The dynamics of sales are ever evolving but the objections remain the same. With changing times and funny vocabulary, they may sound different, but they are not. Now that we understand how objections are a part of the Sales Process, and love them or hate them they are not going anywhere, so let’s learn how to handle them.

Let us now dive into uncovering some common sales objections and how to handle them. 

1. “I don’t have time to talk.”

Suggestion: “Sure, I understand. So, before we schedule another time to talk, could you give me some information about your objectives and requirements?”

2.“I’m not interested.”

Suggestion: “I’m responding to your initial interest from our website. Could you please help me to understand what drove you to download some information?” OR

“Let’s say that we had a product that just fits your needs. What would be the process for consideration?”

3. “I don’t have any need at this time.”

Suggestion: “You must have a great current solution in place. What is it and how is it working for you? What’s one thing that could make it better?”

4. “We’re just looking.”

Suggestion: “Great! What prompted your interest? Tell me something about it. Could you also tell me about your business and types of projects you are currently working on?”

5. “We are already using your competitor products.”

Suggestion: “I’d like the opportunity to earn the right to some share of your business. What are some of the things that would enhance your current situation?”

6. “Send me some information.”

Suggestion: “Glad to. Mind if I ask a couple of questions to zero in on your needs and what to send?”

7. “Your price is high.”

Suggestion: “What are you comparing us to? I want to be sure you are comparing apple to apple. Can you please also help me understand why you feel we are priced high?”

8. “We don’t have the budget.”

Suggestion: “How does your budget process work?”

Some Retailer Objections:

• Overstocked
• Your product does not move/not in demand
• Let the demand come first
• Past service bad
• Pending claims
• Terms & conditions do not suit
• No space
• Already carrying too many brands
• Credibility gap:
  • company
  • distributor
  • salesperson

All the objections you will ever receive will come from five major categories: need, relationship, authority, product/service, and price. Once you are able to identify these categories and learn specific rebuttals, you will be more confident when you hear them. Be ready to listen to what the customer is really telling you by way of objections, and respond effectively and immediately.

I would love to know about the objections you face and how you deal with them, and which one of these tricks are you going to use when you encounter your next sales objection.

In the next blog we will dive into something  even more interesting and impactful that will further change the course of how you sell. 

It’s sad that standards of sales professionals and their ethics have generally been lowered so much across industries. I have personally seen just a decade ago, companies not allowing their sales professionals to make sales calls without undergoing a structured induction and training program. With competition increasing leaps and bounds and in a race of sales against production, I observe sales people being hired and thrown in the market without even basic sales training. There is an assumption that if the sales person is a fresher, ‘he would learn by himself in the field’ and if he is experienced, ‘he would know it all’.
There’s chaos all around when these untrained sales people go out by themselves and communicate with prospects. The intent is just to go out and ‘SELL’ so that they hit their monthly/annual targets. The basic characteristics of true sales professional thus seem to be missing:

• Competence
• Communication
• Customer-First Attitude
• Reliability and Responsibility
• Appearance
• Poise

This results in prospects rejecting them as they do not like being ‘sold to’. Here are reasons why people don’t like being sold to:

1. There’s a lot of selling all around

With competition increasing each minute, the prospects have sales people trying to connect to them at the same speed. They have sales people visiting their offices, cold calls over telephone, emails, voice mails, social media invites, and the list is endless. When all of this adds up and is continuous, it becomes annoying. The prospect becomes uncomfortable and all the more confused. This plays a major role on how the prospect feels, when you try to approach him for making the sale.

2. Sales persons can be annoying

As discussed in the opening, majority of sales persons these days can be annoying. While prospecting or making a sales presentation, the sales person tends to be talking about his/her company and its products or services. It becomes all the more annoying to a prospect when the discussion becomes sales person centric and the intent of identifying customer needs and offering a solution seems to be missing.

The situation worsens when the sales person does not qualify a prospect and keeps on persisting for the sale of the wrong product to a wrong person.

3. The sales person may appear to be pushy

For a successful sales transaction to take place, both the seller and the buyer must have their needs satisfied. The need of the sales person is to close the sale and get the order whereas the buyer wants the right product at the right price that solves his problem.

When the prospect feels that the sales person is just interested in closing the sale without any intent of solving his problems, the sales person appears to be pushy and no one likes a product being shoved down his throat.

4. Salesperson does not seem trustworthy

However good a product may be, and whatever efforts might have been put in by the salesperson to push the sale, unless the prospect has been put to ease by asking good and relevant questions to uncover his needs, the prospect won’t buy. The sales person does not seem trustworthy to a prospect till the time all of the above has been done, all objections have been attended to and the product has been supported with enough proof. The sales person must build rapport and trust to make the sale happen.

