SalesMotivation.net

by The Sales Doctor

Most sales professionals wait to handle objections until prospects bring them up, but that strategy – or lack of strategy – isn’t nearly as effective as eliminating objections before making your presentation.

As a “sales doctor,” your first overall step with a potential client is to perform an examination – a qualifying interview – to find out where it hurts. During the examination, you find out if the prospect has medical coverage – a budget. Only after the examination is well underway do you offer a prescription by making a presentation. In the interview process, you effectively diagnose and dispose of the majority of objections.

Phase I - The Interview Process
Within the interview process there are five steps that lead lo qualifying the prospect, drawing out their objections, then solving or eliminating those objections. This means that prospects can’t bring them up later. You can make an agreement with the prospect that says, “I’m going to find out what you really want and need by interviewing you. If I can help you, I’ll tell you, and if I can’t, we’ll end the conversation.”

Don’t make a presentation unless your prospect qualifies.

The first two steps of the interview process are pre-call planning and bonding and rapport, which means doing your homework on the person you’re calling, and, once on the phone, getting that person to feel comfortable with you.

Step Three
The prospect’s problems, issues and concerns equal pain, and that brings you to the third step. This third step allows you to build trust further and helps dispose of another major reason that prospects make objections – you haven’t brought up a specific issue or need that they want handled. To do this effectively, you must first interview prospects to come up with a minimum of three – preferably five – issues or problems that you can resolve for them.

What you’re looking for is where prospects are in pain. As the sales doctor, you want to find out where it hurts, how long it’s been hurting, what, if anything, has been done already to take care of the problem, and what the result has been.

For example, many prospects are concerned with making more money, but it’s not enough to simply address the desire to make money if there’s no pain attached to it.

Imagine the following conversation:

You ask, “How much is your business making compared to last year?”

The prospect answers, “We’re up five percent.”

“What were you doing the year before?”

“We were up about 3 percent.”

“So you’re growing even in this recession?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you want to make more money?”

“Because that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

You don’t have any pain here, just a little greed. You have to find the pain that will cause them to want to make a change or make a difference. If the same prospect said he needed to make more money because his business would go bankrupt if he didn’t increase growth by 10%, that’s a pain that you can address.

Another aspect of step three is how to handle any objections that do arise. No salesperson makes enough money to handle stalls and objections. The point is to give them back to your prospects and work them out together. For example, say your prospect wants 24-hour delivery of a product. You know that it takes a minimum of 48 hours. Try to work out a solution. “If you want it in 24 hours, we’ve got a problem. We can only get it to you in 48.” The next question is key: “What can we do to resolve this?” If your prospects don’t offer you any legitimate solution, feel free to ask, “Is there another company that can offer you 24-hour service?” If prospects answer yes, then ask, “Why aren’t you using them? What are you hoping that I can do that they can’t?” Then be prepared to answer any new issue that emerges. Most of the time, however, when you ask the question, “Is there another company that can take care of this?” prospects will answer, “No. Other companies can’t do it either.” or “There are those companies said that they could, but they didn’t deliver on their promise.”

Most sales people don’t ask these follow-up questions or turn an issue back to prospects for handling. Get prospects to discuss why the objections have come up to find out whether they are really important. If you truly can’t solve them, it’s better to disqualify the prospect before you spend time making a presentation.

Step Four
The next major objection presents itself during step four, which explores the prospect’s budget. As a sales doctor, this would be equivalent to finding out whether they had medical coverage before prescribing treatment.

You might ask, “Now that we know your five main concerns, let’s pretend that we could take care of all of them to your satisfaction. Can you help me? What kind of budget would you have for my product (or service)?” Prospects may ask you to present a figure instead, but the end result will eventually be that either they have a budget or they don’t. If they have one, it will either be enough or not enough. If they don’t have any money, there’s no point in continuing with a presentation at this time.

However, if their budget is low, you once more ask for help in handling the objection. “We’ve got this problem with your budget. Can you help me? What can we do within the budget that you have? Which one or two of the five problems we discussed do you want to address so that we can stay within your budget?”

