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By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
In the heat of a sale, it is sometimes easy to confuse a condition to the sale with an objection. The key is to understand what you are really dealing with, and respond accordingly. Done right, it could solidify the sale and the resulting relationship with the buyer.
Take a look, then download the Objection Handling Handbook, and let me know your thought.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
One questionable piece of advice sellers are given is not to take “things personally”. While I understand the sentiment behind it, encouraging sellers to not go down a dark hole, there is something wrong with telling professional sales people, in fact professionals of any type, not to take it personally. The reality is that part of successful selling is conviction, not just in your ability to add value to the buyer, but and in how you sell. It is hard to have that and not be passionate about selling, and as soon as passion is involved, it also becomes personal.
Certainly there are parts of the sales cycle that you can remove yourself somewhat from the emotions of the sale, usually during the prospecting stage, especially if you are a proactive rather than a passive prospector. When you first reach out to a potential buyer they don’t know you from Adam, and the goal is to get them engaged. Initial rejections are more situational than directed; meaning that they are not rejecting you as an individual, but what you represent, an interruption. But as you get engaged and are working through the sale, you get more emotionally involved, things do become a lot more personal.
It is that emotional involvement that often allows you to go deep with a buyer. Passion and enthusiasm are contagious, and it’s something you want your buyers to catch. After all, we are constantly reminded that people buy on emotion, then rationalize their decision, so it only helps if you are going to connect with the buyer on that level as well.
A more workable and realistic goal is to understand that you do need to get involved on a number of levels, that it does get personal, and that you need to be able to deal with and manage the outcomes whether they go your way or not. The ability to step back, assess the circumstance, and move on to the next sale. No different than the expectation and practice in professional sport.
By assessing the outcome you achieve a number of positives that help with the personal aspect. First you can evaluate how well you did execute you plan and process and understand why perhaps you lost the deal. I say perhaps, because there isn’t always a clear answer all nicely wrapped, if the result of the assessment is ambiguous, you will still have to deal with the outcome and move on.
But if the analysis of the deal and outcome are not ambiguous, then you are in a great position to learn, both what you want to repeat and to accentuate moving forward, and what to avoid and improve. While this may not take away the sting of a lost deal, it does help you benefit in some way, cope, and have a reason to give it another go with your new insight.
It is very much the emotion we bring at sellers that helps us win deals where most all other things are equal. It is precisely then that you need to go deep, and leave yourself open to disappointment, and yes it does become personal precisely because of that; and given the opportunity I would advise you to get emotionally involved and deal with the outcome win or lose. After all, they only give you the advice about it not being personal when you lose, it seems they are OK with it being personal when you win.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
Had an interesting discussion with a rep Jim, last week around the area of trust. He works for smaller company, they use various technologies to help them with lead gen and nurturing. Two specific apps enable him to track who has opened his e-mails, and the other lets him know who has visited his company’s web site, right down to specific pages. As you can imagine, with the right content, laced with specific links, a seller can gain some great insights.
Having worked with the team, I know that they are diligent about avoiding and or removing objections. Jim was on the phone with a potential buyer who asked that Jim send him some info before committing to an appointment, Jim tried everything we put in our Objection Handling Handbook, but in the end had to send some info. As per the teams SOP, he only sends e-mail, chock full of links, and scheduled a follow up call to review. Over the next few days Jim saw the prospect read the e-mail, both in the office and on his mobile device. He saw the footprints on the website, hitting critical target pages, Jim was ready for the call back.
The Objection Handling Handbook, instructs sellers to continue taking away objections on call back, encouraging sellers to start the call by saying: “Hi Mr./Ms. Prospect, this is Jim calling back, following up on the information I promised to forward, you probably haven’t had a chance to read it, have you?” Thus taking wary the obvious and common dodge.
Feeling confident as a result of technology, Jim skipped the take away, and left himself open, and disappointment by asking the buyer if he had reviewed the e-mail, and letting the facts get in the way of process, he assumed the buyer would lead with the fact that he did read the note and visited the website.
Well guess what, yup, the buyer took a left turn and you know it, “Jim, I am up to my eyeballs in alligators, and just have not had a chance to get to it, leave it with me and I’ll get back with you as soon as I have”. Jim, got back and program and managed to secure a face to face appointment with the buyer, and the cycle is progressing.