5. Sales person seems to be partial

All prospects need to be treated equally, with dignity and respect. All prospects big or small are important and deserve respect.

When a prospect feels that he is not being provided the same price and treatment as they would to other customers, he may feel offended. He feels that the sales person is taking advantage of him and he is just being sold and would not buy.

Once the sales person starts communicating more as a business person than a sales person, with an approach that is more about “all about you” than “all about me”, building a foundation of trust, separating good and bad prospects by qualifying them and considering prospect’s interest also in mind when making a sale, he surely would turn the table.

Remember, people love and enjoy buying but they hate being sold to.

No matter how good a sales person you may be, there are times when sales calls just don’t go well. These poor sales calls can ruin your mood and perhaps, the rest of your day. Facing the aftermath of a poor sales call can really wreak havoc on your confidence or even your performance. It’s important to be able to recover quickly and effectively from a bad sales call so that a sales person can retain customers, learn lessons or move on to the next customer with confidence intact.

A few common challenges that tend to ruin a call are:

• A grumpy or angry prospect
• An unprepared sales person
• The sales person is having a bad day, and he or she lets it affect the call
• Stammering or stumbling over the sales presentation
• The sales person comes across too pushy in making a sale

A bad sales call can ruin your day if you don’t handle it right. But if you do, not only you would recover from it; you will also become a stronger and a better person.

Here are a few simple suggestions to help you to recover from a bad sales call:

Recover your mood and take a break

After a bad sales call, you need a short break to charge yourself with positive energy and return to a neutral state. If you keep on thinking about that bad sales call and torturing yourself, you are bound to ruin the rest of your calls for the day. Give yourself a few minutes to regain your focus and calm your nerves.

Take a break. Get your mind off the last call. Get some coffee, try listening to your favourite song, read inspirational quotes, read some jokes on Whats App, watch a funny video on You Tube or whatever you think that could help. The idea is to separate yourself from any lingering emotions from your bad sales call into the next one.    

Start fresh with your next call and avoid carrying the negativity over

Face your next call with a positive mind-set; visualize your next call with the positive outcome you expect. Don’t allow pessimism to set in. Remember that every new call means a new opportunity. The result of one bad sales call does not decide your destiny. And most important; never lose confidence in yourself or your product/service.

Learn from your experiences; ask yourself why the call turned bad

Recalling a bad experience and learning from your mistake can be a good lesson so that you’ll be able to avoid it in future calls.

Try to recall if you actually made a mistake by answering the following questions:

• Was your performance poor?
• Were you not focussed?
• Were you underprepared?
• What could you have said in a better way?
• How can you deal with the same situation next time it happens?
• How can you control bad feelings and emotions to avoid affecting the conversation?

Don’t take it personally

Next time you deal with a bad sales call; don’t let it drag you down. Do the opposite: turn it into an opportunity to become better sales professional. Remember that the show must go on. Bad things are bound to happen and professionals don’t let it affect their performance for too long. Bounce back by using these tips and get ready for your next opportunity to close a deal.

How do you get back in the game after a bad sales call? Let us know in the comments below.

Do not forget to hit the like and share button if you found this blog useful.  

All sales coaches would have trained you on questions you should be asking during a sales presentation. I would talk today on questions you should never be asking. There are a lot of questions being asked that are simply stupid. They are actually hurting salespeople in the sales process and the prospects automatically turn off as soon as they hear these questions.

Let us talk about these 10 worst questions and ensure that you never ask them again.

“How are you?”

This is commonly used as a conversation starter in 95% of selling situations reflexively and it’s killing them. The prospect knows that you don’t really care how they’re doing. Most sales people are starting calls, meetings and even emails with this stupid question. Just stop ever asking anyone that question. Come out with something more creative. As a way to start a conversation you may ask-“Did I catch you in the middle of something?” This will actually catch them off-guard and will be more likely to actually get engagement.

“How can I help you?”

No one wants to be sold. The prospect immediately feels like they’re being cornered and being pushed into making a close. They go defensive and go into a shell.

Instead you may ask-“can I provide you information? May be I can ask some questions to help understand your needs and provide you with information to help you move along.”

“Do you have a minute?”

All of us know nothing could be sold in a minute. What it conveys to the prospect is that your time is not valuable. It only shows that you are lying and you lose all credibility.    

You may instead ask-“Is this a good time to talk?”

“Can I set up a call so I can learn more about your challenges?”

This is one of the worst questions to ask as it shows absolutely zero value on the sales person’s part. Show some value through the quality of your questions. Then just set the logical next step to go deeper.

