E208: The Most Important Question That Will Turn a 'Not Sure' into a 'Yes' (and Grow Your Trade Sales)

In this episode, we will unpack the most important question that will turn a not sure into a yes so you can grow your sales faster. Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction, and industry sales and business leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, and over the last 15 years, I've helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses, and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes. Let's get started. In this episode today, we're going to focus on 3 levers that we can work around to help us get more yeses and less nos around deals, or in particular, less I'm not sure. And for me, having been in sales for so long, the number of times I've had a customer say to me, leave it with me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I'll come back to you. Look, I can't count on a thousand of me. And to be honest, in reverse, as a buyer, as we are all buyers in times in our life, I've certainly done the same thing to customers in reverse. Sometimes because I don't want to use them and I want to use others, but plenty of other times because I'm actually not sure what I want to do next. And I've certainly seen in teams that I've worked with, we have plenty of times when customers aren't saying, I'm not ready to go because I don't want to use them. Of course, there are plenty of times where they don't want to use them and this happens, but we're seeing lots and lots of, you know, equally as many times where customers actually aren't sure what they want to do next. So they're not sure how they're going to get to that decision. And that is probably the first lever I think that's really impactful for today is that often when we get a not sure from customers, it is because they're genuinely not sure. They don't know how to step forward. They haven't done this before. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. You will know more than your customer about what you're doing. It is very, very rare that I've seen a trade leader, a business leader, a salesperson walk in to be selling a deal to a customer where their customer knows more about them than that topic. So, so often we see these salespeople as being ones who can guide customers through their projects, but often don't have the courage or the time to be able to do that. So when we start to look at how we can be turning not sures into yeses, for me, the most impactful thing we can do first is to ask questions. And we explore this across episode 205 and 206 around good types of questions to ask. But I think the most impactful one when we have a deal that's stalling is to ask someone what's getting in the way. What's stopping you from moving forward? Is there something that we need to work through to, to help you be able to say yes? Is there anything you're uncertain about? Is there someone else you need to talk to who needs more information? Have I not provided you with enough information? Right? There's lots of different ways we can be asking that question, but Certainly when we're saying to a customer, hey, what's getting in the way? What's stopping you being able to make a decision? What it does is it opens up a conversation to really start to talk about, well, what do we need to do to move forward? And that's where we can really nicely roll into a second lever. So we've asked what's getting in the way, but it's where we can really nicely roll into that second lever that starts to workshop what success looks like. So let's say we're in the relocation game, right? The logistics game here. And we've got a customer who's not quite ready to forward. And we ask the question, hey, what's getting in the way? Is it the time it's gonna take to move? Are you worried about some of your valuables being broken? Are you concerned that we haven't covered everything off? Is there something that you think that's really integral that's missing? You ask that really open question that says, hey, can you tell me what is it that's bothering you or stopping you being able to make the decision? From there you can say, and hopefully we've got some answers that, let's say in this instance the customer says, look, I'm actually worried about things being damaged, so I'm thinking about doing I'm thinking about hiring a couple of trucks and getting my staff members to move the business, whatever it may be. And that's where we get to workshop. Okay, that's really reasonable. I completely understand it. And I will say this is a form of objection handling, but it's objection handling without labeling it as such because I'm definitely not a fan of hard closing, of hard objection handling, but I am really a fan of talking to our customers and engaging with them around what's going on. So in this instance, okay, we're worried about damage, so we're thinking about doing ourselves. And that's where we get to say things like, okay, well, so Do those concerns disappear, right, if you end up doing it yourself? You know, is there any less risk of packaging things and they're breaking, right? We do this every day. We have a trained team of professionals who have moved hundreds of thousands of items and our damage rate sits at 0.1% or, you know, we have people that are really strong and they do this all day every day. So they know how to move equipment, they know how to move products, they know how to move homes without damaging them, right? If you're hiring people within your business to do it, is that risk actually any greater for you to be able to damage it yourself? And what it does is it allows you to open up the conversation to say, okay, Have you considered everything? I know you've considered everything you can think of, but have you considered everything out there? And when we know what's getting in the way, that second lever around workshopping what we can do to resolve it becomes really impactful. And from there, it allows us to move into a third lever here that says, okay, which of these do you like? Is there anything that we should work on? Are there things we should chip away at? Now, has this answered some of your concerns? And maybe you can relook at moving forward. But what it does is it allows us to then ask that question that says, okay, so what are we going to do from here? I talk a lot about asking the customer what they want to do next. And hopefully you'll see with my podcast episodes, we really do go through themes and I'll explore themes from some different angles in the hope that, you know, having listened to 2 or 3 episodes with somewhat similar but certainly expanded types of context, that you'll be able to take away some measured and some balanced conclusions to be able to roll things out yourselves. But in this instance, when we're talking about a deal that's slowed down, asking what's in the way, followed by workshopping what you could do to fix it, And then agreeing on a timeline to resolve it, right? By asking, what do you want to do next? When do you want to do it by? Who do you want to see? Can I get involved with that person? Let's make this meeting on this date, right? We're actually keeping some control of the deal, but also making sure that our customer is able to get everything that worries them or concerns them or can potentially get in the way off the table. If nothing else, it builds a stronger relationship. If nothing else, it helps us position ourselves as a business, as a brand that's worth working with because we take the time. So it doesn't always lead to yeses coming straight away, but what I've certainly seen across the hundreds of leaders I've worked with is that it increases your overall yeses. It increases some of your yeses now. It increases some of your yeses in the midterm. And in some instances, it actually leads to a no now, but a yes down the track. And I'm really cool with that because a no now stops us wasting a whole lot of time chasing up customers. And then we really get to prioritize our time with who needs our help now. Rather than spending it on everyone out there, right, and getting diluted across those deals. It's a nice short and punchy episode today because for me, I see a lot of deals, particularly at the moment, particularly with the petrol prices that we are seeing globally go up. I see a lot of people sitting on their hands unwilling to make a decision. But when we can ask what's getting in the way and look, even really topically, when the petrol conversation comes up, when we can ask what's getting in the way and someone says, I'm worried about fuel. You know, that your prices are going to change because of fuel costs. Well, particularly in the moving game, we're then able to reassure someone that says, hey, we forward purchase fuel, or our costs include fuel, or, you know, the fuel makes up 4% of your total cost of your deal here. So even if fuel doubled over the next, you know, couple of months, we're talking about 4% difference in terms of your pricing, right? And, you know, we can agree that we hold it fixed, or I want you to be reassured that 4% isn't something we're going to come to you with a variance on. Right. But it allows us, you know, to really topically talk through what's going on and make things happen. So outcomes from today is I really want you to have a think about for you, if you've got deals stalling, what you can do to remove the obstacle and get them actually progressing into some forward momentum again. And the way I think we do that, that I certainly see a lot of businesses asking, is ask about what's getting in the way, unpacking those solutions, and then workshopping times and what they're going to do to fix that. So if you're someone or if your business is struggling with that and you're not closing enough deals, then what I would say really clearly is if you don't change something now, you'll keep getting these same stressful results like over and over and over again. So we've set up a free quote audit for podcast listeners that'll pinpoint exactly why you're not winning more jobs and then what you need to do to increase your close rates quickly. You just need to click on the free quote audit link that's in the show notes. It's up near the top there. It's nice and easy to do. We'll set it all up, all right, and we'll get to work moving the dial for your sales growth. If that's not for you today, no problem at all. I'm really, really grateful for you being on here. I hope you can take something from these deals that are not moving forward, adjust what you're doing, and get yourself closing more deals really quickly. That's it for today. Look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now.