[Your Sales Process] Are You Assuming the Yes or Assuming the No?

Let me start by asking you a question. As part of your sales process, when you’re in a sales or enrollment conversation, do you assume you’re going to hear a “yes” or a “no”?

Now, I’m not asking how attached you are to hearing a “yes.” Say, for instance, you’re feeling stressed about money. You might feel like you absolutely need a prospect to say “yes,” or you won’t be able to pay your bills. That’s more of a desperate, pursuing energy, and it’s usually connected to being attached to the yes.

My question today is during the sales process, are you assuming your prospects will say “yes?”

And more importantly … are you prepared for them to say “yes”?

I was recently at an event hosted by my friend and client Melinda Cohan, and one of the things she taught was to always assume the yes.

Melinda does. She also uses The Coaches Console, a software platform she created, to prepare the contract so that when she gets the yes, she can pull it up right then and there and walk the prospect through it.

One of the reasons why this is so powerful is because if you’re not actually prepared to welcome new clients into your business, you may unconsciously repel them.

Think about it: If you don’t have a contract ready, or a decent way to accept payment … if your welcome packet is a mess (or nonexistent), not to mention the rest of the back end of your business is pretty much a train wreck, onboarding a new client turns into an absolute headache.

And, if you’re not a full-body, 100% yes to accepting new clients, how comfortable do you think your prospects are going to feel during your sales process?

Melinda is a little different from many of the other entrepreneurs and coaches out there (including yours truly). Many entrepreneurs and coaches jump first and ask questions later. In their eagerness to build their business and start making money, they rush out to start signing up clients, without once considering what will happen when they actually land one.

When Melinda was building her business, she spent the first few months creating systems and getting her back end together, so when she was ready to launch, she was totally prepared. As a result, it didn’t take her long at all to completely fill her business with coaching clients.

And, because there was nothing else out there to help coaches build their back end, she created The Coaches Console.

So, back to assuming the yes:

When I first heard Melinda teach it on stage, it had a profound affect on me.

You see, I’m an Enneagram 6 (you may have heard me talk about this before). If you’re not familiar with the Enneagram, it’s a really powerful way to see your patterns around your wounds. If you want to break negative cycles you find yourself trapped in, the Enneagram can really help.

So, I’m a 6, which means I’m a massive worrier. (Fear is my thing, which I suppose makes total sense that I’m now teaching how to shift from a fear-based foundation and to a love-based.)

Now, I actually don’t really worry anymore (which doesn’t mean I don’t feel fear or worry or anxiety; it just means when those emotions come up for me, I’m able to quickly break the pattern and get out of it). But, some of my old thought processes still exist, and one of those is the idea of the “other shoe dropping.”

To me, assuming the yes means I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This is a problem (at least for me).

One of the things I realized about my worry habit was that I had created a false “story” about my worry—that it was actually a magical talisman designed to keep bad things from happening to me.

You see, if I worried about the bad things, they wouldn’t happen. (Because, truthfully, the vast majority of things you worry about don’t happen. For me, at least, my worry attracted more things to worry about, but it didn’t necessarily attract the specific bad things I was thinking about.)

So, if I started assuming the yes, all those other shoes would start dropping … raining shoes, even!

Okay, all kidding aside, I want to ask you again what I consider a profound question:

If you’re assuming the no, are you afraid you might jinx it if you assume the yes?

Or are you maybe afraid you’ll raise your own hopes only to be dashed if the prospect says “no”?

Or maybe there’s some other reason.

But, what would happen if you assumed the yes?

How would your life change if you walked into an enrollment conversation confident and prepared for that to happen?

Think about it.

I have two book recommendations for you if you liked this post: My “Love-Based Money and Mindset” book and my “Love-Based Online Marketing” book.