“I’m not interested” still remains, in my opinion, one of the hardest objections to overcome on the spot. But there’s more that you can do to avoid this from derailing the sale.

From the brief period of time I spent working in investment sales, “I’m not interested” still remains, in my opinion, one of the hardest objections to overcome on the spot. But there’s more that you can do to avoid this from derailing the sale.

I remember calling my customers at my first bank job to talk to them about moving money from their secure, insured bank CDs into more – potentially – fruitful investment options. At a time when interest rates were soaring in the 4-5% range for short-term CDs, this was a tough sell. Especially for conservative, older customers.

The line that every platform investment rep dreaded was the classic “I’m not interested,” followed by a soft click as the phone was hung up.

At the time, I wrote it off as a roadblock sales objection, hung up the phone and dialed the next number on the list.

What I, nor my colleagues, were stopping to consider was why we were getting so many of these objections in those types of scenarios. Sure, interest rates and security were a big part of the equation. But in a financial decision, so are factors such as trust, comfort and time.

The Lies We Tell

Your customers are lying to you when they give you a line like “I’m not interested.” If you’ve done your segmenting correctly, what they really are saying is that your message isn’t hitting them in the right place at the right time.

Things you need to consider about your message to make it resonate and pull your prospects in are:

  • At what stage of the sales funnel would you put this customer or prospect right now? Do your prospects even know who you are?
  • How many touch points has this person potentially viewed related to what you’re talking about? Are they going to be familiar with the conversation?
  • Based on the information from those questions, what are they going to be thinking, feeling and doing when you hit them with this message? Have you mapped that out to prepare?

Timing is Everything

Finding the sweet spot is difficult, but not impossible.

The surest way to avoid the shut-down objection and hang up – or better yet, poor response rate to your email campaigns – is to model your marketing as if it was an ongoing conversation.

Decisions are rarely made at the first touch point. Know that and move forward with a plan to hit your segments with steady messaging all along. Pay attention to what is working and adjust from there.

For the most part, your customers and prospects are happy to hear from you. Especially when you can help them out. But the first leap shouldn’t be to the sale.

So, if interest rates ever climb back up to 5% on a 12-month CD, don’t make the phone call to your high-balance customers your first step. Make it the last.

 

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