Yes. No. Maybe. – De Boer Consultancy SARL

The ABC of Sales Part III.

Featured image © Modern Toss

In the spirit of Sesame Street, today’s instalment of sales wisdom is brought to you by the letters Y, N and M – with R and S thrown in as bonus letters. And the number zero.

As with my previous articles in this series, the focus here is on behaviours and mindset rather than process. It also occurred to me that continuing to work my way through the alphabet sequentially would be hard work for both me and the reader!

Yes, no and maybe are the three fundamental states of any sales opportunity. As a salesperson you are working towards that magic ‘yes’ and closing the deal. Regardless of your career stage, clinching the deal is a terrific feeling. Some people argue that closing deals is a salesperson’s job and doesn’t merit celebration. But, as any sales professional will tell you, it’s a great moment when that deal comes through. Sales is an emotional profession.

More often than not, of course, the answer is ‘no’ – the law of averages (and conversion rates) dictate that however good you are, you will lose more than you win, unless you have a market monopoly or the Greatest Product In The World Ever (which is usually when the product team start pointing the finger at the sales team if their wonder product somehow fails to corner the market[1]). But that doesn’t make the rejection any less deflating, especially if the ‘no’ comes at a relatively late stage in the sales process.

Most salespeople manage their activity (and, unfortunately, are often managed) through a sales pipeline, which by its very nature is a list of ‘maybes’. Moving a sales opportunity through the pipeline is generally defined as a process, driven by a set of agreed activities and based on hitting a particular stage in the pipeline once those activities have been completed.

But it is also an expression of confidence by the salesperson, based on their experience and their assessment of the relationship with their key contacts at the customer. There is rarely one size fits all for a sales deal, however much a sales organisation might want to standardise its processes for the purposes of benchmarking and performance management, or outsource various stages of the sales process to agentic AI in the interests of efficiency and cost savings.

The health of a sales pipeline is in the degree of movement, and not just in its overall size or value. Hundreds of ‘deals’ stuck at an early stage isn’t a pipeline – it’s a prospect list or a set of leads which haven’t been actioned. A static list of maybes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions, is of no substantive value to the business. Unless that business is looking to paint a healthy picture of its business development activities and market engagement as part of an exit strategy!

‘Maybe’ is the last thing most salespeople want to hear from a customer. The salesperson’s job is to move each maybe to a firm decision – yes or no. As deflating as hearing ‘no’ can be, it is better for the sales organisation and for the health of its sales pipeline to get a definitive answer and move on to the next opportunity. Conversion rate and opportunity age are as valuable benchmarks of pipeline health as its overall monetary value. Note I say pipeline health here, and not performance.

That being said, there is unfortunately a ‘special’ type of salesperson who thrives on the maybes. Somehow, there is always that one massive strategic deal which is inching just that tiny bit closer to a decision… but an opportunity of this size and complexity is naturally going to take lots of time to reach a firm conclusion… “I should know more next month” etc etc. And, if that business opportunity is genuinely strategic and huge, this is where the sales leadership and C-suite in a business can really add value and help close the deal. But I have also seen this tactic used to string along gullible sales leaders, whilst the poor devils doing the right things, getting yes and no from their customers on the relatively modest bread-and-butter sales opportunities, and as a result seeing their pipelines churn and conversion rates struggle, are the ones singled out for performance management – or ‘coaching’.

Sales leaders and sales organisations have a responsibility to support their sales teams and to be consistent in how they do this. Salespeople are often maligned as bullshitters with the ‘gift of the gab’. Don’t reinforce this horrid perception by falling for the charismatic bluffers in your own sales organisation. Hold everyone to the same standards of behaviour and performance. And accept that any sales organisation will lose more deals than it wins. The value is in learning why those customers said ‘no’ (and why they said ‘yes’) and adapting your commercial strategy accordingly.

In terms of moving deals through the pipeline and converting those maybes to a firm decision, the business needs to be aligned across its various functions, with a toolkit of high-value content (for instance case studies, thought leadership, events) to support the sales team. Give the customer a compelling reason to stay engaged and agree to move the conversation and process forward. Just ‘circling back’ periodically to ‘check in’ (yes, we all do it!) might work once, maybe even twice, but if you keep relying on this as your engagement tactic, the customer will eventually stop answering.

Which brings us to the bonus letters, R and S. Radio Silence.

Sales organisations put the onus on their salespeople to move the deal forward and win the business. After all, that’s their job, isn’t it? But in a consultative sales process, the customer has a responsibility as well – especially if the salesperson and their organisation have invested a considerable amount of time and resources in engaging with you, through in-depth conversations, on-site visits, product trials using sample content or bespoke workflows, or longer-term pilots.

Going through all this and then ghosting the salesperson is frankly unforgiveable. A commercial discussion should be a conversation between equals, with mutual respect for each other’s time and needs. If you are no longer interested in what the salesperson and their organisation is proposing – if a competing party has a more compelling offer or if the circumstances at your end have changed – please do the decent thing and get in touch with the salesperson to say ‘no’. It may feel horrible, but it’s the right thing to do.

Finally, why the number zero? Because that’s what your huge, impressive sales pipeline is actually worth, unless and until you have a consistent process for changing those maybes into yes or no.

[1] This finger pointing is unforgiveable, by the way. Product blaming Sales for failing to sell their product, and Sales blaming Product for delivering a substandard product, are characteristics of siloed, underperforming organisations. Alignment is key and, culturally, this needs to come from the top of the organisation. You are all in it together!