As you’re having your early 2018 meetings with customers, you may already have started to give presentations and present ideas to help your customers with their needs and goals. As long as you’ve been doing your pre-work before presenting these ideas, then you’re spot on with your approach. Ideally, you’re getting some positive responses and even some great sales.
But, even if it has been tough going in these early meetings, you are getting valuable information from your customers and also getting help in achieving your 2018 sales goals.
“Tim, seriously, how can these unsuccessful meetings be helpful and positive?”
An understandable question from someone who SEEMS to be having lots of poor results. But, in reality, these ‘unsuccessful’ meetings are invaluable to your success. Objections are a good thing and here’s why:
- Objections help direct you to success
- Objections help you focus and think
- Objections make you a better salesperson.
Objections help direct you to success
Being face-to-face with your customers is gold. Every personal meeting is an opportunity for you to build and strengthen your relationships with your customers. Every conversation should be viewed as an opportunity to help further define how you can help your customer achieve their needs and goals. Even when you have done your pre-work and preparation for your meeting, your customer is most likely going to have an objection to something you’re presenting. That’s great news because it is helping you to further refine what it is you’re proposing that they buy from you. Eliminating things that your customer finds unnecessary enables you to spend more time on what they really are looking for. Basically, they are helping you to EDIT your own sales message. I like to think about objections as a traffic app, like WAZE, for a sales proposal…the questions and objections are the equivalent of ‘heavy traffic alerts’ and can help me to pivot to a better route. Very useful in sales and also driving here in Southern California!
Objections help you focus and think
Sometimes it is challenging to wrap your head around exactly what your customer is looking for to help them. Maybe your customer really doesn’t know themselves what they want. When you are receiving a number of objections during your customer presentation it could be because they are unfocused. This provides you with a great opportunity to focus on those things that they are not objecting to…assuming there are some! Even if it seems that your customer is objecting to EVERYTHING, that is also incredibly helpful to you. It’s helpful because it will make you think, or rethink, exactly what message you are trying to get across to your customer. It could be that you have misread the situation and that you need to go back to the office and redo your proposal. Just about every proposal that I, or our team, have given to a customer will needed to be tweaked in some way. That is to be expected and is a positive because it is getting you closer to making the sale.
Objections make you a better salesperson
I’m a big believer in the phrase, “Take your job seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously.” I always like to remind salespeople that it is normal to make mistakes and that you’re not going to make a sale every time. Getting and dealing with objections, though, will help you to limit mistakes and improve your close rate. As I mentioned, in-person customer meetings are invaluable. The more times you get objections, the better you will be in handling objections. If you can deftly handle objections with humor or, even better, some humility, then you will create a stronger bond with your customers. No one like to be SOLD TO…think about those times when you’re approached by a sales amateur in a retail store. It’s painful to watch them flail with you. But, as a sales professional, you are learning to handle objections with ease because you are confident in your ability to help your customer discover what it is that they need.
I welcome objections from customers. Objections mean that they are paying attention to my message and care enough to help me find the exact proposal that will help them. Candid customer feedback will help you achieve your sales goals and be a better resource, and partner, for your customer.
Sales Tip of the Week
- List the top three objections you receive
- Write down clear simple responses to each
- Know these inside out so you can respond quickly and confidently in customer meetings
Let's talk about Sales 