Do you find that you can predict why someone might not want to work with you? Depending on your type of business and who your ideal clients are the reasons why they might not want to proceed will vary. In sales terms these reasons are called objections. For most businesses the classic objections they hear are they can’t afford it or they don’t have the time.
I’ve talked about marketing the value of your service/product before so I’m not going to go over that again today but I do want to talk about how to handle other objections before your prospect even thinks of them. Before I carry on let’s talk about mindset here. A lot of the objections that you think people will have are merely in your head and not in theirs! Harsh but true 🙂 but let’s assume they are real tangible objections that you need to successfully manage to close the sale. Here’s the standard ones most businesses will face:
I can’t afford it. In some cases this will be a convenient excuse and in some a genuine situation. There are several ways to manage this and to a certain extent it will depend on your precise service/product but here’s some ideas.
- You absolutely need to nail the value your service/product will bring them. If you do that well enough this one vanishes.
- You can equate the price of your solution to the end product of working with you. I used this when I was marketing the Business Growth Clubs when I said the price of the 6 month programme was £600 and for most of my clients that is equal to only gaining a single client. By doing this I “joined up the dots” and helped them see the risk of the expenditure was actually quite low. Another one I use is to keep hooking their desired transformation back to my fee so if a business wants to grow by £10,000s then my fees look tiny!
- De risk the payment profile. People will get a bit panicky if they think they are signing their life away so make sure you have break clauses in your agreements so at any point (with the agreed notice period) they can stop working with you. If you firmly believe in the value you deliver this type of solution shouldn’t worry you as people won’t want to stop working with you, but it will take that objection off the table.
- Payment plans. If cashflow is a challenge for them use a payment plan option where the spend can be spread over a period of time. Depending on what you sell you could even find a 3rd party financing solution so you get your money straight away and the 3rd party carry the risk.
- The “No win No fee” approach. I used this when I was 1st starting out as I didn’t have banks of testimonials to support my pitches so if I could see the prospect was nearly saying yes but still had a reservation I would say “let’s give it a go and if after the first XX you don’t think it’ll work for you then we’ll agree not to carry on”. This approach does carry a degree of risk with it so you need to be clear about how you structure an agreement around it but it did worked well for me.
- Testimonials. If your prospect is worried that your product/service won’t work for them then play in your testimonials and/or get them to call an existing client or 2.
I don’t have the time. You will need to understand why your prospects are using this one. Once you know then you can counter it. A good handling strategy for this is to ask them how they see things panning out if they don’t make the changes they need to, or ask them what they have tried in the past (which obviously hasn’t worked otherwise they wouldn’t be having the conversation with you!) and why they are keen to make a change now. Basically you get them to build up their pain and need for the transformation you can give them so it helps them realise they can make the time if they want it bad enough. The same approach can be used to handle the “I can’t afford it” objection too.
Ultimately you need to know you ideal clients well enough that you understand their challenges including cashflow and time. Once you can effectively put yourself in their shoes you will know how to counter their objections. When you are using written marketing you need to weave the objection handling strategies into the copy so that as they read it you are removing the objections before they even think of them. If you are face to face with them ask them if they have any concerns about using your product/service as this gives you the golden opportunity to resolve their concerns and close the deal. After all what have you got to lose!
This week’s challenge is to write down a list of the common objections you have come across and then how you can counter them.