Treating
Objections Before They Come Up
When was the
last time you bought a sofa at a major department store or retail
furniture store? If it hasn’t been long, you’ll probably recall
that it is not unusual for upholstered furniture to be pretreated
with Scoth-Gard fabric protectant or some other chemical to deal
with stains or other “unforeseen” accidents.
So… picture
the sofa as something you are actually selling…
you sell light colored microfiber sofas in a Danish furniture store.
Clients love your sofas but you always hear, “You’re right. This
is a beautiful sofa but we just can’t have something this nice in
our house. One glass of red wine and it will be ruined.” Over
time, you were able to deal with customer
objections before they ever came up…
Customer: “This really is a beautiful
sofa and the color is so nice.”
Sales Rep: “We receive a lot of compliments on our
sofas. Each one is pretreated with Tivoli Stain Blocker to resist
spills, accidents and other marks that would ruin other sofas.
With Stain Blocker, liquids immediately bead up for easy clean up
and smudges can be wiped with a damp sponge. This protects
your investment and allows you to enjoy your sofa without worry.”
Customer: “So, we wouldn’t have to
worry about having a light-colored sofa in the house. That’s great!”
The best way
to deal with possible
objections is to face them head on. Benefit statements allow
you to point out the features of a product or service while eliminating
any possible objections that may be thrown your way. Can you think
of ways you can use
benefit statements to anticipate
and defuse objections?
Travel
Industry
Possible Objection: Cost of traveling overseas/unfamiliarity
with locations
Sales Rep: “With Cosmic luxury motorcoach tours,
we arrange for all accommodations and your itinerary across all
four countries. This allows you to not only take
advantage of the negotiated savings we’ve arranged with our
hotel partners, it allows you to know that your schedule is taken
care of. You benefit by saving
money and spending less time worrying and more time planning.”
Professional
Services Industry
Possible Objection: Unqualified consultants
Sales Rep: “Our team
of consultants has experience working on over one-hundred PeopleSoft
implementations and is cross-trained on a variety of different modules.
You can rest assured that you will deal with highly
qualified individuals who won’t spend time learning
on the job. That enables you to receive
a faster roll-out while decreasing deployment costs that otherwise
would be spent fixing a sloppy implementation.”
Imaging
Industry
Possible Objection: High cost of owning and
maintaining a copier
Sales Rep: “With our MultiAdvantage program, customers
are able to lease equipment at a fraction of the cost of owning.
This allows you to automatically utilize our on-site support
staff and have faulty equipment replaced at no charge with current
models. You save by not having to worry about additional maintenance
costs and knowing that your team will have access to our newest
models.”
Write down all
the possible objections
you might face in the course of a
sales call. Don’t try to answer every single one but hit upon
the major ones that come up most often and are more likely to derail
a sale. Bringing up possible objections via benefit statements is
the easiest way to circumvent them.
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