“When you actually give them permission to say no, it is scientifically proven, more likely that they will come back and say yes, because all of a sudden that pressure will have been removed.” – David Priemer in today’s Tip 454
How do we get customers to engage with us?
Join the conversation below and learn more about David!
Cerebral Selling Website
Sell The Way You Buy Book
Cerebral Selling Blog
Cerebral Selling on YouTube
David Priemer on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from David Priemer. David is a 20 years B2B tech sales veteran across 4 startups and he spent 5 years as a VP at Salesforce. He’s also the author of the brand new book: “Sell The Way You Buy” Here he is with today’s tip:
David Priemer: Hey, so this is David Priemer from Cerebral Selling, and I have a very super simple sales tip for you today. Now, this tip is a solution to a problem that so many sellers have, which is around customer engagement.
How do we get customers to engage with us? Not even just engaged in a sales conversation, but even simple things like telling us to go away, which kind of sounds counterintuitive, but as any salesperson knows, one of the worst things that can happen in your sales cycle is a customer going dark or not responding. And of course, what do you do? You start following up, following up, following up, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But what’s happening is it could be pushing your customer accidentally even further away because all of a sudden they start to feel this pressure to engage with you. So here’s my super simple tip for today, and this is a scientifically proven tip.
Now, you know, give you a really, really simple example. Suppose you went to the mall and you were in a clothing store and you’re kind of thumbing through the merchandise at the store and a sales person comes over and says, “Oh, excuse me sir, ma’am, can I help you find something?” You immediately become resistant. Then you say, “Oh, no, no thanks. I’m just looking on my own.” Right? Even if you do need help, and this is because of a psychological principle known as reactance, and it’s our desire to push back when we feel our ability to choose freely is being restricted.
So if you’re a salesperson, you’re kind of coming on strong to your customer and leaving lots of phone calls and voicemails and followup, or they’re going completely dark, or they feel that if they engage with you, otherwise they will be forced into your sales process. They’re going to become very resistance and say, “No, you know, I don’t want this” but they’re not going to call you back.
So here’s what you do. Here’s the simple EXITO to this whole problem. When you are, you know, positioning something to your customers around engaging with you or calling you back, you make it okay for them to say no.
So for example, after you engage with a customer you’ve established some value around your solution around how you can help. You could say something like,” Hey, you know what? You know, I’d love to continue the conversation if you have 15 minutes, I think this would make a lot of sense. But if the answer is no, by all means, just let me know and I’ll back off, right?” When you give people the option to say no, they all of a sudden feel more free, right? They feel more liberated. They do not feel that you are pressuring them to do anything and they are more likely to do two things.
Number one, get back to you in general, right? Whether it’s a yes or no. You give them permission to say no, they’re going to get back to you. But when you actually give them permission to say no, it is scientifically proven, more likely that they will come back and say yes, because all of a sudden that pressure will have been removed.
So that is my super simple sales tip for today. Scientifically proven If you’re trying to get higher levels of engagement out of your customer, whether you’re having a great relationship or whether they’re completely ghosting on you, make it okay for them to tell you no. No is a good answer, right? And it will make them feel more comfortable engaging either way and more likely that you will get a yes. That’s my tip for today.
Scott Ingram: For more about David including links to his LinkedIn profile, YouTube channel and of course his brand new book “Sell The Way You Buy” that you can pick up on Amazon today. Just click over to DailySales.Tips/454 and we’ll have everything for you there.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!