If you’re in your own business, and even if you work for others, you are also a salesperson.

Your business card can read lawyer, plumber, or dog-groomer; and you’ll still persuade for a living, if only to convince your boss you’re worth retaining.

Typically, the more effective you are at persuasion, the more you’ll earn, as well.

So, it makes sense to know a little about the selling process. One of the most important things you can do is to inject a sense of URGENCY into the buying process. Prospects must come to learn that they cannot procrastinate. Your offers are time-sensitive.

“Act now, or regret it!” must be the message they get, explicitly or implicitly.

In order of functionality to me, I welcome a Yes, push for a No, avoid Maybes, and never accept Silence.

A No is superior to a Maybe in several critical ways:

(1) It tells me to stop pursuing that prospect. I waste no time after I hear a serious no. Surely, I might address an objection, answer a question, and probe for a reason, but I am happy to take no as final.

(2) Maybe gets me to do several dysfunctional things, especially of the clerical type. I have to enter a Maybe into the prospecting database, make notes, select a follow-up date, and so on. If that Maybe is just a Soft No, a way to let me down gently, it is dis-serving me, and the prospect. I’ll get a false signal that there is a 50-50 chance of sealing the deal, when there is zilch.

(3) Maybe also means I haven’t driven the offer hard enough and I probably haven’t tried to extract a firm decision from the prospect. In other words, Maybe says I’m a lazy closer!

(4) I believe there is a sweet sound of success that we hear when a prospect expresses genuine interest. If you hear it, press on. If you hear resistance, clarify that the No you are sensing is a definitive one.

(5) If prospects do not act with sufficient urgency, cut them loose. I did this today. I said: “Before I file your paperwork away and move on, I wanted to see if there’s any interest in the X proposal.” This forced the prospect to explain his sloth and to promise to have a decision, a firm Yes or No, by Friday.

I said, more or less, “I’ve decided to put you into the No Pile. If you’re really a Yes, speak-up or I’m out of here!”

It worked, and that is one of the fruits of urgency. It is a device to get the genuine buyers to distance themselves from the rest of the pack.

Just a word about Silence. It’s rude, especially if a prospect avoids your calls and doesn’t respond to your faxes and emails, after you have invested time developing a proposal.

So, I don’t accept it. I might try an end-run, speaking to one of that person’s colleagues to see if he or she is ill or out of town or on leave. Sometimes I have jumped to the wrong conclusion and my deal is still in the pipeline, trickling its way through.

Still, urgency, setting deadlines, and pushing for Yeses and No’s is the way to go.

You’ll sell more, faster, with much less frustration!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman