All set...

Sometimes in my daily prospecting efforts I will engage in a brief conversation with a business owner or executive and they will quickly say something along the lines of "Thanks for calling, but we are all set." Now it is my belief that this is highly unlikely to be an actual TRUE statement.

So am I saying that the person that I am contacting to see if we can have a open conversation to determine if my firm may be able to help them is LYING? Well yes I am, however I understand why they are lying. We all are bombarded daily with messages from sales people, TV, radio, newspaper, Internet, etc that we should change something because we are spending too much or do not have the correct 'stuff'. And well after hearing "that if we just gave some insurance company 15 minutes that we could save $100's" for about the 1000th time I think we all become a little worn out. So we defend ourselves and just immediately say "We are all set".

When this happens to me, I genuinely feel bad for the person that says it to me. I understand they are probably just so sick and tired of hearing the message "hey your a dope you are spending too much on your (blank)...you should talk to us and we can fix this." So my question to myself is...How should I handle this from now on? Well I have set out over past couple of months and examined some different ideas from different sales gurus and have heard some ideas that are downright scary until finally I stumbled upon a tactic suggested be Dave Kurlan, author of Baseline Selling.

So from now on when a prospective client tells me they are 'all set' before we have even had an open conversation I respond with the following. (Bold is prospect. Italic is me.)

"Tom, thank you for the call but we are all set."

"Mr. Prospect, sounds like you're extremely happy with who your currently using."

"Yes we are. "

"So you know you are not spending a penny more then you should be. The documents that are vital to your business are managed perfectly. You are certain that the documents that you create in house and end up in your clients and customers hands portray your organization's image perfectly. You have no doubt that this area of your business is optimized. You know it would be an absolute waste of time to even have a conversation about this area of your business. "

As of yet, I have not had a business owner that has actually heard this and agreed with me...typically they will open up a bit and say "Well I wouldn't go that far, maybe we could use some work in that area." And to me that is a fair and truthful comment. To which I will ask them in what area. And if they expand on some area that is a problem, I will simply ask the two following questions, which help us both know if it makes sense to spend more time talking or not..."Is this a problem?"(Question 1)..."Do you want to fix it?"(Question 2). Answer Yes to both then we should speak more, answer No to either then it likely doesn't make sense to talk more.