Tips for Closing Sales: 10 Ways to Avoid No-Decisions
Recent data pegs the no decision rate for buyers of enterprise solutions at 61%. That means that 6 out 10 of your sales efforts end without a win or a loss. Why is that percentage so high?
From my experience, it stems from sales execution errors.
Sellers focus too much on their product and not enough on the critical information buyers need to justify a purchase. Because sellers overemphasize their product features and differentiators, the buyers only learn to compare products but they lack three crucial buying skills:
Connecting your solution with an outcome buyers want to achieve
How to sell this idea to my peers
Understanding how to overcome the risks I face as a buyer.
Avoid sales ending in no-decision with these 10 tips
To avoid an opportunity ending without a sale, you need to learn how to address the primary causes of no-decision. Here is the list of actions you need to take to avoid no-decisions in your next sale:
Understand how buyers evaluate risks
Unlock their personal motivation to change
Customize your communication to match their style
Expose, then fill, knowledge gaps
Establish credibility with a buyer by sharing lessons learned
Gain credibility by defining the exact challenges they face
Educate them about the consequences of inaction
Train your buyer to be an Internal Seller™ of your idea
Demonstrate confidence so you transfer confidence to them
Guide them how to buy your solution
Pay close attention to the verbs in the list above. The verbs provide guidance for how to approach the modern buyer. Notice that the list does not include Sell or Tell.
Our activities have to revolve around the consultative selling principles of helping them make an informed decision. Stop pushing products. Start bringing ideas. Sell the future state that your product enables. Coach them how to sell their peers. Avoid no decisions.
Tip 1: Understand how buyers evaluate risk
Fears predominate most buyers. They fear making a mistake, they fear the project failing and they often fear asking for help.
The fix: Buyers overcome fears when they recognize that their risks have been sufficiently addressed. Salespeople need to de-risk the sale by proactively sharing how you address their risks. You want to serve as comfort ambassadors™. We need to get them comfortable that we can manage their risks and that we have their best interests at heart. *Bonus- we get them comfortable telling us the truth and willing to ask for our help.
Tip 2: Unlock their motivation to change
Converting your Buyer to a Sponsor must happen in the sales process or you will end up in the land of no-decisions. If they don’t see the outcome you provide as worthwhile, they will not drive the process within their company.
The fix: By studying Movement Triggers™ you can learn what gets each buyer type most motivated. Some want an easy path with little work, some want a chance to earn a promotion, some want to make their boss look good and some love being early adopters. Study your buyer and present your solution as a way to help them achieve their personal goals and you will create a motivated buyer/sponsor. *Bonus- Loss avoidance motivates many buyers but don’t neglect their aspirational goals.
Tip 3: Customize your communication to match their style
Each buyer has a behavioral and communication style that reveals how they like to give and receive information. Their preferences dictate the pace, the media, the frequency and the amount of socializing they prefer. If you push a deliberate buyer to decide too quickly, you will lose. If you try to steer a directed buyer they will resist because they need the decision to be their own. If you fail to give a detailed buyer the data and facts they need you will lose.
The fix: This fix starts with improving your self-awareness. How do you prefer to sell and communicate? Taking a self-assessment provides a valuable baseline. Then you can learn your blind spots as a salesperson. Next, you need to read the buyer and understand the clues they provide for how they like to communicate. Example: Are you quick to trust people and expect them to do the same? Know that about yourself and spot cautious buyers that need more time, more details and don’t want to be rushed. PS — Reach out for a complimentary 50-page coaching report.
Tip 4: Expose, then fill, knowledge gaps
When buyers are comfortable with the status quo, they are tough to move off that spot. Exposing a knowledge gap works as the best way to motivate them to hear more of your story. Curiosity spikes buyer’s attention levels by 91%.
“Curiosity prepares the brain for learning, because curiosity puts the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it.” Dr. Matthias Gruber
The fix: Find a knowledge gap that puts their project at risk. Then after exposing a knowledge gap, you fill the gap with the knowledge of how your solution addresses the gap. Great gaps to fill include: Reasons they will fail, experience they lack, expertise required, skills and resource gaps. Bonus Demonstrate how your solution fills all 5 of these gaps and you will win the sale.
Tip 5: Demonstrate your credibility
If you fail to establish your credibility you will lose. At the heart of consultative selling is the ability to provide lessons learned and to bring industry best practices that reduce customer’s risk. Don’t waste the buyer’s time with questions that you could answer from reviewing their website.
The fix: Using the right industry terms, speaking their language and asking insightful questions earns credibility. Start the conversation by sharing your understanding of their goals and challenges to save time and avoid interrogating the witness. Do your pre-work and show up ready to share a perspective that informs the buyer. Bonus Never ask what keeps them up at night, you should know that already.
