Let’s get a saying out of the way that you may have heard before: ABC or Always Be Closing.
As illustrated in prior blogs, asking great qualifying questions, truly listening to the buying prospect, answering their questions and concerns and taking them down a path that satisfies their wants and needs is the smoothest way a “close” occurs.
With that said, there are still techniques to closing. One of them is something that many salespeople don’t do – ask for the sale. Before we get there, what about overcoming objections? There are some VERY common objections you will hear. If you are prepared for them, they are much easier to overcome. In fact, you have probably used them on a salesperson at some point in your life.
First, realize that there are excuses and objections. When a customer gives you an objection, make sure you differentiate it from an excuse. If they are giving you an excuse, it’s tough overcome that. They are making an excuse not to buy. If it is an objection, it’s more like a problem why they are not buying. If you fix the problem, you’ve taken away their reason not to buy.
You need to narrow down their real objection to why they are not going forward with the transaction. One of the easiest questions to ask them is also one of the simplest.
One way is to just ask, ‘Mr./Ms. Customer, if (whatever their objection is) did not exist, would you be going forward with the transaction?”
See, what you are doing is narrowing it down to one or two things that, if you overcome them, the sale is done and they are much less likely to make other excuses about not buying.
Another simple technique is called “If I could, would you”. It would go something like, “Mr./Ms. Customer, if I could get you the (whatever they are objecting to), would you move forward with the project/sale/etc.?” or “If the price was ($XXXX) like you asked, would we have a deal?”
These are very powerful ways to overcome an objection because they are very simple and to the point. It doesn’t really matter what the “IT” is that the customer is objecting to. The important thing is to narrow it down the “If I could, would you”, so you isolate the objection and get commitment.
More examples in the next blog.
