5 Outcomes of a Sales Call or Appointment

Every sales call or appointment ends with one, sometimes more, of these outcomes.  Knowing this will help guide your call and make yours and your prospects invested time more effective.

1)      YES – The best outcome!  You got the sale, closed the deal and the prospect signed the agreement.  Just don’t spend the commission until their check clears.  Now go make another 10 calls with this renewed enthusiasm.  Call on the ‘bigger’ prospects that you have been postponing until the timing is just right.  Now is the time.  Don’t take a break to celebrate when there is still time in the day to sell.  If you keep a journal, which I highly recommend, write this in it and refer back to it when you receive the 20 no’s in a row in the future.

2)      NO – Congratulations!  You asked for the order, to proceed to the next step and the prospect said no.  Most salespeople don’t like to hear no, so they don’t ask for the order.  Sometimes they don’t even know what they want, say they don’t ask.  Sounds simple, but how many times do you share information with a prospect to demonstrate how knowledgeable you are and don’t ask enough questions to find out if the prospect is qualified, because you don’t want to lose a prospect.  If you don’t ask for the order, you will never hear no and you will always have them as a prospect.  Meanwhile you don’t meet with qualified prospects that could use your product or service and are ready, willing and able to pay for it.

3)      LESSON – Wonderful!  You got in the car, debriefed the appointment and you remembered something you should have shared when they asked that question or gave you that objection.  Write it down.  Ask yourself, what did I do right, what would I have done differently when I’m given another chance and what will I never do again.  Every call is an opportunity to improve. How would you answer their questions better next time; what questions would you ask that you didn’t this time; what was their true ‘intent’ behind the questions as ‘content?’  You will learn more when you don’t get your way.  Failure is feedback.  You cannot learn these lessons in a book or podcast.  You have to live them.

4)      CLEAR FUTURE – Awesome!  The sales process is working.  You are moving them along and both of you have determined the next step.  There is a clear objective in the future that will determine of the next step.  You both know the goal and perhaps even decided on the outcomes before they occurred.  You played; “let’s pretend….” or “let’s suppose…” and depending on that move, the next step happens or not.

5)      REFERRAL – Splendid!  And you did it in combination with a no.  That took guts!  And you should be congratulated.  You got over the unsupportive belief “that you couldn’t ask for a referral because they didn’t buy from you.”  You knew there was someone else that the prospect knew that is a better fit and you didn’t limit your network to just the people you currently know.  You established trust and rapport and the prospect truly wanted to help you.  This is how you replace your prospect pool when one is not qualified, by finding others without spending a dime on marketing or social media posting.  At first you hesitated, but you stepped outside your comfort zone, analyzed the risk (you had nothing to lose) and you asked.  They respect you more for playing the role of a salesperson and they will be thinking of helping you in the future.

Notice the absence of an outcome? I want to ‘think it over’ is not on the list.  Think it over’s happen when salespeople don’t ask for a decision to proceed or not at the beginning of the sales call.  They don’t like no’s and the surest way of not receiving a ‘no’ is to not ask for a decision.  Instead, salespeople give information because they want the prospects approval of how much they know.  We are in the information gathering business.  We cannot live in search of the prospects approval.

Earn their respect, play the role of a salesperson.  Ask more questions.  Start with knowing what you want.  Don’t accept Think it Over’s.  Go for the NO.

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  1. Sync or Sink says:

    […] also works with clients.  There are 5 outcomes of every sales call (https://mnsales.com/5-outcomes/), and one of them is a referral.  When clients know what words to listen for in their interaction […]