A Positive Rejection to Your Request for an Appointment

We have our scripts, and our clients have their scripts. When we make calls, we put our script up against the prospect’s script.

There are countless reasons your prospect may not want to meet with you, but a good part of the time they refuse your request because they don’t hear a good value proposition in your pitch. But rather than allow you to overcome their concerns, they give you a positive sounding rejection.

Email Me Some Information

When your prospect requests that you email them more information, they are politely telling you that they do not hear enough value in your pitch to agree to your meeting request. By asking you to email them information, they are giving you something that sounds positive instead of something that sounds negative. But it isn’t positive. It’s just a nicer form of rejection.

There is no information that you can email your prospective client that is going to compel them to call you back and award you their business based on your magnificent and compelling sales collateral. No one is going to take your sales brochures home to study them.

Call Me Back

A request for a call back is no better. You might want to believe that your prospective client wants you to call back when they have more time, but they really just want you off their telephone. It’s hard to argue with a request for a call back because it sounds like there is interest. The fact your prospect asked you to call back feels like something positive. This too is another polite form of rejection.

At no point will your prospective client be sitting by the phone waiting for you to finally call them back. If your prospect is your dream client, then it’s likely someone else’s dream client too. The fact that they are high profile and high value means that some other salesperson will be calling them in the next 24 hours. They don’t need your call.

Let Me Call You Back

Your prospective client sounds sincere when they ask for your number so they can call you back. You might even be able to tell that they are writing down your number. But your call back isn’t coming.

Your prospective client knows that by being polite, you have to be polite. Pushing for an appointment would be impolite. It might even seem argumentative.

It’s hard to argue with a positive rejection. But it is a rejection all the same. There is no difference between a positive rejection and a negative rejection; in neither case do you have an appointment with your prospective client.

The right response is to address their real fears and concerns, namely that you are going to waste their time and that you have no value proposition that makes meeting with you worthwhile.

• Do you believe a polite request for information or a call back is something other than a rejection?
• How do you assuage your prospect’s fears that you will waste their time?