The Reason Why Prospects Don’t Call You Back

As much as I’d love to, I make an effort to read each and every email I receive from my readers. However, being a popular sales author, there’s no way I can return all of them, and even reading all of them is impossible due to sheer volume, but I do try.

However, your prospects don’t try. They most likely don’t even care. That’s why they usually don’t call you back.

Why? Because you’re not giving them any value up front, and they know it.

Every time I receive a cold call, or sometimes even an email, 9 times out of 10 I don’t even want to hear it. Why? Because I know very well that it’s someone either trying to sell me something, or trying to get something free from me without any compensation. In other words, there’s no value in it for me.

You may have heard by now the story of my first good sales training course, where I learned that cold calling is a waste of time. In addition, I learned of the acronym “WIIFM” in that training:

WIIFM = “What’s In It For Me”

We were taught that before saying one word to a sales prospect – or doing anything with your prospects – to always ask ourselves, “What’s the WIIFM?” Or to say, you had better have value for the prospect, or it was a total waste of time.

Almost no salespeople do this.

Every time I get unsolicited calls from sales reps, there’s never a WIIFM. And that’s why I don’t call back. Or write back. Or want to hear from them again.

Everything you say to a prospective customer, every word you type to your prospects, every action you take with a prospect, MUST contain a WIIFM. And you’d better give the WIIFM up front if you want the prospect to pay attention! There are no exceptions to this rule.

That’s why cold calling is a waste of time. Forget about all the tough receptionists, advanced anti-cold-call phone systems, no soliciting signs, and all that. If you do manage to get a qualified prospect on the phone or in front of you, the issue is that there’s really no way to open a cold call with a WIIFM. Cold calling, by its very nature, is anti-WIIFM. Cold calls are all about what YOU want, not what’s best for the prospect.

(Also, “elevator speeches” and “unique value propositions” don’t count as WIIFMs. They’re worn-out cliches and catchphrases that sales managers love to throw around, and that’s all.)

The bottom line is if you want to increase your sales numbers, and achieve huge sales success, you must never, ever approach your prospects without giving a WIIFM up front. And if you can’t think of one, you shouldn’t be talking to them in the first place. That means they’re not a genuinely qualified prospect for you – and it’s unethical to attempt to sell anything to anyone that doesn’t deliver powerful WIIFMs – real world value – to them.

In closing, remember that cold calling is by far the most anti-WIIFM sales strategy out there. If you’re cold calling, you have no hope of delivering a true WIIFM, up front, to your prospects, which means you have zero chance of making a sale.

Learn how you can stop cold calling forever and become a sales rock star by downloading a 37-page PDF preview of the Never Cold Call Again System.

Read more:

• Why Your Prospects Don’t Trust You