Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

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No Decision will ALWAYS be your number one competitor because, in any buying journey, 40-60% of deals end in "No Decision."

This week we'll cover:

• Momentum is Everything
• Passive
• Active
• Bring it together

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Momentum is Everything

I'm working with a company that serves over 10,000 small businesses with a grudge purchase.

A grudge purchase is something your customers HAVE to buy, but no one really WANTS to buy.

For example, no one is excited about buying insurance, electricity, or shipping physical products from a warehouse to the customers.

When it comes to grudge products, especially those that require behavior change from the customer, such as the shipping example, the sales process is all about momentum.

This lesson applies to every business. One of the reasons so many deals end in "No Decision" is that most buyers don't really want to buy; they want the outcome of the purchase without any of the inputs required. Just like a company wants its customers to have the product without paying for shipping.

Passive Momentum

I'm sure you've found yourself at the end of a sales call asking:

And the buyer responds:

Then you never hear from them.

No matter how many polite "Just checking in" emails, texts, WhatsApp, LinkedIn messages, and voicemails you leave.

Passive momentum means a buyer can take no action, and the deal is over.

Active Momentum

Active momentum is the opposite. The buyer agrees to a specific next step by a specific date and, ideally, accepts a calendar invite for the next meeting.

Therefore, if the buyer chooses not to continue the buying journey, they have to take an active decision to either:

• Decline the meeting invite
• No Show the meeting, or
• Not complete the next step in time

By forcing a buyer to actively opt out of the next step, the buying journey maintains momentum for at least one step longer than when the momentum is passive.

Putting it together

There are two ways you can use active momentum in your sales calls:

1. BAMFAM
2. Deadline Commitment

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BAMFAM stands for Book A Meeting From A Meeting and is the superior of the two options.

BAMFAM means every single sales meeting ends with the following:

• Agreeing on the next step
• Agreeing on the timeline
• You send a calendar invite, and
• The buyer accepts the invite

Ideally, the next meeting is as short a time away as possible because time also kills all momentum.

Deadline Commitment means doing everything above without locking in the calendar invite. It's best explained with a talk track I shared in newsletter #55:

When you work for active momentum at the end of every sales meeting, no matter the outcome, you'll learn how your buyers feel about the pain you're solving.

They can book for the next day if it's a priority. Or they can decline any next step if there is no priority - either way, you learn a lot through active momentum.

For the next week, try BAMFAM'ing every sales meeting and learn - do close rates increase? Do you identify that many buyers are nowhere near as interested as you thought? Somewhere in the middle? Let me know.

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Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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