Mar/100
Guest Post: Stay Focussed, Boost Productivity & Enjoy What You Do
For sales people, ‘To Do Lists’ are not a useful tool in today’s hectic, information-rich, competitive business environments. Here’s an alternative:
1. Spend 10 minutes every morning planning the day!
We know it makes sense – but we rarely do it properly. Spending just 10 minutes in the morning reviewing our main business objectives and personal goals, then physically writing out a maximum of 3 or 4 results (not tasks!) we want to absolutely achieve by the end of the day, is essential for keeping us focused. Just as important, is the reason WHY we want to achieve the result i.e. what it will mean to us personally (£) as well as professionally – this keeps motivation high when times get challenging.
2. Learn the art of the 80/20 Principle!
According to Pareto’s famous law, most of us spend 80% of our time working on things that will only ever give us 20% of the results we’re looking for. This includes: doing tasks others have passed to us; trying to clear a ‘To Do List’ (because it makes us feel a sense of achievement); and avoiding difficult tasks by distracting ourselves watching news and/or unimportant emails etc. Instead, try prioritizing during the 10 minute planning sessions, batching up similar or related tasks, and delegating or simply deleting more ‘stuff’ – remember simplicity and clarity is power.
3. Spend 10 minutes after work reviewing the day!
It’s easy to get so engrossed in our businesses that we forget to take time out to reflect. By investing just 10 minutes at the end of the day to recap on what we’ve achieved, what we’ve learnt and any great moments we experienced, we stay more motivated. We’re also able to switch off before returning home to connect with family and friends – the basic human need that should be behind why we do what we do in the first place.
Free download: Healthy Habits Guide
For loads of resources check out: www.healthysalesexec.com
Mar/102
Where is the spotlight? If it is on you, you are not selling!
I was sitting in the best burrito place in Budapest one afternoon. At a table near me, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation in English, My Hungarian is still pretty weak, so the familiar language caught my attention.
In this conversation, an older guy in a business suit was sitting with a young, fresh faced 20-something guy in jeans and a t-shirt. The older guy was peppering with younger one with questions:
- So how long have you known her?
- Where did you guys meet?
- Do you speak any Slovakian?
- What is your current status?
- What does she do for a living?
- Etc.
The kid didn’t seem to mind, but it was eminently clear that the older guy was COMPLETELY controlling the conversation. I am not making any value judgement here, just an observation.
It reminded me of a talk show. Where Johnny or Jay or Connan or Larry fires off well informed questions, directing the celebrity of the moment through the interview until the key moment when the hot issue is approached, exposed and explored – with or without the consent and/or comfort of the interviewee .
What does this have to do with sales and selling? The key concept here is all about what we can call “the spotlight”.
Some non-salespeople (and some salespeople) have the misguided idea that salespeople love the spotlight. They believe that selling is an opportunity to get up on a kind of stage and present the wonders of a product or service in such a dazzling way that prospective customers can’t help but throw money at them, like bras at a Beatles concert in days of old.
These people have it all wrong. If these people are salespeople, then it is probably a hard job for them. The image of the snake oil salesman on his wagon in the old west town is an old story, and it no longer plays in Peoria or anywhere else.
If you aspire to be an effective professional salesperson, then you should remember the concept of “the spotlight”. To help you remember it, perhaps I should tell you what it is:
When you are in a sales conversation, imagine that you and your prospect are on a stage with two chairs. You sit in one, the prospect in the other. The stage is dark, except for a single spotlight. The spotlight shines not on the person talking, but on the person who is the subject of the conversation.
You are selling most effectively when the spotlight is on the other person – the prospect.
How can this be? Don’t you need to tell the prospect all about your great stuff so that they know that they need to buy it? Not necessarily.
