Here’s a great objection handling tip, it’s called “Remove The Risk!” A little while back it looked like I’d missed the opportunity with a Prospect- I got in contact with him and he said “Oh you’re too late it looks like we’ve gone for another solution.”
So I said “okay well where are you with your decision-making at the moment if you don’t mind me asking? He said “well we’ve seen three suppliers and so we’re now just going through the process of deciding which one we should engage with.”
I asked him how long ago he’d seen the last provider. He replied “Just over a couple of weeks ago, why?” I then replied to him: “The fact that it’s been a good couple of weeks since you saw the last provider tells me that it’s likely that none of the potential solutions that you saw really stood out otherwise you’re very likely to have made your decision by now…”
He then replied “okay what are you suggesting then?” I said “what I’d like to suggest is that I come and see you give you my proposal and if it turns out that I’ve got the ingredients you’re really looking for then that means the decision-making is done for you, or if it turns out that my solution isn’t the right one then that tells you that the true decision lies with one of those three other providers.”
He agreed to see me and at the end of the meeting it was my company (I’m happy to say) that he engaged with and I never would have had the opportunity if I hadn’t have challenged the initial objection in that positive way.
My recommendation to you is when you hear that people are already perhaps partly through the decision -making process, there’s still an opportunity to probe further and potentially give them some helpful ideas and may end up winning the business. It may also be that you’ve got opportunities in your pipeline that perhaps have gone stale and you need to look at ways you could approach the Prospects in order to remove the risk like I did and stimulate them to take action. I hope you find this useful and please check out my great new online sales course: Sell More, Easily!