Step Five
Step five of the interview process gets rid of the last major stall – “I’ll think it over.” Here, you say, “After we show you that we can take care of all the problems we discussed and that we can do it within the budget we agreed on, there are three decisions anyone can make: ‘yes,’ ‘no’ and ‘I’ll think it over.’ If we take ‘I’ll think it over’ and put it away – and if saying ‘no’ is perfectly okay – will you be able to make a decision about whether to buy after I make my presentation?”

If prospects say “Yes,” you’ve eliminated “I’ll think it over.” If they say “no,” and you ask why, you will generally discover that it’s because you’ve been speaking to an influencer rather than a decision maker, and that someone else needs to be involved in the final decision.

Phase II - The Presentation and the Close
During the second phase of the sales process, qualified prospects listen to your presentation and close. This is where, as a sales doctor, you offer the prescription and treatment plan. The first phase should have eliminated any objects because you not only know what the prospect’s main concerns are and what budget they have, but you’ve also got a commitment to a decision-making process. In addition, you’ve gained more of people’s trust because people see that you care about their true needs. If any objections do come up in the second phase, it’s generally because prospects have withheld information or because you didn’t qualify them thoroughly.

Step Six
Step six reviews the agreements you made during steps three, four and five. This verifies that no new objections have appeared. “We agreed last time we talked that you had five issues. Have they stayed the same?”

“Yes.”

”We also agreed that this will cost you $10,000.”

“Fine.”

“Next we agreed that when I called to make the presentation today, you’d be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and take away ‘I’ll think it over.’ ”

“Right.”

Step Seven
During the presentation, step seven, you will eventually take away the pain involved in all the problems and issues that you discovered during step three. Initially, however, you only solve three of the five problems.

You first ask the prospect which of the five issues has priority and solve this one first. After each issue is addressed, you ask, “Are you satisfied that I’ve solved this for you now 100 percent?” Don’t move on until your prospect is 100% satisfied.

Step Eight
After you’ve solved three of the five problems, you add step eight, a reinforcement to ensure that prospects’ objections remain handled. Say, “Okay, we’ve solved three out of five problems. Just to get an idea of where we are in the process, let me ask you something. With a ‘zero’ score meaning you have no interest in my services and ‘10′ meaning that you already see us working in partnership, where would you say we are on the scale?”

With careful attention to each of the prior steps, the answer you get will usually be somewhere between 6 and 10. That number is a reinforcer. Then you can ask, “What do we need to get to 10?” They often say something like, “Solve my fourth problem and let’s see.” After you solve number four ask, “What number are we at now?”

“Nine.”

“Okay, what do we need to do to get to 10 now?” If they say that they are at 10 when you finish solving number five, there’s the close.

Step Nine
To close, step nine, you can ask, “What would you like to do now?” Half of your customers close themselves. If prospects still object during your presentation, you generally have not qualified them enough.

Step Ten
Step 10 is the after-sale – one final reinforcement to ensure that customers don’t cancel later. For instance, you enter the order and say something like, “To me, this isn’t just an order, it’s the beginning of a relationship between us where I’m going to make sure that all the issues, problems and concerns you have are completely handled. Are you okay with that?”

The after-sale takes care of the “inner parent,” that voice that comes into your customer’s head after you hang up. It objects, saying, “Every time I leave you alone, you spend money. Call them back and tell them you don’t want it.” The after-sale serves as a psychological reinforcement to make sure customers are committed.

About the Author

A coach, author, speaker, trainer and advocate of lifelong learning, Brian Azar has spent the last 30+ years helping businesses and individuals reach their own specific success goals.

Originally trained as a social worker, Brian has a truly unique focus on how to help each individual develop as a business and sales professional. Early in his career, he set sales records at the Xerox Corporation, then took the combined skill set of sales and counselling to become a top level sales manager and trainer within Xerox. Later, he became a national sales manager for a major telecommunications company and marketing director for a major consumer products manufacturer.

Find out more about the programs offered by The Sales Doctor at www.SalesDoctor.com