HANDLING OBJECTIONS THE EASY WAY

A while back I was fortunate enough secure a very competitive order. How competitive?

For starters, one of our own dealerships was quoting the same product at a lower price.

Second, the prospect was personal friends with one of the competitors.

Finally, an associate of the prospect was telling him not to do business with our company due to a bad experience this associate had with a product sold to them by one of our dealerships; even though the operation of the dealership had no strong affiliation with us.

Tough deal to win? I kind of thought so.

Impossible; said one co-worker. When I heard that, I welcomed the challenge, and the following is how I dealt with each of the prospect's three objections.

1) Higher Price. To deal with the issue of being priced higher then a dealership carrying the exact same product, I talked to the prospect about the value of dealing directly with the manufacturer (who I represented in this circumstance). Of note, I started this value discussion during the initial meeting and carried it right through to order signing.

I did this by explaining to the prospect that my quote would not be the lowest price due the extra value that he would receive (ie. stronger warranty program, high level end-user product training, no middle-man to go through for support, etc.).

When I presented my proposal to the customer I went through the value proposition I had prepared to show him that even though my price might be higher, he would be receiving a higher overall value with my offering.

My proposal also included references of clients that had paid more to deal with me and the company in the past, complete with notes about how happy these clients were that they made the choice they did.

I did this because I realized this prospect was going to be quite fixated on price and he would need to see why he shouldn’t just jump at the lowest price.

My proposal also included a list of our key staff members and highlighted the trainer's level of experience and my own level of experience; to demonstrate to the prospect that he was dealing with a team that really knew their stuff.

I also wanted this customer to know that he was buying a team, not just a product from a faceless company. I guess I could go on and on about the different things I included in my proposal to demonstrate the value to this customer, but your time is valuable, so let's just say I worked hard to prove to this customer that it wasn't just about buying the lowest priced product, and instead it was about looking at the true "Total Cost of Ownership".

This was how I handled the pricing issue, since I was not only against one of my own dealerships, but also five other vendors; and my price was the second highest.

2) Competing against the prospect's personal friend. In dealing with the issue of competing against the prospect's friend, I walked on egg shells with this one, but essentially what I did is I sincerely complimented the organization his friend was working for and even talked about their strengths, including the fact that their product had an extremely respectable market share worldwide. However, I also talked about the fact that this same vendor had just opened the branch locally and about the fact that it would take them a while to build their presence in our city; the way they had in other regions.

I explained that choosing them wouldn't be a bad decision but I suggested that he visit their facility and then mine to compare the two infrastructures. I continued that maybe he should even ride along with one of the members of our service staff and one of the members of their service staff to further compare our two companies. I also suggested that he ask them for reference letters.

I wasn't trying to say anything negative about this competitor; I just wanted the prospect to know locally that this vendor was still in the building phase, by comparison.

When this vendor couldn't respond to some of his requests, I think he started question whether signing with them would be in his best interest.

In fact, this competitor ultimately admitted to having only 6 clients in a region where my company had 4,500.

3) Getting a poor referral from the prospect's associate. In handling the situation of the prospect being told by an associate not to choose our company because of something one of our dealerships did, I simply explained the difference between the manufacturer and dealership network, and also explained (with empathy) that I understood his concern. I then encouraged him to speak to a wide variety of our current clients, to tour our facility, and try to the product at our office, etc.

At the end of the day, he ultimately decided to sign an order with us, and I'm forever grateful, for as we all know, on any given hour on any given day, anything can happen in the wonderful world of "selling".

Yours in Success!!!


HANDLING OBJECTIONS THE EASY WAY - To learn more about this author, visit Corey Poirier's Website.

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