In the previous article, we found out the basic rules of telephone conversations; now it is important to learn how to competently deal with customer objections. If you work through refusals, understand their reasons, and develop a flexible model of behavior, then a competent response to them will help not only not to terminate the contact prematurely, but also to complete the transaction. We will try to deal with objections over the phone expressed by the interlocutor whom you are trying to interest.
The “expensive” objection
The following situations may be behind this objection:
- it's expensive on a budget;
- the client bargains and tries to reduce the price;
- the client withdraws from interaction.
Solution: First cut off strategic bargaining objections. If the client claims that it is expensive, again tell him the benefits and value of the product. Next, pause and look at the client. The client will see that you do not intend to bargain. This can help maintain the original cost and not lower the price.
If your client, after you have demonstrated to him the benefits and value of the product/service, is dissatisfied and claims that the price is too high for him, there are two situations:
- expensive for the client's budget;
- a customer compares your product with another product.
After this, you need to work either with a budget or make arguments in defense of your product against the background of others.
Objection “I’ll think about it”
When a client uses this objection, many salespeople make the mistake of asking what he wants to think about, or what he is not happy with. But by saying “I’ll think about it,” the buyer takes a defensive position and it is important to first get rid of this position.
Solution: make it clear to the client that the transaction cycle has already been completed. Use the phrase in dialogue with the client: “Yes, I agree with you. You definitely need to think and not make hasty decisions. Let me send you more information about this product? After this, the client relaxes because he thinks that the transaction cycle has already been completed. Next, ask: “How do you like the product overall? What do you like/dislike?” The client will answer, and you will find out what was veiled behind the “I’ll think about it” objection.
Objection “I’ll take advice”
When dealing with the “I’ll take advice” objection, use the same strategy as when dealing with the “I’ll think about it” objection. It is necessary to demonstrate that the transaction cycle has already been completed. Tell the client that different opinions need to be taken into account when making decisions, and then ask how the client himself finds the product for himself. Ask: “Do you like the product yourself?” We need to understand the truth of this objection. Next, ask: “What doubts do you think his wife, management, etc. might have?”
Solution: in the b2b segment, you can ask the client what their decision-making procedure is, which participants in the transaction will be involved, etc. If the client shares this with you, then your main task is to offer assistance to the client in this matter. To do this, you invite the client to join at some stage of the review. This will increase your chances of making a sale.
Failure Types
There are four main types of failures that an operator may encounter:
- thank you, but we don’t need your services (products), we already have everything;
- send your proposal by email, we will take a look;
- We don’t have time to talk to you now;
- We are not interested in this.
But you should not immediately end the conversation and put an end to the contract with this client. It is worth directing all your efforts to gain his trust using various methods.
Universal techniques for dealing with objections
- You can ask the client the following questions: “In which case would you purchase this product?” or “In what case can we talk about concluding an agreement?” Let the client tell you what they need to complete the deal, and then you can meet that need.
- The universal “product value” technique. Ask the customer: “Don't you see value in our product?” Next, ask, “Why don’t you see value in yourself?” If the client answers your question, based on the information received, give your product presentation again.
when communicating with secretaries and decision makers
Cold calling is a fairly broad topic, and an objection is something that greatly affects performance. Let's say you are engaged in wholesale supplies and, using 2GIS parsing, you have collected telephone numbers of organizations that may need your products; they may be your clients, but for this you need to talk with their management, who is responsible for trade contracts.
If we switch to professional slang, then you need to establish contact with the decision maker - decision maker, and then sell your solution. At the same time, he may already have suppliers or he may not like your price, that is, there will be many different situations that you will not be able to resolve. Therefore, it makes sense to prepare in advance, think through conversation tactics, write down the main thoughts and create, so to speak, a scenario according to which you will act.
And, of course, you need to provide answers to various questions and objections and think through a strategy for dealing with refusals, otherwise the effectiveness of cold calls will be close to zero.
In this post I will talk about how to close the objections of the secretary and the decision-maker.
As a rule, in order to reach the decision maker in advance, you need to go through his secretary, that is, the person who filters incoming requests for communication with his boss. This is a kind of blocker and a very large percentage of calls end with the secretary.
So let's get to the point.
Reservation
All the methods proposed below have been tested and work. However, one must understand that each individual situation is very individual, and there may also be specific characteristics in different categories and industries. Accordingly, in order to find the optimal option, it is necessary to conduct testing and then select the option that will give the best result. This is the most reasonable and correct approach that allows you to calculate working techniques.
In general, do not accept anything as dogma, and test everything in real conditions and you will profit.
Secretary's objections
We are not interested, we don’t need it, we don’t want it, and just get off us.
This is a classic objection that often arises, its purpose is simply to filter and discard unnecessary contacts, there can be several ways to get around it.
You can appeal to the decision maker and ask:
Is this the official point of view of your management?
Or like this:
Is it not interesting and specific to you or your manager?
Each of these statements, which is attacking and hints that decision-making and, in general, determining what is interesting for the business and what is not interesting, is the responsibility of the management, and not the secretary. And at the end you need to add a call to action: Connect me with him, connect me with the director...
Usually this technique works well.
If they answer you in this spirit: We are not interested in anything.
Here again, you can turn it around, shift it, so to speak, the emphasis of importance. Firstly, you can agree, or simply refuse: I agree with you, you personally are most likely not interested in my information.
Here we seem to confirm that the person on the other end of the line is right. But then it breaks down, we can say, as in the example above: You are not interested. But this does not mean at all that your manager will also be uninterested in them, I am sure that this is not the case.
And after that we add a call to action.
Go ahead.
Another popular objection that can be heard from a secretary goes something like this: Send us your proposal by email, and we will answer you after studying it.
