Here’s a counterintuitive piece of information – your best performing salespeople will hear “no” more times than their less successful teammates.
You might be thinking, well that doesn’t make much sense, our most successful people shouldn’t be failing to acquire sales. Your organization wants your salespeople to hear “yes” – not “no”?
Well as it turns out, 80% of prospects say “no” four times before they say “yes”. This means that your most successful salespeople – the ones who get to the “yes”,heard no at first but listened to their customer’s needs, acted with a resilient mindset, and adapted.
Salespeople Need Resilience and Persistence
It can be a bit soul-crushing to constantly hear “no”. Constant rejection is a hard pill to swallow, but in the highly competitive world today the role of a salesperson has gotten that much more challenging, and hearing “no” has become that much more frequent.
But “no” is not a stopping place. In fact, the most resilient salespeople do not see “no” as a failure, they see it as a step closer to a new business relationship, another interaction where they learned more about who they are selling to and what this potential customer needs, and another opportunity to connect and build a platform of trust and understanding.
Seeing No as an Opportunity Rather than a Failure
Your organization’s survival depends on your salesforce’s resilience, yet most salespeople still mistakenly view no as a source of failure.
- 44% of sales people give up after one “no”
- 22% give up after two “nos”
- 14% give up after three “nos”
- 12% give up after four “nos”
By adding these percentages up, you will quickly realize this means only 8% of your sales reps attempt a fifth follow up. But with 80% of sales being achieved after a fourth attempt, this tells us that no longer is the 80/20 rule true, but in today’s selling world, only 8% of salespeople are getting 80% of the sales. This is why sales professionals need resilience training now more than ever before. Learn more about resilience for sales in this whitepaper.
If your sales reps hear “no, sorry, I am not interested” and they hit a brick wall, stopping them dead in their tracks and turning them running back with shattered pride, looking to start their sales process over, with someone new, they are going about this all wrong.
A resilient salesperson means more than just sifting through all of the leads telling them “no” until they reach someone who will say “yes” on the first attempt, it means working through the “no” until you learn what exactly it is that your customer needs to say “yes”.
Learn more about how your company can build a resilient salesforce here or check out our resilience research library here.
