HARD TRUTH – Your Sales Team Has Limited Capacity To Handle Rejection & It’s A Leaders Job To Mitigate This Risk.

We all know that the key to sustainable revenue is building a healthy pipeline of qualified prospects, however, building a pipeline is often a game of repetition, which requires resilience, and although you pay your sales staff to ‘kiss a few toads” before identifying legitimate prospects, the truth of the matter is, each and every “No” can have a compounding negative effect on one’s confidence & energy. These negative effects can impact morale and, in turn, revenue.

At SalesInc, we know a few things about building pipelines (*cough heaps of things *cough) and we firmly believe that businesses should be doing everything within their power to enable their salespeople, to ensure that they are not only selling in an effective manner, but also a sustainable one.

Actual footage of a Sales Inc client sales pipeline

Do you know who to ask for? If you don’t, the gatekeeper won’t be letting you through…use your admin team to scour LinkedIn, other forms of social media and business websites to find the name of the person that you need to speak to. Trust us when we tell you that this investment will not only save you time, it will also save your team energy. 

Be enthusiastic, but not cheesy. Gauge the tone, tempo and volume of your prospect, and mirror it (within reason). Commonality plays a major part in progressive conversations and, on a subliminal level, it demonstrates respect. This alone will give you a competitive advantage when compared to your industry peers.

Give your prospect a reason to stay on the line. Where possible, add some value or share an insight, before talking about your agenda. The other way around tends to end with a hung up phone. Take the time to truly understand the problems that your prospects face on a day-to-day basis and what direction they might take to remedy the problem.

Document everything. With every rejection, you should be learning something. Each no brings you closer to a yes, but only if you are committed to learning from each and every no. Awareness is the key to making strategic pivots, and strategic pivots ensure that you never hit a dead end.