When you receive a “No,” understand it to mean, “No, that is not yet enough ideas for buying your services.”  Keep right on putting weight into the “Yes” side of the balance until it tips your way. Do not consider any “No” final until you have run out of both contrasting weight and attractive colors; so that you cannot change the scales.

[Sidenote:  Stick it Out Here and Now]

If it is possible for you to “stick,” don’t be put off when you come to the closing stage. All the weighing you do at the present time will be valueless lost effort unless you complete the selling process here and now.  When your prospect tries to put you off, he tacitly admits your weights are right.  Otherwise he would say “No” and be done with you.  You really have won his mental decision.  A continuance of skillful salesmanship will enable you to get him to act favorably without delay or further evasion.

[Sidenote:  Entertainment In Court Room Out of Place]

Some salesmen make the mistake of mixing entertainment with the closing process.  Earlier in the sale you may be able to secure excellent results by entertaining the prospect with clean jokes and good stories.  But the close is the stage at which he arrives at his mental conclusion as to the “preponderance” of the evidence. Jests and light conversation are out of place when the judge is performing his functions in the courtroom of the mind. An amusing remark or a witty quip at this juncture would suggest that the scales of decision in the salesman’s own mind were somewhat unbalanced.  Your attitude when you are weighing “Yes” and “No” before the prospect should be pleasant, but quiet and serious, as is becoming to a convincing weighman.

When you work to secure a favorable decision, you are weighing evidence with the purpose of impelling the prospect to take your judgment or to weigh the evidence just as you do.  It is necessary all through the process that he be made to feel you realize you are aiding in the performance of a judicial function.  He must have complete confidence in your intention and ability to handle the scales honestly and with serious pains to determine what is the right judgment about your proposition.  Your levity at the closing stage would lessen the effect of honest, serious, painstaking weighing of the images for buying in contrast with the images against buying.  So get the funny stories out of your system before you come to the decision step of the sale, or else keep them bottled up inside you and don’t pull the cork until you are safely at the celebration stage.

[Sidenote:  Tones and Acts When Weighing]