Tip 6: Address the exact challenges they face
Buyers don’t want to buy a generic solution that fits all sizes. Too often we share all of the product features and benefits and hope that they make the connection to how our product fits their specific needs. That is lazy selling. Hope is not a strategy.
The fix: By studying the buyer’s situation, you can determine which talking points, use cases and outcomes to highlight. Ultimately, you need to be able to share why your solution is perfect for them. By proactively sharing that you know the challenges they face, you further develop your credibility and you get them eager to hear that you can address the challenges they face.
“Articulate a problem really well; buyers assume you know how to solve it.” Play Bigger
Tip 7: Educate them about the consequences of inaction
61% of buyers think taking no action is better than the outcome your proposal promises. If buyers lack motivation and they don’t see value in moving forward then they will not take action. What are the costs of inaction? Are they going to fall behind the competition? Do they face greater risk from inaction than from making a change? What are the opportunity costs of not moving forward? What is the best return on capital?
The fix: Presenting difficult information to a buyer that confirms they will not achieve their goals represents the single skill separating the average salesperson from the exceptional salesperson. No one likes to force a buyer to face hard truths but if you get the buyer to acknowledge the consequences of inaction, you also get them to realize they need to make a change. This skill is vital to avoiding a no-decision.
Tip 8: Training your buyer to be an Internal Seller™of your idea
Many projects die in team meetings when your sponsor loses funding approval to another project that was presented with a more convincing sales argument and better alignment to company goals. The failure to train your buyer on how to present the solution puts your proposal at risk. Further, you also need to troubleshoot your proposal against expected push backs from their skeptics. “We already have that… We can do that ourselves… Our current vendor has that capability in the roadmap..” All of these can derail your sale if your internal seller can not refute these assertions.
The fix: To create an Internal Seller, start by sharing a use case that features a clear outcome/win from a current customer install. The use case works because it includes the challenge they faced, why your solution was uniquely qualified to address the challenge and it includes a proof point that a key metric improved. Buyers can remember the story much better than they can remember product #s, skus or cliched jargon about your product. #madetostick
2nd fix: Take a training approach to your communication with buyers. Be consistent in the language that you use and listen to hear if they re-use your phrasing. Train them on the phrases you want them to use when describing your solution to their peers. Before they go to ask for approval, ask them to share how they will describe the solution and prep them for any objections you expect they will face. Bonus Offer to review their justification presentation and assist with your own visuals and slides if they want help with creating their presentation.
Tip 9: Demonstrate confidence in yourself and your solution
Asking buyers to put themselves at risk personally and to take a chance on your solution requires faith in you and your solution. If buyers see weakness in your commitment, why should they accept the risk too? Buyers have trained antenna to sense your lack of confidence and these value leaks™ can cost you at the negotiation table and in worst cases cost you the sale completely.
The Fix: Develop a bulletproof confidence in your solution. Study the wins your company has already posted. Research the competitive take-outs already completed. Learn how to connect the differentiated services you offer into meaningful outcomes the prospect desires. Your goal is to transfer your confidence into the buyer’s mind so they have equal confidence in the solution. Bonus Prepare your Rocky response for when you get backed into the corner. It starts with this phrase, “Before you select another vendor, you have to know this about our solution…”
Tip 10: Guide them on how to buy your B2B solution
A common mistake is to assume that your solution is perfect without allowing for the possibility that you may not be the best choice for their exact needs. This blind selling hurts your credibility. We have to allow buyers to make up their own minds and convince themselves of the merit in our solution. If you metaphorically “close off all exits” in the sales process, some buyers will instinctively resist just to show they still have the power to say “no.” Don’t box buyers in. Respect their right to say “no” and trust that if you help them make an informed decision, you have the best chance of winning today’s sale and sales in the future.
The fix: Imagine preparing a buyer’s guide for your prospect. Coach them on what to look for in a good solution, how to evaluate vendor claims and highligh lessons learned from servicing your existing customers. By sharing these details you help protect the buyer from making a bad decision which is the exact type of help they need in today’s information overload.
Bonus If you can get a buyer to expand the criteria they use to evaluate their purchase, you have a tremendous advantage over the competition. We all know that if we didn’t help write the RFP, that we are already in second place. But even from second place, if we can expand their criteria to include some of our unique attributes, we can tilt the playing field back in our favor.
Incorporating these tips to close more sales
If you can incorporate any of the fixes listed above you will increase your win rate and reduce the number of no-decisions. We know that a certain amount of items are outside of our control (remote workforces, budgets, hiring/firing, acquisitions etc.) but for all of the details that are in our control, we have to execute flawlessly and we have to be better than glorified product brochures. Outcome-based selling focuses the discussion on how you improve their future state and help them achieve their goals.
Take pride in your craft. Use your mind. Think on behalf of the buyer and don’t be afraid of the difficult conversations. Your gut knows what questions to ask and your gut knows why you will win or lose the sale too. Trust your gut.
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