With the recent economic turmoil, we could all be forgiven for being anxious about making our numbers. Customers are nervous – and that’s never a good thing. There have always been plenty of reasons why customers choose not to buy from you – but now unfortunately there is one more big one – the state of the economy. As they say – when the going gets tough – the tough get going, and right now is the time to doubly focus on the right things to do, and doing them right.
Speaking of reasons to lose a sale, a recent Fortune magazine article lists some of the strangest reasons why sales were lost .. and some of them made me smile, so I thought I’d share.
- “The customer said my accent was not real”
- “The spiritual counselor of the customer told him to go with my competitor”
- “His wife was taken to an asylum”
- “I was taller than the client and he didn’t like it”
- “The primary contact was murdered”
- “I answered the phone after hours, and the customer said he wanted to speak to a machine”
In truth though, if we lose a sale – it really means one of two things (a) you shouldn’t have been there in the first place (this was a deal you could never win), or (b) you were out-sold. It’s really that simple.
In this challenging times, we all need to be ruthless about qualifying-out early, and spending our time and resources maximizing our conversion rates by focusing on the deals we can win – and are worth winning. That’s how to continue to make the number – when all about you are missing theirs.