Objection handling is one of the key salesperson techniques to develop. Having answers to those objections ready and handy is good preparation. Building answers to likely objections during a sales presentation will head them off before they even surface.
Price
Using ROI (return on investment) as an approach will reduce the number of discount requests customers raise. By showing an ROI model, you remove the need to discuss discounts because you are already showing the customer the return they will be getting for your product or service.
If you are showing a return in a reasonable time-frame, prospects are probably not even thinking about a discount because they can see the financial benefits in front of them. If they are thinking about a discount, they are unlikely to bring it up because it will just seem greedy. In essence ROI methodology helps your customers see that your price has little to do with costs and a lot more to do with the value you deliver. In fact ROI based selling can reduce the sales cycle time drastically because people won’t want to wait to start reaping the benefits. How long would you want to wait if your grocery bill could be cut in half the minute you started shopping somewhere else. Or would it take you long to sign up to a new supplier if it meant that your electricity bill would be 40% cheaper?
Delay in decision
When you show a valid ROI argument to a customer you are helping them see that the longer they delay, the more money they are losing. When store owners are engaged in building their stores they know that every week of delay in opening they lose out on potential sales. Likewise, if you have shown in your ROI the amount of cost savings or new sales they can receive from using your product or service, then the longer they delay, the less they will see of those benefits.
This is not something you have to push too hard as they can see it for themselves. If someone said to you, we’ll start covering all of your fuel bills the minute you tell us to, how long would it take you to go ahead? Try and get used to showing the ROI benefits in that way to help create a sense of urgency without pushing.
Don’t believe it
This is a common objection. Some people will not want to go ahead without some proof. What you will need here is either a guarantee of some sort to take away the risk for the customer or some references or case studies to show how it’s worked elsewhere. If you’re not keen on the guarantee idea (why wouldn’t you be if you stand behind your product?) then get some data to support your claims. If you don’t have any, go back to former customers and get some. Ask them questions like, “How has our product or service impacted on your business? Have your costs reduced as a result?” If so, by how much? How do you attribute this to our product or service? Make it easy for them and be prepared. Ask them some questions that will be easy for them to answer or offer to help gather the information needed.
Be armed with a few case studies, figures to back up what you claim. It also helps as part of your presentation to talk about a few of the successes you have had and name the clients. You can draw comparisons to the current customer to show an even closer fit to the product or service you are offering. You could say, “ABC Company are also in your industry and they have a similar sized workforce. They were a little sceptical at first but after just one month, they noticed a marked improvement.” Or “XYZ International are a pretty demanding organisation. They decided to go ahead after they saw the short term payback. They would be more than happy to tell you of their success with this service.”
Already have a supplier
Incumbents are even trickier to negotiate if they are friends with the customer or even worse – related. Sometimes, no matter what you do, people won’t change. You could offer stuff for free and that wouldn’t be enough. However, sometimes people are just comfortable or think it will be too hard to change. These are great candidates to use this approach on. Remember, you are showing them good reason to change. Help them see the logical argument for your product or service. It’s true that people make emotional purchases but people also make logical purchases – the ‘no brainer’? Buying a product or service as a ‘no brainer’ has long lasting effect. Emotional purchases often lead to buyer’s remorse. Admit it, we’ve all made purchases on an emotional impulse and even when we’re handing over the money we can start to feel the doubts kick in!
A lot of the time, there will already be a current supplier in place, so get used to having it come up as an objection. Better still, head it off at the start by saying something like, “I know you probably already have a supplier for this and they’ve probably provided you with real value. Let me show you how we can extend that value for you and improve your financial position.” Notice we haven’t knocked the current supplier. If we knock them, we also knock our customer for choosing them in the first place. It’s best always to keep the supplier on side by helping them save face. Confirm they have made good decisions up till now. You may go as far as saying that up until you could offer what you have today, the choice they made was the best option available.
Help them see that although they have a good relationship with their current supplier it makes good business sense to take advantage of what you have to offer. Work on logic rather than emotion in these cases.
If you want to learn more about how to show an ROI on your product or services, check out more of my articles on the ROI topic or get a copy of this book: ROI: The Sales' Person's Secret Weapon
Derek Good has been a General Manager for a number of years and since 2002 has been involved in corporate training and consulting. He has won the North Shore Business Award for Customer Service Excellence and the TUANZ Award for innovation for general education.
About the Author:
These days Derek's focus is on researching the changes in training trends and developing his online micro video training organisation LearningPlanet which is currently accessed by thousands of users across a number of countries.
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