends, or make a lot of money? I don't mean to imply that high production and good customer relations are mutually exclusive, but if you're doing your job, sometimes you're going to get negative feedback. Learn to love it. It's a good signal that you're pushing enough.
Neither am I advocating becoming a "tiger closer." I don't like to "close" deals and I hate being "closed." I'll bet you don't like it, either. Being "closed" makes us feel out of control, an uncomfortable situation at best. In fact, as I steadily progress into ever-deepening geezerhood, I have made every effort to remove the term "close" from my vocabulary, except as it relates to doors. "Closing" is a final word, meaning the end of something. I hate final words. Why do they call them "airline terminals?" On a recent flight, the pilot said, "We are now on our final approach to Las Vegas." I didn't really want to hear that.
Selling is a process of opening and maintaining relationships. If we can concentrate on opening enough relationships of sufficient depth, the closing of sales will take care of itself. Relationships require commitment, however and obtaining a commitment from our customers frequently requires a little push.
More years ago than I care to remember, Notre Dame University ran a survey, which Universities do when they have excess funds. They found that sixty-three percent of all sales presentations end without the salesperson having asked for a commitment. Those were not sales presentations, they were merely conversations. It doesn't become a sales presentation until the salesperson asks the customer to do something.
What a waste of time. I find baseball nearly as dull as cricket, but can you imagine how dull baseball would be if only thirty-seven out of every one hundred batters who came to the plate bothered to swing at the ball?
While they were in the neighborhood, the researchers studied how many "No"s a salesperson would take before giving up. They found that forty-four percent quit after the first "No." That's right. Of the thirty-seven percent of those who even bothered to ask once, nearly half crapped out after only one try.
Twenty-two percent quit after the second "No," and fourteen percent quit after the third "No." You'll notice that the numbers are getting smaller and that's because there aren't that many players left in the game. By the time the fourth "No" has been uttered, ninety-two percent of your competition is out in the parking lot with all four feet sticking straight up in the air.
And then the Notre Dame folks found that nearly sixty percent of all buyers said "No" four times before they said "Yes."
If your math works the way mine does, this means that eight percent of all the salespeople get sixty percent of all the business, and they get it just for asking. If you ask, you shall receive. You don't ask you don't get. The more you ask, the more you get. Oh sure, you'll hear a lot of "No"s, but you'll be way ahead at the end of the game.
Don't be afraid of being too persistent, of asking too often, of pushing too hard. If you overstep your bounds, your customer will tell you and if they do, make allowances for the fact that they may be wrong and you still weren't pushing hard enough.
Please let me know what you think about pushiness in salespeople.
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