Sales Question:

"How should I handle the "Now is not a good time" response? One of my colleagues suggested I reply with "What will be different in a week/month from now?" But is that the best rebuttal to use?"

Answer:

The number one reason a prospect will say "Now is not a good time" is because the salesperson's opener (what they said after "Hello, my name is...") invoked this type of response. In short, the salespersons opening value statement was anything but and failed to accomplish it’s first objective, which is to pique interest in those precious first few seconds of a sales call.

Hot or Cold

And this response isn't just a product of cold calling either.

I've seen plenty of salespeople get the same blow-off / stall on warm calls as well (Warm calls = when a prospect raises their hand)

An example of a warm call would be when a salesperson is calling a lead that was generated via their website after a prospect requested information or a proposal and the salesperson calls and says something like:

"I'm calling to see if you had any questions"

or

"I'm following up on your proposal request" and they still hear "now is not a good time"

No matter the type of sales call, the “Now is not a good time” blow-off / stall has EVERYTHING to do with how the sales person approached the prospect and very LITTLE to do with the temperature of the sales lead.

The Solution

The "What will be different in a week/month?" rebuttal is argumentative in my book and all though its better than saying "ok" and hanging up, its a flawed solution because it doesn't address / fix the real problem that caused the "now’s not a good time" response.

If you want to eliminate or at the very least drastically reduce the amount of times your prospects use this stall tactic on you, you’ll need to re-word the opening value statement so that they will want to actually hear what it is that you have to offer by piquing their interest in the first few seconds of the call.

Do that and watch how the "now’s not a good time" stall becomes a thing of the past.

Example:

Which call would pique your interest more:

Option 1: "I'm following up on your request for pricing..."

Or...

Option 2: "I understand you're curious about what type of results you could expect from our online B2B phone skills improvement workshops as well as what the initial investment might be and if any incentives are currently available…"

If you want to get better results, you have to stop using old, flawed sales tactics and start using new ones that make logical sense. Hope this helps.

Michael Pedone
CSS: Chief Sales Scientist
SalesBuzz.com (A 2011 B2B Phone Sales Training Company Watch List Award Winner!)

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