6: Late objections 2

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Late objections 2

Let’s take a couple of late objections. The classic, I want to think about it. This for me is the same as, could you send me an email? So, I think the best thing to do is to try to tackle these two objections in kind of the same way. So I want to think about it. The reality is you could have pre-empted this one at the beginning. Sometimes depending on what you’re selling, you could say, Mr Customer, if at the end of this conversation, this makes good business sense, would you at the end of this conversation tell me a yes or a no? Would that be okay? So, if you’ve said that at the beginning, then you can also say at the end, listen at the beginning you told me you’d make a decision if you’re 100% confident, I’m assuming you’re not 100% confident.

So what’s on the back of your mind? So if you’ve done that bit at the beginning cause you expect a deal on the day, then you’ve got the right to ask for at the end. But if you haven’t and you are where you are, let’s tackle that now. So you’ve got, I want to think about it now. The classic way that I was taught was to go, well yeah, okay, so what do you want to think about? Well, it’s really about everything and then it’d be really difficult to tackle this objection from now on in. So of course, you start by saying, absolutely understand you want to think about it. Would you like me to put something in writing to you or send you an email? So you’ve got all the salient points down. So when you’re ready to make a confident decision about whether it’s right for you or not, you’ve got everything in front of you that’s understanding their position, which is now you’re in the position of, shall I send you an email?

Of course, now you should go through all the positives of their proposition. What are the good things you liked about it that would be a value to your company? Then the customer will start to tell you and if you want to nudge them along a little bit, then really tackle the things that are on the back of their mind that make it not good value and then start putting those things down. So once you have those two things in mind, it is possible at this stage to start going, ah, okay, let’s see if we can tackle that now. Because earlier on, if you remember, you really just said when you’re ready to make a decision, then you’ve got everything in front of you so you didn’t actually have to wait a day or two. One of the things that always used to confuse me when customers say, I want to think about it quite often when I was in face to face, I’d often say, great, listen, I need to use your bath in a moment.

I’ll go to your bathroom when I come back. Tell me if you want to go ahead. The customer didn’t say how long they have to think about it. What’s really confusing? Sometimes when people say, I want to think about it, depending on what you’re selling. I’ve been in sales, we’ve got great show, like if you’re calling in a couple of weeks, well how, why would you leave it two weeks? So I never understand when someone wants to think about it. Most of the time, as I’ve said before, if a customer is thinking about it, pretty much they’re going to do what they’re going to what they say they’re going to do at this particular time. And anything else is going to get less and less and less after they’ve thought about it. So, in other words, if they’re thinking about it now and they’re a hundred percent sure, I can assure you tomorrow they’ll be 95% sure. And next day there’ll be 90% sure it will just keep going down. It will be like a kettle that’s hot. It would just get cooler and cooler and cooler. And if they’re not 70 or 80% sure. Now thinking about it will probably end up being a no.

I had a friend, Massimo, who when he was face to face, someone said, I want to talk to my partner. And he said, of course I understand you want to talk to your partner. But the bigger question is how are you going to talk to your partner? And nine times out of ten the customer say, what would you mean? You say, well, how are you going to talk to them will affect what your partner says. So, for example, if you say to your partner, ah, I didn’t know if we should do this or not, it’s about 15,000 pounds. What do you think the partner’s going to? Well, I don’t know. But if you say, listen, I really want to do this, it’s only 15,000 pounds, should we go ahead, then you’re probably more likely to get a yes. So, the way they ask their partner is obviously going to affect what their partner is going to say.

One thing is to ask their partner, but you really got to understand how they’re going to ask their partner. But you can do it in that way or early on. As I said, you can simply say, if it was solely up to you, what would you do? But the reason I like to ask them to put things down on an email is because when I ask him what does he like about this, he’s going to start selling it back to me and that’s going to give me a really strong indication of how well he’s going to sell it to his partners. And if he can’t tell me what he likes about it, then how do you think the conversation’s going to go when he speaks to his partners? It’s simply going to go like this. Do you want to buy Bradley Scheffer’s product? How much is it? It’s about 15 grand. Yeah, not really. And that will be it. Unless he can tell us the benefits of the product, it’s always going to be a no.

Too Expensive: This is the objection. Obviously that I liked the most. Why? Because there’s an implication that if I can do a discount, then the customer will go ahead. But before I get to that stage, of course I need to isolate it. So the first thing I would say is repeat back, oh, I understand it’s too expensive. But then I would say, what are you saying then that say for example, 20,000 pounds is too much money for the value you’re getting for this product. So, notice I said too much money, which is even a stronger implication that there must be some money. Once I’ve established that it’s too much, then I need to understand once again what they liked. So let’s just put the money aside for a second. Let’s understand what you like and what you don’t like and let’s find out what value you place upon this.

So then we go through the previous exercise of writing down all the things we like and all the things we don’t like. Now this really depends on what you’re selling. Are you able to give a discount for the same product? Yes or no. And have you proposed lots of different features. Like when you’re buying a BMW car you can always take things away. So obviously what I’d always recommended you start high cause taking things away is a lot easier than adding things on. So one of the ways when you’re selling something that contains lots of different parts is to start creating a hierarchy to say, okay, there were lots of parts here. Let’s put them in order of what you really like and what you don’t like, what you can live without. After a while, you really need to justify that, but that still might not work.

The customer still says, can you give me a discount? Well, first of all, I like to get a figure out of the customer, because at that point, I’m really now only trying to justify the difference. So, if I say 20,000 pounds and the customer says, well, I only want to pay 10,000 pounds, then I’ve only got to justify 10,000 pounds, not 20,000 pounds. Just as a psychological factor, if you start quoting in whole numbers, the customer’s more than likely to discount in whole numbers. So, if you say it’s 19,685 pounds, then they’re done less likely to go, well, can you do it for 10,000.

When I deal with the objection, can you give me a discount? Oh, I definitely want a discount. The question I tend to throw back is, Mr Customer, I understand you want a discount. How do I give you it at the rate you want and still retain all the benefits of the product you want? What do you mean? You want it at this rate? How do you imagine I can go back to my boss and ask them to give you this discount and still give you all the benefits of the product. I don’t know, what do you have in mind? And at this stage we were going to take things away. What can you live without or get something from them in return. So for example, when I’m selling advertising, quite often if they wouldn’t barge on any of the products or lose anything, what I would say is, okay Mr. Customer, I work on commission. So therefore if you can give me three or four names that I can talk to, the chances are one of them will buy and I’ll make my commission up. So that’s how I will try to justify a discount. If you’re selling, say for example, anything you could always ask for referrals. It’s a good standard way.