Are you having a difficult time closing sales?

Do you feel guilty because you know you can help the prospect?

If so, you’re problem lies in your inability to say “No” to people. This tendency could be the result of:

• a sense of scarcity
• a passion for helping others
• a desire to please others

A sense of scarcity makes you look hungry during the sales call. Buyers sense your need and naturally withdraw. Who wants to work with someone who is struggling?

A passion for helping others often causes you to overlook the prospect’s desire to change. Just because you know that you can help someone doesn’t mean they’re interested in being helped.

If you’re a pleaser, if your goal is to make others happy and you’re willing to do whatever they ask, you’ll cave to the prospect’s demands – often to your detriment. Again, buyers sense your need and take advantage of your nature causing you to do a lot of work with little compensation and even less customer satisfaction.

Regardless of the reason, your inability to say “No” sends mixed messages to the market. If you’re experiencing scarcity, buyers sense that and find it difficult to believe that your offerings are as great as you say they are. When your passion for helping others causes you to say “My offering can help anyone,” buyers become skeptical – they know that there are no panaceas, no one-size-fits-all. If you’re a pleaser and you keep changing your offerings to accommodate buyers, you cause then to question the value of your product or service.

What’s the solution? The secret is to say “No” to people who don’t value what you have to offer. You know which of your customers bring you great joy and which drive you bonkers. Discover what those delightful customers have in common and use these characteristics to define your ideal customer. Then learn to graciously say to the others “I don’t think I’m the right person to meet your needs.”

Indeed, you can take this one step farther by telling prospects, in the sales call, who your ideal customer is. Amazingly, when I use this approach, some people have asked “Do I qualify?” This simple question allows me to have a candid conversation with the prospect that allows them to participate in a self-evaluation that helps them and me make a more informed decision about whether or not we should move forward.

It’s counter-intuitive, but if you want to:

• attract more business
• close more sales
• become more effective in serving your customers

learn to say “No.”

Buyers want to do business with people who:

• demonstrate confidence and success by their willingness to walk away from business that doesn’t make sense for them
• have a clear understanding of who their ideal customers are and communicate that information clearly and effectively
• who aren’t willing to compromise the value of their offerings to please others

The 7 Steps to Becoming INVALUABLE program I offer is designed to help you see more effective ways of doing business – ways that dramatically improve your bottom line while making your life easier.

In today’s blog I used Step 1, Contributory Negligence, combined with Step 5, a Contrarian Mindset, to demonstrate how our inability to say “No” makes us less attractive in the marketplace. For more information on the 7 Steps to Becoming INVALUABLE visit www.furtwengler.com/7steps.htm.

If you’d like to receive a weekly email reminder with a link to The Invaluable Leader blog or if you’d like me to address specific topics, please send me an email at dale@furtwengler.com. Please share your experience with our readers by posting a comment.

Are we effecting a recovery…

…or postponing the inevitable?

The February 18, 2009 Wall Street Journal headline says “GM Plans to Slash 47,000 jobs; Chrysler Mentions Bankruptcy Option for First Time.”  This news hit on the heels of a speaker telling those of us in the audience that we can’t afford to let the automakers fail.  Is that true?

Let’s bring this question down to a manageable size.  I’m sure that each of you has thought “I can’t afford to lose this customer (employee, vendor, job, friend, etc).”  That mindset causes you to make concessions that you wouldn’t otherwise make, to overlook inappropriate behaviors, to tolerate arrogance and poor performance longer than you should.  Indeed, your actions give the person reason to think that they are more important than they are, triggering even greater arrogance and more demands on you.

When you made those concessions, what did they buy you?  Did the relationship improve or did it decline?  Did you finally get to a point where you said “no mas” and walked away from that relationship poorer, but wiser for the experience?

It’s counter-intuitive, but any time that we feel that we “can’t afford to lose” something we set ourselves up for a costly lesson – one that we could have avoided by simply walking away from the untenable situation. 

In the case of the automotive industry, what has the $17+ billion in bailout money provided to GM and Chrysler in December 2008 and January 2009 gotten us.  GM is planning on cutting 47,000 jobs, shutting 14 plants and thousands of dealerships.  Wouldn’t that have happened anyway if GM had been allowed to go into bankruptcy?

If that weren’t bad enough, we’re rewarding the poor performers (GM and Chrysler) while Ford continues to exercise fiscal responsibility without taxpayer aid.  Do we really want to reward bad strategy and poor execution? 

As you can tell, I believe that the automotive bailout is not in our best interests.  As long as we continue to provide taxpayer assistance there won’t be any urgency on the part of GM, Chrysler, the unions, suppliers, bondholders, stockholders and others who have a vested interest in GM and Chrysler’s success to act quickly and decisively. 

If we’re going to experience the economic pain of more layoffs, plant closings and dealership closings, let’s do it now.  It will be a shock to the economy, but it will minimize our both short-term and long-term losses.  It will also quicken the recovery.  Once uncertainty is removed from the market, buyers will come back into the market.  They’ll be served by the surviving automakers who will purchase, through the bankruptcy courts, the plants that have been closed, reopen them and rehire those automotive workers who were laid off.  This recovery in the automotive industry will happen more quickly if GM and Chrysler are allowed to fail.

Please share your thoughts with Invaluable Leader readers by posting a comment.  If there are issues you’d like me to address, send me a note at dale@furtwengler.com.