"There is always room at the top." - Daniel Webster

“Umm let me have a think about that and I’ll get back to you,”

How many times has someone told you that? (Of course you never hear back from them again.)

If you’re getting push back from your prospects about your prices, or stalling tactics – then this article is for you. The good news is that it likely has nothing to do with your prices or your abilities but it has everything to do about your actual sales process and how you market your business. It’s likely you either don’t have a good one, or you have gaping holes in the one you’ve got that are making people clamor to safety.

The simple truth is that most people tell you “they’ll think about it” for 2 basic reasons:

1) You haven’t given them enough information to enable them to make an informed decision

2) You haven’t given them a compelling reason to jump off the fence now (as opposed to next week or next month)

Here are 5 easy ways to strength your sales process,improve how you market your business, increase your conversion rate and help more people make better decisions about using your services:

1) Prior to any sales appointment or big in person meeting, send them a “Shock n Awe” kit. This kit contains valuable information about your services, your clients and your accomplishments. In every way it should surprise and delight the prospect – think of including an expert audio CD, a special white paper you’ve written on a topic of interest, a copy of your book. Get creative and make this a fun package for people to receive.

2) Script your sales process. Forget “winging” the call. Every top salesperson in America uses sales scripts (usually memorized). Its because they work. Most people don’t even prep before an important sales call, let alone use a script. If this is you then its time to tighten up your process, get some sales scripts crafted and watch what a difference it makes to your conversion rates.

3) Follow up after the call. Just because they say "no" on the phone, doesn’t actually mean no. It just means "not now."Once someone has raised their hand, keep marketing to them again and again. Use a combination of email marketing (better than nothing) and creative “drip” direct mail campaigns (the most persuasive).

4) Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Give them a reason to jump off the fence today. Otherwise expect them to “stay put” until they feel they’re ready (by which time you might be old and toothless).

5) Take away the fear for them. Everyone is petrified of making a wrong decision, especially in business. No one wants to waste their money on a lemon and sadly because so many businesses are mediocre at best – most people buy expecting to be disappointed. In my copywriting and consulting business, practically every client we work with has horror stories of working with other marketing companies. Big promises, poor delivery. Impotent sales copy that completely missed the mark. Missed deadlines, bad quality, horrid graphic design – the list of battle scars is long in our industry. So we flip this on its head, and instead of expecting our clients to take all the risk by using our services – we take on the risk by guaranteeing our services. Either they love working with us and are thrilled with the results or we’ll refund their money. That’s unheard of in our industry. But you can see how it immediately takes the fear away for a prospect. If you truly believe in the value of what you do then why wouldn’t you offer a bold guarantee?