Jim was upset for two reasons, one he could fix, specifically the approach and methodology. By executing the follow up call according to plan, regardless of whether he knew if the prospect had read his e-mail, or visited the desired pages on the company web site.
The second was a bit more problematic for Jim, while not being naïve, he was looking to establish trust with the buyer and felt that the buyer had undermined that opportunity. While he will continue to engage with the prospect, and will continue to be honest, straight forward and ethical with the buyer, he says he will always have a hint of doubt as to the integrity of what this buyer will tell him, and by extension other buyers.
In the end technology does not replace human interaction, and with any interaction there is some give and take. I pointed out to Jim that the buyer may have had some reasons for not being straight with Jim, including bad experiences with other sellers, perhaps looking to see what kind of rep Jim is, or any number of reasons. Trust is not instantaneous, it takes time and familiarity, which why I am surprised when some pundits talk about being able to establish trust right out of the gate, or even on a voice mail.
More importantly, technology is there to support the effort, not replace it, had Jim stuck to the program, he would have been able to respond to the situation more effectively, but he had painted himself into a corner, not the technology.
Having said that, it does raise the issue of how fragile trust is, and how easily it is undermined by technology. While the buyer may argue that they were being spied on, they should also be aware that there are no secrets on the internet, and any time you click a link, you have company.
What do you think of Jim’s dilemma, and whether technology can in fact undermine trust?
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
There are times when an objection is not what it seems, but by treating it as an objection we could inadvertently create a scenario and situation that is risky when it didn’t have to be. Often, prospects’ questions at critical points in the sale sound like objections, when they are just the buyer thinking out loud.
Sellers need to slow down, step back assess, then deal with the situation, statement in a way appropriate for that situation.
Take a look at what I mean. Then download the Objection Handling Handbook.
What’s in Your Pipeline
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
There was a good post this week at Funnelholic blog, looking at “Best practices for getting in the door”. In the piece there was a statistic attributed to the Harvard Business Review that stated:
“Harvard Business Review: 90% of C-level executives say that they never respond to cold calls or email blasts”
Now I can’t speak for the e-mail blast part, but as for the responding to cold calls part – “Horse manure! That’s for sure!”
I can tell you from personal experience, mine that of my clients, and other sellers, that the percentage of executives who respond is much greater than 10%, and even if they wanted to reframe the statistics and limit it to those who have made a purchase from a cold call, the number is still much higher than 10%.
There could be a number of explanations for this misrepresentation of the facts. One can be the way the question was asked, because it is true that in the wrong hands, cold calls can be painful for both parties; maybe they specifically asked executives predisposed to not taking cold calls or want to be politically correct in a social age; or they relied on data from the “never cold call” crowd, whose bias would taint the survey, after all it is hard to sell DVD’s, books, and ab machines if cold calling was shown to be working.
I suspect that this is the sales world version of the Bradley Effect, where voters told pollsters one thing about how they will vote, while doing opposite when they actually went to cast their vote.
As I have stated here before, there are no absolutes in selling, if your job is to engage with potential buyers, you will need to try all resources available to you, including cold calling. The post on Funnelholic highlights this in a clear way. While in certain markets you can get away with little cold calling, in other segments, you will never hit quota without picking up the phone and making some well-placed cold calls.
Another cause is the fact that many organizations spend a lot of money training their people on “selling” or managing accounts or relationships, but very little on proper prospecting. While lately there have been some programs focus on the use of social media or LinkedIn, again they ignore cold calling, after all, if you don’t do it, you can’t teach it.
Some of the referral based programs overlook the fact that while someone may give you a great referral, but unless the person making the referral calls in advance or introduces you, not always the case, and your call to the target is unscheduled, guess what, it’s a cold call, doesn’t matter what you want to call it to make you feel better. Unless you have mapped out the call, how you manage the likely objection, and turn it into engagement, you’re beat, and will become a statistic. Maybe the statistic was that 90% of cold calls are so bad that they would not buy from those callers. Which is reasonable given the fact that they have only been trained on the latter half the process.
What is interesting is that I have met executives leading sales force espousing alternate means to cold calling at conferences or webinars, who in a different setting lament their teams’ overdependence on their existing base, and the inability of their teams to prospect, including cold calling.
