My sales calls showed that "I'll think about it" isn't necessarily a no

Why did I start to study sales myself? I have worked on the profitability of Google advertising since 2006. But every time I worked with large clients, I saw a repeating pattern: The advertising looked well set up, exact keywords, all the settings, careful targeting, target leads come at a good price, everything is great. And then the client says that everything is great, but they will cut the budget. I ask why. Because the profit stays in the same place.

Leads come, but the cash does not grow. And what usually comes to people's heads? This is really my experience, what came to me first. If sales are bad, then the managers are bad, and we need to replace the managers. We fire some, new ones come, and they repeat the same mistakes. Then comes the thought that the price is probably too high, so let's lower the price. As a result, the margin falls, the problem stays, and the profit is even smaller. Then, again my experience: A few years ago someone told me that my sales scripts were bad. We hired a sales script expert and paid a five-figure sum in dollars.

The first thing that always came to my head as a business owner: I will go and listen to the calls. I turned on the phone system and started to listen. I listen, and anger, of course, comes over me right away. I start to look into the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Anger again. This one did not fill in the card. This one forgot to move the deal to the next stage. This one put a plus sign in the CRM instead of a comment about the call.

To find where exactly the clients and the money are lost, you need to step outside a little, break the whole client path into atoms, count the conversion at each stage and compare what the managers tell you with what really happens. So in my online school, we started to count.

How we counted

We record our sales calls. From March 11 to July 25, 2026, our phone system logged 11,781 calls of 45 seconds or longer. Of them, 8,674 had a recording, and we transcribed 8,518, or 98% of the recorded calls. The other 3,107 calls had no recording file. They came from every manager and every month, and we found no single cause. The 906 people who had only such calls bought less often: 1.4%, against 3.1% for people with a recorded call. Because of this difference, our transcript results may not represent all callers. Our first count began with every call followed by a payment within 14 days, so it had too many buyers. This count uses every transcribed call.

We matched each call to purchases in our CRM by client. The calls covered 4,921 people, and 154 of them paid within 14 days after a call. That is 3.1%, our base rate. Every "times the base rate" below uses it. Each person counts once, even after several calls. For a buyer, we only count what was said before the payment.

We found phrases with keyword rules in Ukrainian and Russian. "I'll think about it" is our label for a group of similar remarks, not a quote. For it, two artificial intelligence (AI) models reread all 363 matches, and a third settled the 41 cases where they disagreed. A check of 50 random remarks found 48 labeled right. The rules for price and for split payments were right in 27 and 29 of 30 random checks.

These are links between words and sales, not proof that the words caused the sales.

"I'll think about it" isn't necessarily a no

I have taken several sales courses and several trainings, and there, work with objections is always like the cornerstone. But in my experience, people rarely state their real objections directly. They say something like: "No, it's expensive, it's complicated, I'll think about it." I can't count how many times I, as a client, said the first time that I would think about it, that it was not interesting. And then, if an experienced manager started to talk with me, we found that I was not interested because I did not trust them. Then they gave me more information, and often I agreed.

Our calls pointed the same way. From March to July 2026, 208 people put off the decision with "I'll think about it" or similar words. Of them, 29 later bought, or 13.9%. Most did not, but that is about four and a half times the base rate. The gap held in calls of two minutes and longer and for each of the five managers with enough people to compare (at least 20 with the phrase and 50 without).

But look at how some managers work. He sits at the phone, the CRM is in front of his eyes, and the person says that he will think about it. And he, click, puts the status "refusal" in the CRM. That's it, goodbye. But it's not necessarily a refusal; it may be worth one more contact. Maybe in a week this person is ready to buy, but you will not call, and a competitor may.

Once I, personally, as a client, left a company because a manager simply started to push me. The price was 5,500 euros. I was ready to buy 100%. I told the manager: "Yes, yes, I'll take it. I will pay on Monday." And he started to tell me that on Monday I would lose a 500-euro discount that worked only until that day. I said: "OK, I will pay 500 euros more." We hung up, and he started to bomb me with private messages. Why did this happen? Because he did not understand why I would pay later. The reason was my payment schedule.

Calls with a price sold more often

In the same calls, a concrete price came up with 1,040 people, about one in five. Of them, 98 bought, or 9.4%, about three times the base rate. When the longest call lasted two to five minutes, 7.9% of people who heard a price bought, against 1.0% of those who did not. When the manager named the price first, 43 of 344 people bought, or 12.5%. When the client asked first, 35 of 499 bought, or 7.0%. For the other 197 people, the client named a sum without asking, or we could not tell who spoke; 20 of them bought. Maybe calls that reach the price are simply warmer. The data can't rule that out.

Look what managers often do instead. Many start to argue. Or they tell the client that if it's expensive, then this is not for him. This also humiliates the client. Or some give a discount right away, 20% off. And you think: How much did they inflate the price if they give me 20% at once? In fact, first you need to understand what stands behind the objection.

The client says it's expensive, and the manager starts to add value. But sometimes, in my experience, the client believes in the value and just has no budget at that time. And here you needed not to add value, but to offer a contract with payment in 60 days, or monthly payments for half a year, to split the price. In our calls, managers offered to split the payment to only 258 people, about one in 20. Of them, 42 bought, or 16.3%, about five times the base rate. The gap held in calls of two minutes and longer. Maybe managers offered it only in warm calls.

A script is a frame

In my projects, I paid many specialists who built sales scripts for me. I know how a script should not look. I remember very well the first sales script I bought; I paid a lot of money. They gave me a special program: The manager sits in headphones, talks with the client and must go along a tree in this program. Ask the client this question. The client answered yes or no. The manager presses, for example, "yes," and the next question opens. I was delighted when I saw it, but in my experience, the program slowed managers down because they were focused on which button to press. A normal sales script is a frame, a few key points.

The first 15 minutes

Many business owners have this inner wish to describe the ideal sales process. The client leaves a request, the manager picks up the phone right away and calls him. The client answers and says that you have a great business and asks for a proposal. And in five minutes the accountant already pays you this million. But in reality, it is a bit different. In reality, some requests are processed after two or three days: They left it on Friday, and the manager called on Monday.

Our CRM data for July 2023 to July 2026 shows how call speed lines up with payments. In all, 1,014 people left a product request on our website. We left out 85 who paid before any call, 139 who never got a call attempt and 150 we could not match to orders with confidence. Of the other 640, 84 got a first call attempt within 15 minutes, and 23 of them, or 27.4%, paid within 30 days of the request. Of the 556 who received a later call attempt, 79, or 14.2%, paid. The fast group paid almost twice as often. This is a link too, not proof that a fast call caused the payment. Only about one person in eight got a call that fast. We measured the time from the request in our CRM to the first call attempt, answered or not, and counted a purchase as a paid order.

I will never forget one night when I had a toothache, a terrible one. At night, at 4 or 5 a.m., I sat down to search for a 24-hour dentist, and ads popped up. I click, I call, nobody picks up. I click, I call, nobody picks up. So I understand that their ads run around the clock, but they are either not open 24 hours or do not pick up the phone.

Where to start

Ask yourself how your sales process works. Then ask: What if the person did not pick up the first time? What if the person picked up and told you to go away? What if he asked you to write to his email? What if you wrote, and he did not answer for 3 days? What if there is a mistake in one digit of the number, but the person is real? And to get angry, try to ask these "what ifs" to your current managers. Very often the results are sad.

I always recommend finishing any ad setup with a test call to the manager, to hear how he will handle this request. In my view, half of success in business is great advertising. The other half is sales.