“Would you be interested if……?”

Whatever you fill in the blank, there is going to be a stupid question. Your objective during a sales call is not only to get the customer interested but also to uncover their challenges. You should be asking questions to identify the challenges that matter and then solving them.

“Are you the decision maker?”

This is way too direct and will never get the information you really need. Asking this stupid question will get you either false information or offending and pissing off your prospect. Instead, learn about their decision making process by focussing on the process. So, when you talk to them regarding their decision making process, they will actually tell you who are involved in their decision and how do they go about making a decision.

“What can I tell you right away that would make you buy?”

This question is a high pressure and so transparent that it tells your prospect you are there to just sell him your product and you have no intent to help him satisfy his actual need.

“How could you not want this deal?”

You cannot push. You cannot shovel down your product in your prospect’s throat. Instead, make the prospect realize that your product will actually help them or take their business to the next level.

“Would you like some time to think about it?”

Delay kills sales. Lead the prospect towards a buying decision and close the sales then and there.

“Would you like a proposal or a quote?”

Close the sale without a quote. Get a commitment after you have properly qualified a prospect, take out the agreement and sign the deal.

Stop asking these stupid questions during a sales presentation. Instead, help the prospect uncover challenges, show how your offerings will actually solve them and then set clear next steps.

During a sales conversation, ask

• Intelligent questions,
• Smart questions
• Leading questions
• The discovery questions
• The multiple choice questions
• The redirect questions

Closing is nothing more than asking the right prospect the right questions at the right time.

You have all seen big budget mega movies with leading actors and expensive sets bomb at the box office. They fall flat on their face as they do not have a story line to support their presentation.

A sales presentation may face the same fate. A formal sales presentation must get attention of the prospect and make him interested in the product. The sales person can do it through a lively and interesting sales talk as well as a systematic demonstration of the product. The product could be offered to feel, taste or smell depending on the nature of the product.

It is important to know about the presentation process and how to be more persuasive and how to put a structure together for a good presentation.

It’s always good to have a great opening to your presentation.  Talking too much and not asking enough questions may confuse the customer. If it’s too many statements without questions, you’re not a good presenter. A good presenter is somebody that’s asking relevant questions because you get to find about the customer and his buying needs. Providing some insight or some information that the customer may not know as an attention grabber may be a powerful opening.

Another aspect of a great presentation is that you must have a narrative or a story line–

• What is your presentation about?
• What’s the key point you are about to make?

It may be a new technology that may be your cutting edge or you may be trying to convince the customer that he needs to replace the product or company he is using at present with yours as you are better.

Having a nice and crisp narrative supported by two or three key messages makes the presentation that much powerful. Produce authentic evidences to prove the product’s superiority.

Every time a presentation is made, it always begins with the obvious end in mind. What is the end? What do you want to happen when your presentation is done? You need to have this clearly defined in your thoughts even before you put together your presentation. The desired outcome must be clearly defined before making the presentation. It helps you build your presentation towards the pre defined desired outcome.

Address any concerns or objections the prospect may have. A good sales person must interpret objections clearly and remove them tactfully. Unless the objections and complaints are satisfactorily answered, the sales cannot take place.

Last but not the least; the presentation must have an outcome. So, as you move towards the close, you must start asking for commitments.

Qualities of a good presentation:

• Presentation is questions and knowing your craft, knowing your product and generally not B sing people whom you don’t know what you are talking about.
• Sales Presentation must be complete covering all aspects related to company, product, competitive benefits, etc.
• Sales Presentation must be clear, free from all confusions and vagueness.
• Sales Presentation must be consistent.
• Sales Presentation must be precise.
• Sales Presentation must prove superiority of products over competition.
• Sales Presentation must be confidence winning.
• Sales Presentation must be supported with evidences. A good sales person must produce testimonials, awards and guarantees issued by government or test labs, celebrities, and other reliable sources.

The Sales Presentation Process may be summarised

• Start with a structure
• Start with a good opening with some attention grabbers/did you know information/some key insights/ information beyond the obvious
• Create a narrative or a storyline
• Support your narrative with demonstration/social proofs/things you have done with other customers
• Reduce resistance by effectively handling objections
• Close by asking commitment questions.

During your presentation, you have to answer three key questions which the customer always has in mind:

Why do I need to change?

Why should I do it now?

Why should I buy From you?
 

• What would you do?
• What would you say?
• What would you show?
• What would you demonstrate to answer the above three key questions?

If you can answer these three key questions, a customer is more likely to say “YES” than a “NO” to your sales presentation.

Be well prepared- Prepare, prepare, practice, practice and then practice more for an effective presentation. You only have one shot at making a first impression.