In the sales process that I map out in blow-by-blow detail in my book Mastering Your Sales Process, the first four steps (leads, prospecting, qualifying and needs analysis) are designed to allow the salesperson to demonstrate professionalism which generates trust and to gather client information interactively, in such a way that what feels to the client like the gathering of information (spotlight on them) simultaneously and proactively addresses potential objections and informs parameters for the solution option.
In this way, the second half of the sales process (solution, objections and close) can be brief, spot-on, and totally effective without the need for presentations, lengthy proposals, extended negotiation sessions, or any of those other “spotlight on the salespeople” activities that usually do more damage to the opportunity to close than they do help it.
Proposals and presentations have their place, but if you want to be effective, the skills you need to focus on revolve around understanding the compelling reasons that the prospect has for wanting your product or service, and fleshing them out in a dialogue that highlights your understanding of the issue, your ability to fix it, and your character as the kind of person the prospect wants to partner with towards a solution.
Keeping the spotlight on the prospect with great questions, trial solutions, thorough needs analysis, properly timed and complete proposals will help. A lot. When you do it all right, your closing technique can be as simple as something like “well OK then”. It is true that to close, you do need to say or do something, By keeping the spotlight on the prospect the right way as you work towards the close, you can keep it short, and help make it more effective than your best uninformed, spotlight-on-you monologue or power point presentation ever will.
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Mar/102
Prospecting series – The bane of the cold call
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Many subjects in sales elicit a strong, emotional, binary response from salespeople; none more so than the question of cold calling.
Some people swear by them, to this day. Others declare them dead, obsolete, etc. How can both of these be right?
Like most things in life, “is that good” is too simple of a question. Luckily for those of us who relish the beauty to be found in nuance, there is more to the cold calling question than a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. When done poorly, cold calls are painful on both sides of the phone. When done well, they just aren’t so bad. Sure it would be better to lie on a warm beach sipping from a cool drink, but then again you could say that about most things you do at work – that’s why you get paid to do them!
So if we are going to cold call, what should we do to make it work? Here are a few tips:
1 – Know what you are going to say in the first 20-30 seconds
You want to be able to deliver your call with confidence, and you must be sure that you say what you need to say in those precious first seconds when you actually have the attention of the person you called. You may be nervous, which makes it easy to screw this part up – so yes, you should use a script. Not a complex one, but a simple one. Not for the whole call, but for the first 20-30 seconds for sure! Read Stephan Schiffman’s book on cold calling to get some ideas, or send me an e-mail and I’ll send you an excerpt from my book that might help.
2 – Have the right reason for the call
I first started cold calling when I sold promotional products. At first, I told the person I was calling that the reason for my call was to suggest that we should meet in person so that I could demonstrate all of my great ideas. It was not so compelling, or effective. Later, I started calling people with a trade show coming up in the very near future, and I suggested that we meet so that I could help them come up with a good promotion for their upcoming event. Same basic idea, just more targeted and time sensitive. That was much more effective.
Your industry will be different (unless you happen to sell promotional products), but ask yourself – is the reason I am suggesting a meeting compelling to the prospect? If not, find a new one, and build your call script around it.
3 – Don’t sell on the cold call
Unless you sell via a one-call-close-by-phone methodology, the goal of the cold call is probably to secure an opportunity to talk more about the possibility of a sale. That might mean a longer phone conversation, a later phone conversation, or in most cases a personal meeting. Whatever the case, the first thing you need to sell is the idea of a sales conversation before you start selling your product or service. Once you secure agreement for a sales conversation, you are not on a cold call anymore, even if the same phone call continues as a sales call; you are now on a sales call, or on your way to a sales call in person at a time you agreed to met with the prospect.
4 – Be ready to close
Most of the time, the close of a cold call is an agreement for a meeting – so be ready to make that close before you pick up the phone to make the cold call. Have your schedule ready, and if you will meet them in person at their office, know where they are located so that you can schedule a meeting that fits in with the rest of your schedule. Once you are ready to set a meeting, don’t lose momentum by fumbling with your calendar.
