Sales Objections & Put Offs Can You Help?

Overcoming sales objections and put offs will increase your sales.


A put off is something like 'send me something in the post or call me in three months, or he's busy you'll have to send him an e-mail.


An objection could be 'that's too expensive, you'll have to get your price down.' Another example might be 'we've already got one or our existing machine is okay, or we are happy with our existing supplier.


I have a number of objections and put offs within my results driven sales system as you'd expect.


What I'd like to do is build a bigger list with your help and I'll develop lots of response and share what I put together with people that help me.


So can you send me your common objections and put offs and in return I'll send you a new objection book when I've designed suitable responses for you.


If you have a standard reply to an objection or put off that you use already, could you send me that as well to help other people?


I will send you a copy of this new objection book when its are collated, in February next year.


All you need to do is send me some objections or put offs and subscribe to this blog and I'll send you the book in February. 


Regards 


Mark





P.S. This isn't going to be a PDF, there will be a very small charge to cover the production and postage costs for the objection book. 


I'll let you know what that will be when its put together next year, but rest assured it will be only be a nominal cost.


 P.P.S. This offer will end at the end of January 2010.


Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights Reserved

Sales Rescue

Have you ever had a verbal conformation that the prospect wanted to buy from you, but later on they got ‘cold feet’ or ‘buyers remorse.’

There are a number of ways that you can try to overcome this situation.

1. Get them to commit to signing an order or agreement in the first place.

2. Write to them after they have placed the order, re-enforcing the positive points of your proposition, telling the customer or client what a sensible decision that they have made and how they will benefit from the purchase.

The second point I don’t really like, but that’s a personal point of view. The first point strays into the area of legal advice, so no comment on that one! Talk to a practicing suitably qualified person.

If a sale is going down the pan, you need to communicate and find out why.

Don’t use e-mail, its too impersonal.

Get on the phone or meet the person and ask them what are their concerns, try and isolate the real reason (s) someone has changed their mind, then offer a solution.

Ask some questions like these

What’s stopping you going forward?

What are your concerns?

Is it the return on investment?

Will buying this product/service give you a return you are looking for?

Is it the delivery options?

Is there an issue with financing the purchase?

Are you happy with the guarantee?

Keep calm and don't let any frustrations show, have a genuine concern.

Sometimes its not in your clients best interest to proceed, in that situation its better to agree with your prospect and accept the situation, or if you feel its not right for them mention it yourself.

On the assumption that it is the right thing for the client to proceed, when you have isolated the concern if you don’t have an immediate solution take time out, consider what else can you afford to do to make it work.

It’s not all about price cutting, for instance recently I restructured a deal where there was a strong guarantee, but the client was still not sure, so we structured our deal whereby if we did not deliver they could not lose.

We did not cut our fees just how they were paid.

I welcome any comments you have, your own experiences etc.

Regards

Mark


Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2009 All Rights Reserved

Talk to your customers

Talking more to your potential customers and your existing customers pays dividends.

It's kind of obvious, but how much time do you spend, finding out what your customers or clients want? Are they really happy with what you provide for them?

Could you do anything more to serve them better?

What are their frustrations how could you help them overcome them?

How do you compare to your competitors? Ask your customers they will know.

Early this year a client of mine who has a manufacturing business, asked me to create a unique selling proposition for him and part of the process involved talking to his customers.

What we found that his customers felt that all manufactures in his industry, had poor product photographs.

So we hired an expensive product photographer who took some really good pictures and together with a graphic designer produced a great new brochure. It was in fact more than a great brochure it was a presenter that my client's customers used in their own sales presentation.

The presenters were leather bound and they cost around £25 each. Here's the best thing. his sales started to grow, he took on more accounts because of the presenter and the quality photographs.

His prospects and his existing customers all wanted the presenter, this together with the new unique selling proposition, he closed more sales.

Part of the USP made a promise that if his customers placed an order before 9.30 a.m. that the product would be with them the same day by 3.30 p.m. or its FREE.

The moral of the story is ask questions, listen and take action.

Regards

Mark

Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2009 All Rights Reserved

Great Customer Service

I took my wife on a Mediterranean cruise with P and O to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. If you ever want to find out more about customer service and marketing I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Also you have some fun, meet some great people and visit some wonderful places.

Lots of the simple things are done consistently well. For example the staff always use your name, ask you if you are enjoying yourself, engage in conversation just in passing. Every effort is made to make you feel welcome.

When I get a minute I will write some more specifics about how they go about it.

Regards

Mark Wheatley

Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2009 All Rights Reserved

Politics In Organisations

This is an extract from an e-mail that I sent to someone on the subject of politics in organisations, its a few observations and quotes on that particular subject, which impacts us all from time to time.

On the first management course I attended back in 1987, we had an organisational behaviour module, taught by a professor called John W. Hunt who wrote a book called managing people at work.

Here are three things that he said during the lectures which I’ve often thought about in the years that followed.

1. There are three sides to every argument the person you are having it with (their version), your own version and the truth.

2. Its very difficult to effect change without a crisis (you can see that now in the political arena ‘cuts’ have to be made to balance the country’s books. Some politicians don’t want to do it, but they have to because of the crisis).

3. Whenever you get more than two people in an organisation there are politics!

Another thing to consider is developing a greater empathy for other people, thinking about their point of view. It’s a key skill to master; you can apply that to anything from sales to leadership or simply getting on with people.

Finally, if you have ever read ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie, he teaches you how to avoid arguments because ‘even if you win an argument, people will resent you for it.’

If you have any thoughts on this one let me know.

Regards

Mark

Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2009 All Rights Reserved