Smashing Sales Objections – Dealing with a very specific one

Dealing with a Very Specific Sales Objection

During sales training courses I am often asked about sales objections, and aside from the usual ones about budget and wrong time of year, the most common is “I need to talk to my colleague/business partner/MD/ Wife/Husband/ Friend/Dog” (delete as appropriate) and there is a technique I recommend that I would love to share with you here, that works so well. It also really doesn’t matter about the market either, whether you work in a shop, telesales, b2b whatever, this works like a charm.

Couple of things to be aware of. When you are selling, it is worth making sure that you are dealing with a decision maker, in the real world these take lots of forms and may not necessarily be the person who sanctions the spend. This can be put into the hands of an influencer who basically scouts the market and fields pitches which then go the main person or in this case persons.

Back to it then. When you are presented with the objection “I will need to just check with XXX person before going ahead” present them with the following response.

So based on everything I have talked to you about, if it were your decision and your decision alone, would you be happy to go ahead?”

You are looking to hear the magic word “Yes” it may be followed with “and as I said I will need to check”. This is absolutely the thing you want to hear; you must not push either, as you will piss them off. Just say “That is great, I would want to check in too, when would be the best time to come back to you?” Make a suggestion too, and yet not too long. Ensure you also find out the name of that person they are speaking too, you might need it later.

Here is why this works so well.

When you ask the question “If it were your decision and yours alone, would you go ahead?” the positive response they give, and invariably they do, as they do not want to come across as having no authority, then transfers the sales process from you to them, like magic. Having said they would go ahead, psychologically tasks them with having to get a ‘yes’ from the people they need to talk to and this means they have to sell everything you have given them.

When you call back to check in, they certainly would not want to demonstrate to you that they can not influence or sell themselves, so invariably you will get the business. If you don’t then sadly that probably means you never will from this person, in which case talk to someone else higher up, and remember I asked you to get that name? Well that is your contingency; chances are you won’t need it.

So give it a go, it is so easy, very polite, and delivers results. Happy selling!

 

 

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