In today’s business environment, closing a deal especially
with a new customer is extremely challenging. The days are gone where business
was as simple as a phone call and following up with an invoice. Today,
customers are careful and are thinking thousand times over before signing the
dotted line. Some may blame the economic climate, however in approaching the
problem differently lies the key!
Recently, ecube conducted a two day training workshop on
advanced sales skills for one of the leading manufacturer of decorative and
protective paints in the UAE. The ‘objection handling’ session was probably my
personal favourite, as we got to share many experiences and stories around this
theme. Here I am sharing an excerpt out of the session, to have your views too.
Most of the objections today are revolving around time,
money and the people. Now I would want you to picture and imagine a lit-candle
in front of you. By laying your hand on the fire, if it stays there for long it
will hurt you. Ouch!
Let me draw a parallel here. When your prospect or customer
object to your proposal saying that they don’t have money, time, resources and
more, they are actually resting their hands on top of the lit-candle.
If they keep the hand too much on the candle – it pains, they
want to move to pleasure area – somewhere away for the candle ie pain points. As
an effective sales person, it is your role to help your customer to move them
from the pain area to a more pleasurable area – an area away from the
lit-candle.
How do we do move them? By asking questions! Questions which
motivate them to move towards those pleasurable area. If the objection is time,
you might want to ask him/her - who controls your time Mr/Ms customer? So for
how long it’s been going on? So how long you want to let that happen? At this
point you have an opportunity to get back your customer into the negotiation
table- not the price, the time but the real value.
One of the most classic objection, and you would agree with
me, is PRICE! Let’s see how to handle this part of the objection in a five step
process:
Step
1: Neutralize: Once the customer
raises his objection on price, say Okay. Now try saying loudly with me – OKAY!
Now okay, seems like you are agreeing to them, but not really. You are in
reality neutralizing the situation and giving the customer an impression of
agreement.
Step
2: Confirm: Confirm what is really going on. So Mr/Ms Customer; Is that
your only concern with our product, the price? By this you are eliminating all
other concerns which do not exist and you have clearly separated the concern.
Step
3: Question & Uncovering:
Here you are questioning the prospect/ customer to understand why he/she feels
the product is expensive. For e.g.: What you mean it is too expensive? What are
you comparing the price with?
Step
4: Reposition – Get back to the customer by saying -- WOW! I guess I
failed. I guess I failed to show you all the value & benefits of my product
and getting through it me. Now you will agree, people will buy what they value,
see value, and what they desire to own.
Let me make sure I go over this again…I don’t want to fail you and me by
you not seeing the entire value.
By repositioning, you are trying to continue
to continue the discussion over and over again till you overcome the objection
and setting in place the true value of your product.
Step
5: Re asking for the sale: Now it is about time to move the discussion
towards closing the sale. The real objection is why the customer should buy from
you and not anywhere else. When you establish this equation, no price objection
is too big.
Now why don’t you go out and overcome your objections
successfully and may more sales closures come your way!
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