The Yes You Never Want

For years, salespeople have heard, “All you have to do is get to yes.” In today’s article, I’m going to tell you exactly why yes might be what you don’t want to hear. Think I’m nuts? Keep reading!

As salespeople, we have been trained to get to the yes. That’s all we want to hear! But I have to tell you something: sometimes yes is the last thing you want to hear come from a prospect’s mouth. Let me explain. In his remarkable book, Never Split The Difference, my man, Chris Voss, ex-hostage negotiator for the FBI, outlines three different kinds of yeses, and essentially confirmed something I have suspected for years. If you haven’t read the book, I recommend you get it. I’m not going to recreate it here, but what I am going to do is talk about the yes you never want to hear. And that’s the early yes.

They Want to Get Rid of You

Here’s why: people want to get rid of salespeople. A lot of them don’t have the backbone when you’re sitting across from them to tell you no. Think about it, what’s easier to do? We’ll tell them yes, right? We’re going to tell them yes to get rid of them. We’re going to tell them yes to make them go away. We’re going to do it early and often because we want to get this meeting over with as quickly as we possibly can. And the most comfortable, most non-confrontational way for us to do that is to tell them yes. Then when you leave, and you go away, guess what happens? They change their mind. Something happened in their business operations, “Oh, my incumbent agent came over and broke out a bottle of scotch and talked about his son that’s going to college.” And all of the things that we’ve read about in The Wedge, and it never ends. There are all kinds of excuses. The second reason we don’t want an early yes is because they’re milking’ us, man.

They Want Your Secrets

If you go in and you offer a ton of value at the beginning of an appointment, and you’re getting the reassuring yeses, guess what we’re doing? Boom, boom, boom. We’re beating our chest; we’re doing everything we can to make ourselves feel good because that’s what we do, right? These people are buying me. I’m the man. I’m the woman. I’m going to do everything I can to let them know just how awesome I am. And they’re going to continue to nod yes, because why? The ‘I don’t want to get rid of you,’ but more importantly, what if they just want you to keep giving them more and more information, showing how awesome you are so they can take it and later use it against you. The only yes you ever want in a sales call is the yes that ends up with a signed agent of record letter or applications at the end of the meeting.

Get Their Commitment

That’s it, that’s the yes of commitment. Listen, if you’re getting early yeses and those yeses are turning into ruined opportunities, I think I just told you why. Practice listening more than you speak and don’t give up so much value in a sales call that they don’t need you. Show them enough to where they think you know just enough more than they do, that they need you going forward. Now isn’t a time to prove you’re an insurance expert, they’ve already assumed that that’s why they’re meeting with you. Take your time, slow play it, listen, repeat what they ask you so that they understand that you understand, and you’re going to get to the right yes. But if you get a quick one, you better course correct in that meeting as quickly as possible, but you’re never going to kill it in commercial insurance.

Until next time:  kill or get killed!