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Chapter

22

Sponsoring a “No”

Beatty Carmichael

H

ave you ever presented your business to a prospect and gotten to the

end of the presentation only to have the prospect tell you, “No, I

don’t think this is for me”? I’ve had this happen lots of times.

When this happens, you have two options: You can say, “Okay,

I guess it’s not for you,” and leave, or you can say, “That’s okay, we can han-

dle that. We’ll just get you started anyway”—and you enroll him and build a

big business.

How do you do this? It’s a simple technique called “testing the waters.”

Here’s how it works.

Let’s walk through the “testing the waters” concept through the eyes of

a distributor at the end of a presentation. In this example, I have just helped a

new person, Joe, get started. Joe has followed a few prospecting methods I

taught him to get started, and one of the prospects he found was Harry.

When we meet with Harry, we do our best to recruit him. We try to

build a relationship, find his hot button, and come up with the reason why he

will get involved in our business. He’s sitting back and is just a little gun-shy.

He’s seen “these types of things” before and he isn’t very excited. He gives me

some sort of excuse: “I just don’t think I have the money. I don’t have the

time. Let me think about it. Please call me back next month.” All these things

are wrapped up in one, and Joe’s over there wondering what’s going to hap-

pen with Harry. I’m going to ask Harry, “Well, let me ask you, Harry, hypo-

thetically, and this will never happen.. .” and I’m going to put Harry at ease.

As an aside, why do you think Harry is telling me these things? It’s a lack of

belief. In almost every case, it’s a lack of belief and that’s why these prospects

give you an excuse.

How many times has someone asked you to do something and you told

them you could not because of something? You realized in your heart that

that really wasn’t the honest answer; it was an answer and it had some hon-

esty to it, but it really wasn’t the real reason. You were just uncomfortable;

you didn’t know why you were saying no. Does that make sense? Harry is the