When the prospect gets Sticker shock, the sales process stops dead in its tracks and the prospect usually heads off in another direction. They want to check to see if it’s a good price, or see what other vendors have. The best outcome when sticker shock occurs is that it just delays the sale. The worst case is that you lose the sale (and possibly a client) to a competitor and your credibility takes a hit. Once Sticker shock occurs it is difficult to recover the momentum you had built up during this pursuit. This is easily avoided if you discuss money in advance of providing a price. It is even better if you can discuss it very early in the sales process. But that is a whole other subject. Learn the worst time to talk money with a prospect.
Archives for June 2014
Avoid Sticker Shock
Beware of weasel words
Weasel words are the downfall of many sales pursuits. Prospects tend to use vague, non-specific, positive sounding words to keep you excited and interested in giving them what they need. What they need is to pick your brain and get more information or to keep you in the game because they need three bidders to run a competition. Many times they do this when they really have no intention of buying from you. Maybe they don’t have the money or they favor the competition. Or on less jaded view, maybe they don’t want to hurt your feelings or they want to let you down easy or they think it is somehow helpful to you to keep you in the game with hope when there really is none. In either case, you need to identify these words and ask questions to determine if they are really positive or just leading you on.
Objections are a symptom
Video Length: 1:27 minutes.
Skipping steps in the sales process leads to the prospect raising objections. Most salespeople spend too much time handling objections needlessly. If you skip steps in your sales process the prospect will raise questions at the end you can count on it. Don’t gloss over topics that you know will be an issue in hope that it won’t matter to this prospect. If there are frequent objections that you hear, you should raise the issue before the prospect does you will be better able to handle it than if you wait until they bring up. Sometimes the sales process moves quicker due to the urgency on the part of the prospect. But no matter how quickly it moves you still have to “touch all the bases”. In other words, don’t short change the money step just because the prospect says money is no object. Don’t short cut the discussion of the decision process just because the prospect is in a hurry and you want to move to the close. If you do, you will most likely have to deal with objections somewhere down the line.
Determine the Urgency
Sales can be derailed and forecasts rendered inaccurate when you fail to nail down the urgency. Remember that urgency involves a time component.
A prospect may not be happy at the current situation but is willing to live with it for the foreseeable future. The salesperson who only focuses on pain, and doesn’t deal with the time element, will forecast an imminent sale only to waste time chasing it for months.