In the end, either both I and my clients are the luckiest sellers on the planet, or the 90% statistic is 90% politically correct BS.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
The video below is the third in a series of videos on Objections, and Objection Handling I did for BizTV, this one dealing with price objections. One of the most common objections sales people face is the price objection, especially late in the sale. Some buyers use this as tactic, some are genuinely trying to get the best deal they can, either way, the seller needs to be prepared for the objection and how to handle when it comes. In addition to the video you may also want to read The WOW Approach to Price Negotiations, these other price related pieces. And don’t forget to download the companion Objection Handling Handbook.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
This is the second in a series of video prepared for BizTV dealing with objections, the first was an overview of sales objections; this one specifically those you encounter while prospecting.
In the video it references a link to download the Objection Handling Handbook, just in case you missed it above, it is: http://bit.ly/BizTV-OHH
If you have questions about objection handling in the course of prospecting, or just telephone prospecting, give me a call or schedule time by clicking here.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
Many sellers believe that Objections are the bane of their existence, and one can understand why. On the other hand, if you step back, you can actually see Objections in a more positive light, and see them as something you can leverage to move sales forward, and win deals other less enlightened sellers may miss.
Below is the first of a series of videos dealing with objections, and how to make them work for you in winning sales.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
On Thursday October 18, The Proactive Prospecting Workshop is coming to Houston, specifically to Four Points by Sheraton Houston Southwest, at 2828 Southwest Freeway, Houston.
If you are in B2B sales, and need to engage with more new prospects, mark this date on your calendar, then sign up for this full day interactive prospecting program.
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We leave dogma at the door, this is not about old school vs. new school, this is about executing a proven methodology for prospecting more effectively and filling your pipeline with the quality prospects in the right quantities. This is the same program that has helps thousands of sale professionals improve their skills and increase prospects and sales. Sales professional in dozens of companies are using the methods and process delivered in the Proactive Prospecting Workshop to deliver consistent results.
What you’ll learn…
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The Proactive Prospector’s Guide to Objection Handling Booklet
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Call – (855) 25-SALES
Sign Up Today! And always be confident when asked:
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
In the first five installments of this series we looked at the nature of objections by potential prospects and how to best use them to transition an interruption to a conversation. But there is another aspect to objections that is common and can also be dealt with, what I call the Non-Objection. In case you are wondering this is no way related to the famous and perhaps mythical experimental Non-Rabbit.
The Non-Objection are those that can be avoided before they are ever presented; these will differ across industries, and will therefore require you to draw on your own experience to manage. Success with these objections rely on a basic tenant of sales success, specifically the Three Rule.
The Three Rule suggests that the first time you encounter something, it is new and a surprise; the second time it is confirmation, and no longer a surprise. The third time it is our jobs as sales professionals to be ready and deal with it.
Based on The Three Rule, it is up to me to anticipate and move to remove a potential objection from the equation. For example at the start of 2009, a number of people I was trying to engage with put up the recession as their reason for not wanting to engage with me, or trainers in general. Rather than changing professions, I changed my approach. In my introduction I included a variation of the following:
“I work with companies who have decided to take a proactive approach to selling in the recession.”
This did not mean instant engagement, it certainly left the other common objections in play, but it took the “recession excuse” or Conditioned Response out of the mix, leveling the playing field.
Here is another example, I was working with a large international manufacturer, the team covering the SMB sector kept running into the objection, especially with SOHO’s, that “oh we’re too small”. As a result we had them change their script and include “I am the small business specialist”. What was the prospect to say, “oh no, we are minuscule”.
So if you are running into a specific objection other than the five we have prepped you for, step back and see how you can take it away before it is used against you. See how you can use it to your advantage by presenting it as a benefit, rather than have it used to weaken your position.
One other way to use The Non-Objection is in dealing with the Send objection. 90% of the time you call to follow up on a Send, you’ll hear that they haven’t had a chance to read it, or they have yet to get it. So when you follow up, start by saying “Harry, it’s Tibor here, I am following up on our call last week and the information I sent as a result, YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T HAD A CHANCE TO READ, HAVE YOU?”. Just the nervous laughter at the other end is worth the call alone. If they say no they hadn’t, just say “that’s exactly why I suggested we meet, how is Thursday at 10:00?”
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto
