“Yes, but….”
“Sounds good and here is why I can’t….
“Wish I could, but..”
Not your favorite thing to hear when you are in sales. Most seasoned salespeople handle the ‘but’, the ‘objections’, with varying degrees of effectiveness. We have a unique approach which will have you welcome the conversations following ‘but’ or ‘can’t’. This approach rests on a foundation with 3 key components.
- Relationship: move the sales relationship from transactional to being of service.
- In transactional relationships, people are in the relationship for themselves. In service-oriented relationships, at least one person is in the relationship to be of service. Many salespeople fall into the trap of thinking transactionally while pretending to be of service. This undermines trust.
- To establish trust, you must be honest, transparent, listen well and speak to what is of concern to your prospect.
- Setup your relationships so that you win when your prospect wins, not when your prospect buys.
- Value creation: create the value of your product or service as a solution to the issues and needs of your prospect.
- Do the work to understand your prospects’ issues and needs, and the journey they are on to get those needs met.
- Position your product/service to support them on this journey.
- Make their journey and it’s pain points real for them.
- A bridge: between the value you’ve created and a pathway for the prospect to realize that value, including a very real sense of what realizing that value would be like.
- Create a picture of what is possible when their issue is resolved with your product or service. Have them see it, experience it and make it easy for them to purchase and fulfill what they are looking for.
When you have established what is above, and ‘can’t’ or ‘but’ objections come up, you can now establish a collaborative conversation with your prospect. When someone knows they want the product or service and the value it offers, and they can see clearly how their company would benefit, whatever it is that they cannot resolve is in THEIR way, not yours. This is where you become their partner in working through where don’t see how to have what they want. You, as a salesperson, become the expert in helping them at this point.
The effective approach is to investigate this issue with that prospect, because if they can find some power with this issue that is in their way of having what they want, that becomes a huge win for them. People are actually powerful and creative, and they have barriers to accessing that. So, a salesperson’s job, when people’s considerations arise, is to remove the barriers to them accessing their own power and creativity.
The point is to be of service to people even with their ‘yes, but’s’, rather than seeing these considerations as something you need to handle or overcome, to get the sale.