You’ll need make a lot of cold calls before you can really measure results. Give it an honest try, and work smart. Then you can weigh in on the debate about whether they work or not, but from a position of knowledge, not opinion. Making five dials, getting one surly receptionist or one grumpy CEO on the other end and giving up is not a reasonable effort upon which to measure the effectiveness of this prospecting method.
If cold calling is impossible for you, there are a LOT of other ways to prospect. However, whatever prospecting method you choose, you’ll probably need to follow that up with a call to set up a meeting – which is a LOT like a cold call. At the end of the day, a cold call, a call to set a meeting, or a call to check in with a client after a long period of inactivity all have the same dynamics. Get comfortable with this kind of call, and find a way to be effective with it, and your career will move forward much more systematically than if you simply complain that this can’t work for you, and avoid trying to make it work for that reason.
Mar/102
Objection Series – “Your Price is Too High!”
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Early in my sales career, I worked for a promotional products importing company in California that was very entrepreneurial. The president of the company would often get distracted from his core business and pursue a good idea, just because he thought it had potential in the market. Because of this, I had the opportunity to work side-by-side with a golf pro, who had a very direct way of handling price objections.
The president of the company had fallen in love with a golf training product, and hired Rod, a golf pro, to help promote it. Rod worked in the office next to mine (this was in the days before cubicles were the norm).
One day, I heard Rod say something into the phone that I later learned was a response to a price objection (i.e. “your price is to high”). In a very direct, almost sarcastic voice, Rod said:
“Compared to what?!?”
I was pretty new to sales, and still a bit on the nervous side when dealing with customers. His approach absolutely stunned me. I asked him about it, and he was very convinced that his approach was correct:
“Listen”, he said, “people pay me 20 times the price of this simple training tool for an hours worth of private golf lessons, and after the hour is gone, I leave. This training tool, on the other hand, is something that people can use anywhere they can swing a club, and they get instant feedback on their swing that is even more accurate than watching how the ball flies or hearing what a golf pro has to say. To object to the low price of this product is to not understand the value it offers. Anyone who objects on price is an idiot, and needs to be told how to value what they get from this thing”.
Now Rod was a pretty crusty old guy, and I am not a big fan of the style with which he delivered this objection response. However, with respect to his logic, he couldn’t be more right!
Too many salespeople hear a price objection from their prospect and agree with it. Then they run back to their company and demand a discount so that they can make a sale. The problem with this behavior, is that the salesperson is functioning as a semi-automated price tag. It is as if there is a basket of apples with a sensor and a digital price display. If a prospects walks up, sees the price and starts walking away, the display emits a signal, and drops the price 10%. This process repeats until the price is just above cost, or the prospect buys – whichever comes first.
In this case, the salesperson has not established sufficient value in the mind of the prospect. This salesperson is not acting as an expert, as we discussed in the blog series about the importance of expertise. This salesperson is not serving himself, his company OR his prospect well. This salesperson can also be easily replaced by another message runner, or when the technology allows, and someone actually builds it, our automated display!
Only the most Neanderthal of prospects shop on price alone. There are fewer of them than you think. The truth is, almost nothing is bought on price alone. No-one in their right mind would buy on price at the expense of quality, reliability, in some cases warranty, packaging, delivery time, etc.
Do you, for example, buy on price? You might think you do, but you probably don’t:
- Do you buy the cheapest shirt in the store, regardless of style, fit and color?
- Do you drive the cheapest car available, or did you pay a bit more for a car you like?
- Do you use the cheapest mobile phone?
- Do you eat at the cheapest restaurant?
- Have you ever had a coffee at Starbucks?
If you said yes to any of the questions, there is something other than price at work here. It is true for your prospects as well. There is some kind of value that is driving your decision. It needs to be in alignment with price, but is not subservient to it!
What prospects typically want from a salesperson – without even knowing that they do – is an EMOTIONAL assurance that their decision to buy from the salesperson is a good decision. They don’t want to make a mistake. They want to make sure that the product they buy matches up with their values (which may include organizational values from their work place). They want to be sure that your product or service comes at a fair price relative to other options, AND to this value that it provides.
A salesperson can help make this happen with a thorough needs analysis to make sure that the problem that the prospect needs to solve is solvable by the product or service that the salesperson offers. Once this assurance has been made, value has been established, and assuming that the price of the product or service is in alignment with the value that has been established, a price objection should not be a major hurdle.
This is not to say that some prospects won’t play the pricing game with you – some people just like the feel of a good haggle. Even in this case, the salesperson who has established value based on a thorough needs analysis and the presentation of a solution that meets as many facets of the prospects needs as possible has more leverage in the negotiation than one who simply offers the lowest price.
Don’t be the low price provider! Before you know it, someone else will have a slightly lower price, and your choices at that stage are limited, and undesirable.
When a prospect argues that the price is too high, it is because the value has not yet been adequately established. Period. Establish value before offering a price, and put yourself and your prospect in the best position to make a deal that everyone will be happy with.
Mar/106
The right sales mindset and success in social media – part 3 of a 3 part series
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This is the final installment in a three-part series about the right sales mindset for social media success. In the first blog post in this series, I talked about the importance of being a subject matter expert. The second installment in the series focused on how to position your expertise to help a prospective customer decide to allow you to influence their buying decision.
In this last installment, we tie it all together with the glue that cements business relationships on and off the web – trust – arguably the currency of social media commerce.
In the 2008 book Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business by Tom Hayes, the author suggests that trust is the new currency of social media. In the book, Hayes describes an evolving internet business environment that he calls “The Reputation Economy”. This is indeed a double edged sword, as Hayes points out. On the plus side, it is exciting to believe that there are lower barriers to entry and success for even the smallest players. Size is no longer required to grow quickly, and into something significant in this new environment. On the other side of the sword, it can seem a bit scary for buyers. Without traditional entities to mediate and regulate person-to-person transactions on the web, how can there be a guarantee of performance and adequate identification of and punishment of cheaters?
The author Hayes postulates and I agree: the answer is trust. As demonstrated by the success of eBay and Amazon with their user generated systems for rating the reliability of sellers, it seems intuitive that as the online business environment encourages more small players (read: initially unknown and for the most part anonymous even over time), buyers will gravitate towards sellers and interest providers they trust. Trust will be a function of past interactions with the seller, by all buyers or prospects, and mechanisms for displaying this trust will become increasingly demanded and relied upon by buyers.
Today, those mechanisms are mostly content based. Outside of Amazon and eBay, many businesses and business people try to enhance their chances of convincing a prospect to buy from them without the benefit of a formalized seller-reliability rating system. So in these conditions, how do we earn trust? For this, we go right back to the sales mindset that I defined in Mastering Your Sales Process and in the first two installments of this post:
“I am an expert in my field. My job is to help qualified prospects make good decisions about solving problems using my product or service.”
When we embody this mindset in our sales efforts, in social media and elsewhere, we engender trust. People tend to trust those people who seem to know what they are talking about and who can demonstrate that. People trust those who seem to be motivated by the desire to offer assistance in a genuine way. Put these two things together, and you have our definition. Embody this definition, and you will be trusted.
Embodying the definitions means working hard to make yourself and expert in everything that has to do with your product or service, all of the ancillary issues (logistics, finance, etc.), and the business of your prospective clients.
Committing to a business style that focuses on solving real problems in an honest and genuine way means getting past just selling your product, and really working to solve the problems. You will be on your way when you reach the point in a conversation with a prospect at which you KNOW that your product or service is not right for them, and you know what to do next – unequivocally!
This embodiment translates to social media by being the philosophical foundation of your content and aggregation activities. Whether you are posting a blog, answering a question in a forum, or passing on a useful link – come from the place that says “I am an expert who is here to help”, and your content will reflect the right things to lead to trust from those who see your content.
