Conrey is for Closers

The Answer is always no until you ask.

A smarter man than me told me “Conrey, you’ll miss 100% of the sales you don’t ask for.”  That makes sense on the surface but when you look at it deeper, what he was really telling me is “Ask for the sale no matter what”

In sales the biggest thing that holds sales people back from success is fear.   Fear of failure.  Fear of denial.  Fear of the No.  The number one thing you can do to get better as a salesperson is ask for it.    

If you know going in that your client’s budget is well under what you are expecting, ask for the full amount.   They may surprise you and say yes.   

If you know that the client has a cheaper option on the table, ask for them to go with you.   If you’ve done your job right, they’ll see the value in your product and go with you.

For two weeks now I’ve been experimenting with my Gmail filters to get a trueer handle on my email.   The quick run down for anyone who missed the original post is that I turned off all of the auto-archive filters so that I had to manually deal with my email.    After two weeks here’s what I’ve found:

1. Other than mailing lists this would be an easy practice to follow 100% of the time.   Most of my email requires very little actual effort to skim, tag and archive.   Even if I go a whole day without checking my email its only a small pain in the ass the next time I do check my email.   Because I’m constantly on my mail browsers while at work, its not usually an issue
2. GMail’s spam filter is awesome.   This isn’t news, but wow does it save me headaches.
3. Most of my mailing lists are more noise than signal.   I’ve unsubscribed from mailing lists that I realized I wasn’t getting any value from.   I would likely have kept them coming to waste my time other than this.

I expect to tweak this a bit and have some of the mailing lists auto archived just to delay my need to filter them, but this experiment has worked out well for my needs.   I’ve not missed any important or moderately important email in the last two weeks and don’t feel any more stressed about getting to inbox zero than I did before.

Anyone who has been around me for more than 10 minutes has heard me say “The First Rule of Sales is that the answer is always ‘No’ until you ask”.   I thought I would take that and expand it to list the key rules of sales.

1. The Answer is always no until you ask – Be Bold – Someone once told me that I will fail to close 100% of the sales I don’t try for.   Don’t be afraid to ask for the sale.  Most salespeople miss deals by just not saying “So would you buy this?”
2. If you want the fruit to fall you have to shake the tree – Persistence overcomes resistance.  If you don’t like to hear the word “no” you should not be in sales.   Work each and every lead until you have nothing left to give – then get someone else to take a pass just to see if it was you.
3. No matter how good you are as a salesman, you’re only as good as the people and product behind you – This works in two ways: 1) don’t put your team in a bad spot by constantly overreaching their time, abilities, or commitments; 2) The product or team you’re selling for is going to make a big difference in how successful you are with your pitch.
4. Ask for forgiveness not permission – This does not erase the last rule but goes on top of it.   Don’t be afraid to do something before asking for explicit permission – but know your limits as well.
5. Always carry a pen – ALWAYS – you never know when you’re going to run into a potential client or contact and need to write down a phone number or note about them or for them.  Ideally you’ll have something to write on (your business card?) as well.
6. Sales is not a 8-5 job – I don’t care what your boss says, you’re always on the job as a salesman.   Make it to local meetings that are relevant, be a part of the community.   Even if you don’t make an active pitch every time you talk to someone, you’re at least getting recognition in case one day they know of someone who needs what you sell.

I’m sure the sales minded among you can come up with more – or criticize these.   Post below