How to Avoid the Sales Rejection Email

“How do you avoid getting a sales rejection email (Such as: Thank you for presenting the benefits of your program. After careful consideration, we do not feel that this is the right time for us to be pursuing your offerings) after giving a presentation a few days earlier?”

When this happens, several steps are usually missed within the sales process before giving your presentation. They could be any (or multiple) of the following:

1) Failed to get problem recognition.

Most salespeople, even experienced ones, follow something similar: Make contact with the prospect, ask if they are the person responsible for XYZ, followed by a probing question or two, and then do a data dump of what they offer. This is not a winning sales formula in an economy with a tight belt.

2) Failed to get commitment to wanting the problem solved.

Hard to get a commitment that they want a problem solved if you don’t get them to agree that there’s a problem to begin with.

You’re not asking the right sales questions!

3) Offered a solution before understanding their purchasing process.

Asking, “are you the person in charge of XYZ” fails to fully qualify the prospect in their role as a decision maker. Also, knowing their purchasing process before a presentation allows you to know what happens next if they like your solution.

4) Presented without knowing what type of solution they would prefer.

You’d be amazed at how much business you’d close once you learn how to get the prospect to share their thoughts/ideas on how they would like to solve the problem.

QUESTIONS ARE THE ANSWER!

When someone asks me, “what’s the best way to deal with scenario X” my answer is usually going to be, “stop doing what you are doing that causes that scenario!” And it almost always comes down to knowing – or not knowing:

• Which sales questions to ask;
• When to ask them;
• Why ask them;
• Who to ask them to and
• How to respond to the answers given.

Better sales questions will almost always generate a higher win rate.

But you must be willing to learn from your mistakes and make adjustments if you want to accelerate your growth.

– Michael Pedone