The one thing I’d add is that sometimes – perhaps often – the reason for the customer doing nothing isn’t indecision – it’s an active “do nothing” choice.

This happens especially frequently if the original sales call was relatively cold – as you don’t know that the customer has a real pressing need. If you’re working from a referral then (if you’ve guided the referrer correctly) you should only be talking to potential customers with a real need.

One version of this sitaution that’s common – and possible to turn around – is where the customer has a real need – but doesn’t percieve the need to be “big enough” to justify paying for your product or service.

You need to establish early on in a call what the customer’s perception of the size of the problem is and explicitly explore with them some of the impacts of the problem they may have missed. It’s very common for customers to initially identify things as “annoying but not worth solving” (for example a computer systm that’s difficult to use) – but then on further exploration to realise it’s causing them huge problems downstream (lost productivity, errors in customer records, bad customer service, etc.) which definitely are worth solving.

I’ve found this ability to “build up” the perception of a problem (not falsely – it’s all about helping the customer realise the true impact) is a key skill in large sales. Most sales people jump straight from hearing a need that their product can solve into selling the benefits of the product and trying to close. They don’t spend nearly enough time exploring the problem itself and its impact with the customer.

Rgds

Ian