As you guess later, no one will most likely study your proposals sent to the company’s email address, it’s just an excuse not to talk to you further.
Therefore, you should never use such words as a sentence. Come up with something else, just say information or materials or formulate it in some other way, because words like: sentence are like stop words, they’re like spam words that are already automatically filtered out at the cerebellar level. You must understand that you are not the only smart person who makes cold calls and this secretary receives calls five times a day from people with some interesting offers for the company.
Here you can apply some approach, we can say that an email is just a document that cannot answer the questions that your director may have in any way. And accordingly, I will be able to answer any questions and a couple of minutes of communication on the phone will be much more useful than reading such and such a letter, so connect me with the Director.
Maybe in this example I explained myself too extensively, but I think you understand the essence and here is like an article of a training plan and you don’t need to take something from here as a template, you need to understand the essence and meaning of how it can work, and then for yourself to formulate smoother and more logical verbal formulations.
You can also say an interesting phrase, it doesn’t hurt. Of course, I will send you the materials by mail, but this does not prevent me from talking with your director.
You can also hint at spam, you can say that I will certainly send all the necessary information to your email.
But, after I’ve talked to your director and he personally tells me: yes, I’m interested in this, send it to me by email. If you don’t do this, then how do you understand spam and they send so much. Let him know that the conversation with me will not take much time, just a couple of minutes.
Yes, it can work, everything seems to be based on logic and the person agrees with you. I really slept a lot and it’s logical that the manager himself should decide whether it’s interesting or not, and it’s quite possible to get past the secretary.
You can use a different approach, you can agree that you, of course, send all the information by email. But it would be nice to talk with the manager and clarify the details with him, and after you do this, you will be able to more competently and accurately prepare the necessary calculations and materials and send them by mail. Well, after these words, just add a call to action.
More working techniques in a special article on this topic:
How to bypass the secretary
Decision maker's objections
So, you passed the secretary, he connected you with the boss, and now a conversation should take place, which will subsequently bring you profit, a new client, and so on.
But it's not that simple. The person who makes the decision also has a whole carload of objections; he can easily refuse you. In this part of the article, I will talk about basic ways to overcome refusals and objections of decision makers. Of course, to achieve high efficiency, you must develop a cold calling script that is oriented and created specifically for your topic, tailored to the business with which you work. Since everything can be very individual.
Therefore, I recommend that you order a sales script from me, much lower than the market and high efficiency, please contact:
In contact with.
Before talking about what objections the decision maker may have, the conversation with whom we sought is handled by the secretary. You need to think about the overall goals of the cold call.
This should not be some vague goal, like to interest someone or something like that. You need to solve a very specific problem and seek a specific and specific reaction from the manager. Let's say you can seek a meeting, consideration of your commercial proposal, sending a product sample or consent to a free trial service. In some cases, you can already agree on issuing an invoice. That is, this is some step that transforms a potential client into a buyer. And naturally, depending on your goal, the script of your conversation will change. This needs to be taken into account. In general, here I will give a couple of techniques.
You can learn more about working with objections in this article.
Hook.
This method allows you to immediately get the answer yes. You should speak out like this:
Ivan Borisovich, as the head of the procurement department, you probably have an interest in... And here the essence of your proposal should be expressed. This could be much cheaper stands, increased efficiency, reduced costs, increased sales... Here you need to draw attention to a more profitable and simpler solution to the client’s problem, all failures arise at the first stage, when a person simply does not see the value, in business they always strive to reduce costs, and few will refuse more favorable conditions.
If we are talking about wholesale purchases, then this will be a reduction tomorrow or, as an option, uninterrupted deliveries and in general any improvement in logistics, that is, more favorable conditions.
You can think of a speech block that will immediately capture interest. And we get consent at the first point of the conversation and frame our question from the point of view of the benefits of our potential book, that is, we talk about his benefits, and not about our desire to sell something. This is important to understand. Then everything will go like clockwork.
Here's a small template:
Ivan Borisovich, since you are the head of the sales department, you probably have an interest in... (And here we add the benefit for the client that we must sell). That's why I'm calling you.
Another variant of this tactic is this approach:
Ivan Borisovich, if only you had a new partner (supplier) who could... (Here we are selling our value, what we said above). Would this be of interest to you? Here, of course, everything is based on what value you offer; if it is really important and interesting enough, then this technique will work great, just like the previous one. Many answer yes, and here a support for further conversation is already formed.
For free
This is a simple basic technique that is often used; it doesn’t work for everyone. Well, it’s still quite effective.
It sounds very simple: Ivan Borisovich! You have a minute so that we can agree on... And here is something free, some kind of fishing, some kind of meeting, that is, this could be some kind of simple first step.
In general, if you plan sales, especially if it is an expensive or complex product, then you must provide for some simple first step that will transfer the client to another level of relationship, from which it will be much easier for him to pay you money.
This is some kind of test drive that allows you to evaluate a service or product and then place an order, or a free check/audit of the effectiveness of advertising or some processes in order to reduce costs, this is also a good clue, which then makes it easier to sell service. As a rule, people respond to this block of speech with agreement, a minute or a minute is somehow not much, basically everyone agrees. This allows you to immediately establish contact. Well, I would advise you to avoid the phrase: Are you comfortable talking now? This may not work and will immediately reduce the effectiveness of your calls.
Do you have a minute?
Do you know where this came from? From the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Take a look at your leisure, but for now here’s an excerpt that will reveal the essence to you. And in general, the film is about how a provincial company selling shares rose due to competent sales scenarios.
Well, this is where I end, if you have questions or need professional development of objections and scripts, as well as setting up advertising on the Internet, then write.
In contact with.
