Famous follow ups may be hampering your sales and preventing you from getting significant results in the prospecting process. Understand how to stop saying NOTHING MATTERS and start to have better results!
Stop for a minute and look at your sales pipeline. Filter your CRM to show only the offers that are at the end of the sales process.
Like most sales consultants, you should have a list of prospects who have been waiting, for some time, in limbo.
And you, like most vendors, have already told one of them – or plan to do so shortly – NOTHING MATTERS.
“Hi, I’m here for a return and see if you’ve managed to take a look at things.”
Yes, the Follow Up , the follow-up call or email. Modest check-in. He “just called you to find out if blah, blah, blah …”, the disinterested gesture that shows your client that you care.
The great “IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE” for your potential client.
Sales managers receive “IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE” at all times, especially with teams that have problems with this situation.
“Hey, where’s that negotiation in the process?” “I don’t know, nor do I care.”
Diagnosing the NOW NOTHING MATTERS
If you’re saying or listening to NOTHING MATTERS all the time, that’s a symptom of a deeper problem . The root of the problem are two main questions:
- The representative’s sales process is not aligned with the buyer’s decision-making process.
- The sales representative did not explore what stages should happen next for the buyer and defined a specific day and time to attend to the buyer according to what is necessary to carry out the process.
Bad repercussions of the NOW NOTHING MATTERS.
If you or your sellers are saying a LOT OF IT DOESN’T MATTER, you probably have a big problem.
If left untreated, NOTHING MATTERS can result in a slow sales pipeline, unhealthy forecasts (or no forecast), a drop in success rate, and even the loss of your role as a manager or representative.
The worst of all the damage caused by the ALREADY NOTHING matters is not only for you, but for all those around you.
The effects of NOTHING MATTERS on your potential client
If a prospect is expecting to come back to you as soon as you take an attitude, saying NOTHING MATTERS can really hurt your relationship.
I had hoped you would respond when he was ready and your NOTHING MATTERS can easily be interpreted as if you had not respected his time.
In addition, IT ALREADY DOESN’T MATTER more about you than about him.
Conversation thus becomes much more focused on your need to sell than on solving your prospect’s problem.
NOTHING MATTERS does not add any value to your potential client and, many times, it is irritating to the point of damaging your credibility and harming the work you have done so far.
The effects of NOTHING MATTERS on your sales manager
If sales managers also DO NOT MATTER ANYTHING, this is detrimental in several ways, as it makes it very difficult to predict company entry revenue.
Poor forecasting can not only hinder reporting, it can cause team misalignment to other areas of your company, such as Support and Customer Success, as well as creating inaccurate budgets.
If the sales manager hears ANYTHING DOESN’T MATTER and does nothing to help deal with the EVERYTHING ELSE of your representative, he is relegating himself to nothing more than a sales accountant and failing in his role.
He spends his time making 1on1s with reps trying to analyze numbers instead of working as a sales technician, assisting in building skills, and increasing the success of your reps.
The Effects of NOTHING MATTERS on the Sales Representative
As a sales representative, living saying NOTHING MATTERS is no good.
Just as it is bad for you to say that NOTHING MATTERS, it is even worse for those who are listening. It is necessary to have mutually beneficial conversations that end with a realization.
You also want predictability in your results. It is a burden for your psychological to see all the businesses in your CRM, after having worked so much, with a feeling of discredit associated with them.
This makes you think:
“What happened to those happier days when we were getting to know each other or showing you what I could do for you and the two of us really looked like each other? Where did the love go? Why don’t you return my calls? ”
How to get rid of the NOTHING MATTERS
Calm down, there is a proven, proven and well-documented cure for YA NOTHING MATTERS.
From now on you can follow this 5-step treatment program to eradicate NOTHING MATTERS from your vocabulary and be healthy for you, your manager and your potential clients.
1st step: Know the decision process of your prospect
If you have completed the sales process and hear phrases like “I want to think about it” or “Send me the proposal and I will contact you” from your prospect, this means the decision-making process is not over yet.
As a caring salesperson, you need to get back to work and explore whatever it takes.
Information is missing? The prospect is not 100% sure about what you offer? Not comfortable enough to say “yes” to you or your company? Are you still under investigation and are you also looking at your competitors?
If you don’t know the decision-making process of your potential client, you will stop helping them with that and fall into the trap of saying NOTHING MATTERS.
2nd step: Know the process of buying your prospect
Unlike the decision-making process, which is how an individual decides to accept or reject your recommendation, the purchasing process is the company’s protocol.
Who else is involved in the decision? Who are the other stakeholders? What is the order or how does the purchase process occur? Who makes the final connection? Who has the budget?
What are the process stages that must be carried out? Financial approval? Provider approval? Purchase approval?
Imagine if you do not know the buying process of the potential client and your competitor is the one that helps them to carry it out while you only accompany with your eyes. You lost a client.
Step 3: Isolate a specific next step
After learning about the decision-making and purchasing process, you can isolate a specific next step and come up with a plan with the perspective of moving the conversation forward.
If there is only one step, this is easy. If you’re involved in a more elaborate sale with 4 or 5 remaining steps, the work involved in getting a deal may seem overwhelming to you and the prospect.
Forget about the success of the finale and focus on the next small victory needed to advance towards a signed contract.
If you notice that your language changes from “follow-up” to “next step” when talking about the last steps in the process, that’s the first sign that the treatment is working.
4th step: Delegate action points
If a next step is necessary in decision making or purchasing, it means that more work needs to be done by the prospect to go from “maybe” to “yes” or “no”.
To continue a healthy process for both the buyer and the seller, some actions must be taken.
If the budget needs to be confirmed, combine with your prospect that he will have that answer until the next meeting.
If another stakeholder needs to be updated and you don’t have access to it, get an agreement that the prospect will mark the meeting until the end of the week and confirm with you when this happens, so there is adequate preparation for the conversation.
5th step: Schedule your next step
Aligning expectations is essential to maintaining a healthy conversation with your potential clients and leaving you closer to finalizing an agreement.
The basis of the transition from “follow-up” to “next step” is the expectation of when the action item will be completed. A day and time must be agreed and scheduled in the calendars of the prospects and the vendors involved.
This leaves no room for misinterpretations about the importance of the meeting. This is a fundamental meeting to progress.
Prospects who are genuinely interested and committed appreciate this, as the formality of the process helps them stay organized and making progress. They also invested valuable time and want to see the results of it.
This 5-step process is a treatment for NOWHING DOESN’T MATTER and not a cure. It is always possible for a relapse to occur if sellers are not vigilant.
The easiest way to ensure that this does not happen is to build the next steps in your sales process, assuming that even when you are in the final processes, the potential customer has not yet made their decision and the next steps will be necessary for sellers and prospects, to end the conversation.
