I recently read an article about how to handle the “I want to think it over”. The techniques were standard fare and I have no real quarrel with the techniques (other than they seemed very high pressure to me). I just think the whole approach is wrong. Salespeople usually cause their own objections by being Me-Centered and “pitching” (I hate that word) the prospect. We have all been on the receiving end of a salesperson’s pitch. Your instinct is to defend yourself without being mean or arrogant so the easiest thing to do is say “I need to think about it”. In other situations prospects come up with other objections “I have to talk to my spouse”, “Can you call me later”, “we don’t have the money right now”, etc. These are all designed to take the pressure off of the prospect, make it seem impossible to move forward and get rid of the salesperson. We have all said these things to salespeople when we didn’t really have to talk to our spouse, we knew we wouldn’t take the call when they followed up and when we had money if we wanted the product. These were made up objections designed only to end the sales encounter.
Think of it this way; either objections are real, or they are made up. If they are real, you can’t overcome them and if they are made up you don’t really have to overcome them. If you try and succeed getting by one objection they will make up another. This is not to say that once in a while they don’t give up and buy. But the emotional energy and the risk of alienating the prospect is hardly worth it.
THE ANSWER – Don’t cause the objection in the first place. Don’t be me-centered. Focus on the prospect instead. Don’t say “We have this really great product and it will make copies twice as fast.” Rather, ask a question like “are you wasting time because your copier is too slow”. The question will lead to discussion and you won’t hit a dead end with made up objections.
Here is a sales tip of what to do when you find yourslf in that situation
