Spoiler alert: I was guilty of this long before I started working at Wingman and developed a deeper sense of empathy for sales folks. #HonestTruth

This article is part of the brand new Sales Secrets Uncovered series where we share key learnings from our analysis of 211k+ sales calls spread over 3.8 million minutes and 12 months. Why? To uncover the stats that will help you sell better in 2022 and beyond.

PS: Use this data responsibly. Correlation is ≠ causation. 😇 Read more below.

Today’s issue is in the words (and Mac) of our Director of Brand and Content, Kushal Saini Kakkar. 😇

Circa 2020 (and anytime before), whenever I got a sales cold call, I would hurriedly spit out these words hoping to get off the phone as quickly as possible — ”Not interested”.

I mean the person could be calling me to give me Antarctica for free and I wouldn’t know. I would just disconnect the call as quickly as I could.

Cut to mid-2020 when I joined Wingman and truly realized how difficult it was to get someone on the phone. I’m sure you, too, would have been there at some point?

And while we’re not analyzing cold calls specifically today, customers raising an objection about interest (or lack of) is clearly a concern.

The interest objection is the #1 sales objection on sales calls, by frequency, according to our analysis of 211k+ sales calls spread over 3.8 million minutes and 12 months.

Now, prospects (who are more sophisticated than me :D) might not simply say “not interested”. They could use subtler ways of throwing you off track. It’s important to learn to recognize what they really mean to say behind those fancy words. Else you’ll just get ghosted.

Side bar: Did you know that certain personality types are more prone to just ghosting you and staying polite vs actually saying no? I know, wild right? 🤓

So, as a social experiment, I actually tried the Chrome Extension from the good folks at Humantic.ai and let’s just say I’m not proud of the results.

(Checks to make sure none of her vendors are reading this.) 👀

But the premise of the tool sounds interesting — predictive personality insights to help you know your customers before you even meet them. Go check em out - #NotAnAd

Back to today’s blocker — and the most important question:

How does the interest objection impact deal outcomes?

And the answer is this objection points to a 51 percent increase in deal win rate and a 12 percent decrease in deal lost rate. 💥💥💥

If I was you, I’d be willing to play those odds. Don’t give up too soon — there’s still a big chance you will win the deal.

Sending you some DSB energy here. 🕺

But wait, what should you do when the customer brings up interest as an objection?

One of the most common mistakes that sales reps and frontline sellers tend to make is trying to overcome the objection instead of using it as an opportunity to understand their prospects better.

As Ken Baldo puts it in this article: "The salesperson will either give up by hanging up, try some pushy, aggressive way to get through the gatekeeper or call point - to eventually find out it doesn’t work and over-time this creates frustration, desperation and a cry for help to their manager."

Ultimately, it's all about building trust and creating a rapport so your prospect can be honest with you instead of, well, doing a Kushal. 🤷

What do you do when your prospect throws this objection at you?