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Ten Effective Ways To Kill Any Deal

Often my writings include inverted viewpoints and inverse thinking to prove the positive side of the same issue. Normally motivational speakers and authors present facts from the positive side. In doing so repetitively and with great frequency some readers may have become numb to the power phrases heard regularly. So here is a bit of inverted thinking from the opposite side of sales motivation. While I am a lover of “do’s” I am also guilty of “do not’s”.

1. Do not return phone calls or emails. This works. If you really want to blow an opportunity just fail to communicate. Yes, I have had success in killing opportunities using this method. Like most methods this does not require any special skills, tools, education, or practice.

2. Challenge your contact on their conversation points. The louder and more boisterous you can do this the more accomplished you will become at this method. Again, I have been guilty of this method and it worked superbly. One very busy afternoon I received a call from a man identifying himself as Dr. Such So. When he asked what we do I began my diatribe on how no other team compares with mine and adding, in fact, none come close. Talk about a home run! He thanked me for my time and disconnected the line never to return.

3. Purposefully provide misleading information. Loan officers (not you, of course, you are a part of Active Rain) like your competitors regularly quote rates or closing costs even prior to accepting and evaluating an application. Many times we have lost applicants to other companies only to have them return two or three weeks later because our seemingly higher costs and rate were accurate.

4. Continually be late with meetings or communications. There was a former employee at Novation whom I truly liked. He was very outgoing and loyal to the company. His favorite technique for killing deals was to return calls two days later instead of two hours later. This method is effective of killing deals but it is slow and painful.

5. Lie about what you can do or what you have done. This method differs from item number three as demonstrated in this example: Having forgotten to meet a client at a specified time tell them you in fact were there but you must have been on the other side of the restaurant. This has happened to me where someone I had been scheduled to meet did not show. They still call looking for my business.

6. Turn the deal over to your new assistant who has no more business handling the client than I do flying the Space Shuttle. Here again yours truly is guilty of having done this. In the end I was able to save the client although it was too late to save that deal.

7. Talk the prospect into a state of dazed confusion. The most effective application for this technique is to talk over your prospect or to answer with a story length response having little or nothing to do with the required response.

8. Meet your prospect at the local bar and get blasted. While many have employed this method it is a great way to kill any deal. While not guilty of this myself I have seen it happen. This means during working hours, after working hours and even, heaven forbid, before working hours!

9. Curse, tell off color jokes, downtalk your co-workers, talk about religion or politics. This method is really one method with multiple techniques each of which may be very effective. Even if your prospect is engaging in these tactics you leave them alone.

10. Threaten your prospect. Not too many years ago there was a real estate agent from a certain very large brokerage with a highly recognizable national name which soars above the rest who not only threatened a mutual client but threatened my wife. The client still works with me, by the way.

If you want more methods for killing deals just try a few on your own time.