WHEN I BEGAN SELLING, COLD-CALLING FROM OFFICE to office during the day, and from house to apartment during the evening, I was terrified of closing. Every day, I would sally forth to sell, unafraid to get face-to-face with prospects and enthusiastically deliver my sales information. Then, at the end, I would choke up and askhesitatingly, “What do you want to do now?” Invariably, the prospect would say, “Well, leave it with me and let me thinkabout it.” I learned later that the words, “Let me think it over” or “Let me think about it” are polite customer-speakfor “Goodbye forever; we’ll never meet again.” I convinced myself that people all over town were “thinking it over” and that my phone would soon fall off the hookwith eager buyers. But no one ever called.
I finally realized that it was not the product, the price, the market, or the competition that was holding me back from making sales. It was me. More specifically, it was my fear of asking a closing question. One day, I decided that I had had enough of frustration and failure. My very next call, when the prospect said, “Let me think about it; why don’t you call me back,” I said something that changed my life. I replied, my heart in my throat, “I’m sorry, I don’t make callbacks.” “Excuse me,” he said, a bit surprised. “You don’t make callbacks?” “No,” I said. “You know every thing y ou need to know to make a decision right now. Why don’t you just take it?” He looked at me, then down at my brochure, and then looked up and said, “Well, if y ou don’t make callbacks, I might as well take it.” He got out his checkbook, signed the order, paid me, and thanked me for coming. I walked out with the order in a mild state of shock. I had just experienced a major breakthrough.
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