How To Avoid Stalls and Put-offs - Close The Sale

Written by Drew Cameron    Comment & Respond    Print Article

It is closing time in the sales process and you are at what seems to be an impasse with your prospect. Not with prospects that will make a buying decision one way or another (i.e. those prospects that say yes or no), but rather the prospects that arrive at a non-buying decision and do nothing (i.e. those who can't or won’t give you a firm buying decision one way or the other – positively or negatively).

What can you do?

These prospects say things like “we need more time”, “we need to think it over”, “we need to discuss it”, “we need to compare your offerings”, “you’re the first person we’ve talked to and we still need to get a few more prices to compare”, “we’re just getting started and need to look at a few other companies before deciding”, “we need a better price” or “we’re just not ready to buy yet”.

First, you need to discover the real issue that is preventing you from closing the sale as we discuss in other articles and cover extensively in our training seminars. For purposes of this discussion, let’s assume you know your prospect is just not comfortable moving forward at this time.

What should you do?

Unfortunately, most salespeople go on the defensive and begin defending their offer and/or price or go into some monologue of restating “key or critical features and benefits” seemingly designed to “build value” (known as “value-added selling”), thinking they are addressing the issue, only to find the objection, stall or put-off remains.

The net result of which is a sale that remains unclosed.

The problem is that when you defend your product, service or price on its merits and try to address the problem or issue with a statement of some sort, you invariably are assuming you know why the prospect is stalling and commence telling the prospect what you think they want to hear, without first determining what they need to hear to move beyond the impasse.

NEVER ASSUME!

You see, in the prospect’s mind the stalemate or gridlock that is preventing them from making a buying decision is real in many cases and not just a buying tactic. If you can help the prospect uncover the nature of their uneasiness, you can free them from the shackles that bind them and get a sale.

A means for uncovering what you need to address to advance the sales process is to ask questions so you can better understand how to proceed. Resist your natural tendency to talk your prospect down from the ledge with a dissertation of why you, your company, your products/services, and offer are right for them.

Your thoughts and intuition can betray you.

Instead, don't address a prospect’s concerns until after you find out why they exist. Remember, most objections, stalls and put-offs manifest themselves in the form of a statement made by the prospect.

Statements are not questions, and as such do not require answers. However, statements that are made by prospects during a sales call that go unchecked by the salesperson can sabotage the sale.

As such, a good guideline is to ask your prospect a question or series of questions to gain better perspective of what issue is really preventing them from moving forward.

In our scenario where the prospect is apparently not comfortable moving forward because they are misinformed, uneasy, wrong, confused, doubtful, have conflicting information, or are experiencing “paralysis by analysis”, similar to the “pain funnel” process, you should ask a discovery question and a series of follow-up questions to determine why the prospect is hesitant.

Use the following series of “funnel” questions to determine how to proceed:

1. Why do you feel that (i.e. issue, problem, or situation) would happen?
2. When did you first start to feel this way?
3. What do is causing you to feel this way?
4. What would make you feel comfortable? OR What do you need to move forward?
5. Who else, if anyone, do you need to talk to?
6. What would you like me to do? OR How can I solve this problem or resolve this issue?
7. What would you like me to do next?

Asking questions first to gain a better understanding of the real issue before you attempt to resolve the standstill, is ALWAYS the proper course of action. Otherwise, you are proceeding blindly down a path on which you could find your generic or arbitrary statements creating more objections and further stalling the process.

Published: March 7, 2007 4:38 PM by Drew Cameron