How to Respond to the Hollywood Brush-off, 'Don't Call Us, We'll Call You.'by Nina Sunday
Every salesperson has heard variations of the over the telephone brush-off line, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ I call this the Hollywood objection. After auditioning, aspiring actors in Hollywood were often given this cliché response.
Nothing’s worse than your possible new customer shutting the door to follow-up with a statement along the lines of, 'I'll call you when I've read the info.’
If you respond with, ‘Well, I’ll wait to hear from you then,’ you have not asked for, nor have they given, permission to contact them again.
Use this 5-step method whenever they get a DCUWCU – don’t call us, we’ll call you – response, so you retain permission to stay in contact.
1. ‘That’s fine.’
Your automatic reaction should be to agree with your client by saying, ‘that’s fine.’
2. ‘And . . .’
Start your next sentence with ‘And . . . ’. Never use ‘but’, which sounds oppositional and creates resistance.
3. ‘And If I haven't heard from you in say
< 10 days / 3 months / 6 months > . . . '
Actively listen during the conversation for an implied time frame and suggest a callback after that. For example, based on your client's level of interest and urgency, if a week is implied, you can suggest a call after 10 days.
If they indicate a couple of months, suggest 3 months. If ‘not in the foreseeable future’, offer a callback at 6 or 12 months.
4. Then ask permission, '. . . is if ok if I call you then?'
Nine out of ten clients will agree to a call back within a reasonable time frame. If they say that's too soon, ask again with a later time frame, 'How about I call you back in 3 months then?
When they agree, you’ve just gained permission to continue the relationship with a future call back.
It’s written in the selling skills textbook, ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘no’, it means ‘not now’; unless they absolutely have zero interest and tell you again, ‘no, please don’t call.’ That’s good to know. You can take them off your list.
5. Start the next call referring to history.
Then be sure to open your next call with reference to the last time you spoke:
‘Hi <their name >, this is < your name > from < your company name >.
< Back in August > you asked me to phone you around this time regarding < . . . >’
Now when they hear from you, you are not interrupting them, but following their instructions. This is the elegance of permission marketing.
The task of a salesperson is to create new customers, not to wait for incoming orders.
Action Summary
1. Remember to end every phone call referring to the best time frame to contact again, and wait for them agree.
2. Then make sure you make a note of the agreed callback date in client history and schedule the callback on your calendar.
How you end a sales call determines whether the next time you contact your prospect they’ll be happy to hear from you or whether they’ll consider your call an interruption.
Selling today is about continuously asking your customer for permission to stay in contact, so they expect to hear from you, keeping the door open to an ongoing relationship.
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Copyright Nina Sunday 2011. All rights reserved. Published in Sydney, Australia.
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