If these embodiments are genuine and well executed, your prospects as well as your connections, followers, friends and whatever else they may be called in the social media lingo du jour will trust you. If they trust you, then you have established the basis for a business relationship.
If this is (all or part of) your goal in using social media, then start every interaction with the idea that:
“I am an expert in my field. My job is to help qualified prospects make good decisions about solving problems using my product or service.”
In this way, you will build the trust you need to take steps in the direction you desire, and your prospective clients will be happy to be along for the ride.
Feb/100
The right sales mindset and success in social media – part 2 of a 3 part series
FREE TRIAL OFFER: Read the first 30% of my new book “Mastering Your Sales Process” FREE – delivered to your inbox immediately – please visit http://www.davidmasover.com/free-book-sample.html to register.
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This is the second part of a three part series about the right sales mind set for social media success. In the last blog post, part one of this series, I wrote about the importance of being a subject matter expert. This week, I will cover how to position that expertise to help a prospective customer decide to allow you to influence their buying decision.
Imagine this: some salespeople actually think that it is their job to sell something to somebody. Now I won’t say that this is entirely wrong, but it is the same as saying that a hockey players job is to score goals. Let me explain what I mean here:
It is true that salespeople (and those who have a vested interest in them) like it when sales are made, just like hockey players and fans like it when (their team) scores a goal – but focusing on the goal alone is not how you get there – in sales or hockey. Lets start with hockey.
On average, generally speaking, there are about 6 goals per game scored in an NHL hockey game. These goals age generated by 12 players (6 per side including goalie) during 60 minutes of play. Without getting into a lot of sports statistics, it is pretty clear that a lot is going on during those 60 minutes that is not goal scoring. So if the job of the hockey player is to score goals, most of them are not doing their job – hence the problem with defining the goal as the job – true for salespeople as well.
A more useful way for salespeople to think about their job is reflected in the second part of the definition offered in part one of this blog, originally from my book Mastering Your Sales Process:
“I am an expert in my field. My job is to help qualified prospects make good decisions about solving problems using my product or service.”
This second sentence in the definition goes a very long way in filling in the gaps between goals, as it were. It is what the salesperson should be doing to get to the goal. It encompasses all of the steps in the sales process in between prospecting and closing. It covers qualification, needs analysis, proposal and objections – the meaty part of the sales process!
This perspective – that the salespersons job is to help the customer make a good decision is not only very validating for the salesperson, but in fact it is what the customer really wants from us. Because we spend more time with our product or service than the client does, we should know more about it than they do. If we are doing our job well, we are helping the prospect to flesh out problems they need to solve and to come up with the right solutions.
If we do this with the expertise we defined in the first post on this topic, then the client feels really good about buying from us, and we reach our goal.
So what does all of this have to do with social media? Pretty much everything!
Social media experts and users go on at great length about the “fact” that in social media, hard sales tactics are not welcome. OK, maybe that’s true, but it is also clear that people use information that they find on the web and on social media sites to help them make decisions about lots of things, including what to buy and who to buy it from.
The sales definition of “an expert here to help” bridges the gap between what users want and expect from social media and what salespeople hope to get done there: starting the process of making a sale that is closable. The way to do that is by living both parts of the sales mindset we have discussed, and learning to embody that in your social media endeavors.
If you are trying to sell using social media, then the thing you are trying to earn as a result of your efforts as the “expert here to help” is trust. Trust is arguably the currency of commerce in social media marketing. We’ll talk more about that in the final post in this series next week.
Feb/103
The right sales mindset and success in social media – part 1 of a 3 part series
PART ONE
In my blog post on January 13, I asked the questions “Does Social Media Marketing Work”. My answer was that it works best when it is driven by great content.
But what is “great content” in the context of sales? In other words, if your goal is to use social media to sell more of your product or service, what kind of content qualifies as “great”, especially towards reaching that goal?
I’ll attempt to answer that questions over the next three blog posts – why three? Well, the answer breaks up neatly into three pieces, and the answer is too long for a single blog post – even by my “anything under 1000 character is OK” standards! So here is part one: Why demonstrating that you are an expert matters.
In my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, I spent a few pages talking about the “right sales mindset” and why it is important. That right mindset is as follows:
“I am an expert in my field. My job is to help qualified prospects make good decisions about solving problems using my product or service.”
Before we start to take this apart, let’s get back to the question at hand – why is this the right mindset for sales success in social media?
Anyone who is using social media that might wind up buying from you as a result of doing so, is probably collaborating with others and evaluating multiple sources of information before making a decision. As such, you COULD position yourself in a corporate communications style of one-way, marketing speak (look at our great products, they do these cool things, etc.). This is the mode of communications that you see in commercials, corporate web sites, etc. However, it is not the right approach for social media.
In social media, it is best to not sell, but rather to help customers buy (arguably true outside of social media as well!). Consumers have become accustomed to hearing companies talk about how great their products are, and in the right context, that is accepted (although it may or may not be believed at face value). Social media is a different kind of communications venue in that allows two-way communication, and fosters more of a “discussion” format as opposed to a “presentation”. In a presentation, saying that you are great is usually not contested, if it is even possible (yelling at a TV commercial doesn’t count). In the midst of a conversation, it is not considered polite (or effective) to talk about how terrific you and your stuff might be.
So what does happen in a conversation that helps engender trust? In a conversation, a person who is an expert on the topic at hand will demonstrate their expertise by the content of their part of the conversation. If the topic is cardiovascular surgery, and you are talking with a cardiovascular surgeon, it will become clear during the course of the conversation that the surgeon has some idea what they are talking about, even if (especially if?) they don’t tell you how great they are at it. Rather, they demonstrate their expertise by addressing the subject knowledgeably. They demonstrate this to you by the way they engage in the two-way dialogue you are having.
If you want to have credibility about a subject in a dialogue, you must demonstrate, not announce your expertise in a subject matter. Once you have done so, you have made an important step towards having the ability to influence your dialogue partner. If they believe that you know what you are talking about regarding a subject that matters to them, and they are inclined to take action, they just might listen to an expert like you.
Step one in generating great content in the context of sales via social media is to embody the first part of our sales mind set: to demonstrate that you are indeed a subject matter expert regarding the subject at hand.
Step two – the subject of next weeks blog – will focus on how to position your expertise to help the prospective customer decide to allow you to influence their buying decision.
Feb/108
Do you have the right personality for sales?
WARNING: This post is a bit of a rant – if you are feeling a bit squeamish at this moment, you may want to read this post later!
I participate in the Question and Answer forum and in sales groups on LinkedIn with great regularity and enthusiasm. One question theme that comes up again and again is about sales and personality. So what is the right way to think about the idea that someone does or does not have a good personality for sales, and how might personality related factors impact their effectiveness as a sales person?
The answer to the second question is a little bit trickier, so let’s start there. Most people who believe that personality factors influence sales effectiveness seem to equate personality related factors with the ability to communicate well with prospects. As such, those who have the “right” kind of personality or the right personality factors are better able to connect (or bond) and communicate with their prospects. Personality based sales assessments, and the idea of the “natural born salesperson” cater to this (here it comes) MYTH!
So what is the reality here? Most communication experts will tell you that in most cases, the key component that causes communication to fail is on the listening side of the equation. Problems occur when people either don’t stop talking long enough to listen; interrupt the other person; or don’t jump in, but follow their own line of thinking internally as the other person continues to talk.
Active, effective listening is a SKILL that can be taught. If communication is most often derailed on the listening side of the equation, and listening can be taught (as opposed to being a personality trait that one either has or doesn’t have), then it just can’t be said that personality is the most important factor in business related, effective communication.
Sure it helps when the salesperson and the buyer can “connect” on some personal level, but to take that a step further and postulate that this ability to make a personal connection is among the key drivers of sales success – as many seem to believe – is a step too far! The idea that this kind of connection is an essential factor in sales or business communication is folklore. It is certainly nice, but not as critical as an unexamined speculation might lead you to believe.
This is not to say that people with extreme personality issues can be effective communicators, but as soon as you move away from the extremes, personality becomes a marginal factor in business communications. Period!
So what about the first part – that there are specific personalities that are good for sales and others that are bad for sales? At first glance, this also seems to make sense. Many people have a stereotypical image of salespeople in their mind, and it is not a long leap of logic to go from stereotype to personality type. In reality, anyone who has worked with more than a few successful salespeople over the course of their career has seen that a wide variety of people with very different personalities can succeed in sales, and those who seem to fit the stereotypical sales persona sometimes fail and sometimes succeed. It is hard to meet someone with a lot of experience with salespeople who makes a strong case for personality as a key driver of sales success, because they have seen that personality can vary against the metrics of success.
So does personality matter? Here is how to think about it. If you understand the bell shaped curve, then you can believe that many arguments that make sense on either end of the curve tend to fall apart in the middle.
This is the case with the myth of the sales personality. If personality could somehow be plotted on a bell shaped curve (I have no idea how you could actually do that, but imagine with me for a minute), then those people at the edges might have difficulty selling because of the extreme nature of their personalities.
However, for those in the “fat / tall” part of the bell-shaped curve, there are many other factors upon which their sales success depends, and the success they find in sales will vary based on these other factors. Sales success won’t necessarily correlate to the findings on our imaginary personality bell-shaped graph.
Salespeople are not born, and there is no correct sales personality. Professional selling is a skill, and a skill that can be taught. Psychopaths may struggle, but the average person with the desire to succeed and the commitment to do what it takes to get there is trainable, regardless of their non-extreme personality type.
Do you disagree? If so, please comment – but in your comment, please do provide an example of a personality type that is a bad personality for sales. I am eager to hear what you come up with, and to compare that to the many successful salespeople I have worked with and the wide diversity of personality types that they represent.
Feb/100
Objection series – “I need to think about it”
Thinking things over seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. That is why so many poor performing salespeople accept this objection at face value when they hear if from their clients. The “I need to think about it” objection can be a hard one to get past, until you know how and why you should. This is a long post, but we’ll tackle this often thorny issue, so if it is one that gives you trouble, please read on.
First of all, you need to realize that “I need to think about it” is indeed an objection. In my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, I define objections as “questions that must be addressed after the proposal has been presented.” For the sake of contrast, questions asked BEFORE the proposal is presented are a normal part of the needs analysis process. I mention this now, because the best way to avoid objections is to get the questions answered during Needs Analysis before they even become objections, and they are still just questions.
However, if you have proposed a solution and there are questions outstanding, you will get objections. Sometimes they are very specific and relate to facts and figures in your proposal. Sometimes, they are not very specific, and reflect a general unease or uncertainly in the prospect about moving forward. For example, “I need to think it over”.
From the clients perspective, this usually means that they are not ready to make a decision. They may or may not know why.
They may know (and may or may not have told you) that they need to talk to someone else in the organization. They may know that they need three proposals before making a decision, and yours is not number three. Or it may be something else that they are able to articulate.
On the other hand, they may not know why, but they just are not ready.
In any case, what should you do when your client hits you with the “I need to think about it?” objection.
By realizing that it is an objection, and accepting my definition of an objection, the answer becomes clear. As a sales professional, you need react to this objection by realizing that you need to understand what still needs to be thought about. It would be best if you could be involved in that process of discovery.
So how do we get there?
Most people who work in a professional environment accept the chaotic nature of their own work schedule. Based on this premise, you can reply to the objection by saying something like:
“You know, that is entirely reasonable. We went over a lot of information, and it makes sense to consider it all thoroughly. However, as soon as we leave this meeting, we’ll both be hit with 1000 other things to distract us. So, since we are both (all) here now, and the information is fresh, perhaps you can help me understand what specific issues you still need to think about so that I can provide you with any additional information you might need in order to consider the problem more thoroughly.”
The logic here is clear. If there are unresolved issues, it makes sense to go over them while all are present and the information is fresh. This is especially true if there are multiply buyers in the room.
In using this approach, you have not rejected the prospects need to consider the problem, you only suggested that you do it together, and now. If you are successful, you are effectively back into the sales conversation, and if you can identify and resolve a few specific outstanding issues, you can put yourself back into position to set up the close.
But what if the tactic is just a stall? What if the prospect has no intention to buy or to buy from you? In this case, your approach will flush this out as well. When the answer to your suggestion is non-specific, you may want to say something like:
“You know, lots of times people tell me that they need to think it over when they have already decided not to move forward. If that is the case, can you just tell me now so that we can both save some time in the future?”
Any answer to this questions is good. If they say “yes”, then you know that you don’t have to waste time following up in the future. If they say “no”, then you can try again to flesh out the issues, or at least to agree on next steps. Either way you set yourself up to be efficient, and you demonstrate confident professionalism to the prospect.
Whatever you do, don’t just accept the “I need to think about it” objection”. Addressing it correctly offers opportunities to remain engaged in the sales process, or to learn that you should disengage. Either is better than accepting the objection, and the corresponding fate of the (usually) pointless follow up calls that come with it.
Jan/104
How the competition can make you hurt yourself
I was recently involved in a negotiation on behalf of the holder of intellectual property and a small (relative to industry average) potential contract manufacturing partner.
After only a very short set of preliminary meetings, the contract manufacturer sent us an unsolicited, highly detailed proposal for a partnership. This was the smallest mistake they made, and it was no small mistake. As a note on this point alone, a professional salesperson (or negotiator) should certainly work to learn as much as possible about the needs of all parties and the feasibility of various solutions before formally proposing a solution.
But it got worse.
During the course of the preliminary meetings, our side made it clear that we would require the sourcing of a highly complicated, capital intensive and critical component of our product from a well-known and well-respected component manufacturer. The component manufacturer that we specified was considered one of the best in the world, and was used (with positive results) by almost every major manufacturer in our field.
In the proposal from our prospective contract manufacturing partner, it was suggested that this industry leading, highly acclaimed component manufacturer was grossly overcharging us, and that the small contract manufacturer should also produce the (very complicated, very expensive) machines that make the specialized component – an extremely ambitions suggestion. They further suggested that they could make the machines for less than half the cost of the world famous component manufacturer, with twice the capacity, and in less time.
It sounded too good to be true, and that is just how we interpreted it. This unrealistically ambitious suggestion came at a time when we had just begun exploring our relationship, and well before we had explored many of the much more basic issues related to our potential partnership.
This did not bode well for our perceptions of this prospective contract manufacturing partner!
As a general proposition, it is important to show prospective partners that we are competent and capable potential business partners for them. However, making unrealistic claims early in the process is not the way to do it. Especially if this happens before needs are fully understood, and true capabilities are established. The situation is made even worse if these claims are packaged in the context of an obvious attempt to undermine an existing relationship, and even worse than that when attacking the existing relationship is not necessary. In all of these cases, it just appears desperate (and probably is).
This kind of poor execution usually just winds up hurting the efforts of the needless aggressor. Attacking the competition rather than working to learn what problems exist that can be solved together is not the correct behavior of a professional salesperson, and certainly not the most productive.
A small child may be able to brag to his friends that his fathers new car can go 1000 miles per hour, but when you make a similar gesture to your prospective client in hopes of having them reconsider a more realistic offer from one of your competitors, you are hurting yourself far more than you are helping your efforts to secure the business.
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