Sales Training Tips For Handling Cold Calling Objections, Part III
Here is part III of my short sales training article on handling cold calling objections…
“I’ve had a bad experience with your company in the past!”
As objections go this one is slightly different as it may not be an objection at all, it could potentially be a complaint. For this reason it needs to be dealt with as a complaint to avoid stirring it up into something more.
Most salespeople are confrontational when put into this kind of scenario. That’s a shame as it really is the complete opposite of how you need to behave to deal successfully with this kind of situation.
Here’s a simple 6 step process for dealing with complaints…
- Apologize e.g. “I’m sorry that you’ve had a bad experience with our company in the past.”
- Make a powerful lead statement e.g. “We pride ourselves on ensuring that all of our customers are nothing less than delighted with our services.”
- Ask a question e.g. “Tell me Mr. Client, what happened?”
- Listen, listen and listen some more. Do not interrupt. Do not argue points. Do not put up a defence. The only two things you do are listen and empathize verbally. You do nothing else until the client has no more to say.
- Apologize and make another powerful statement e.g. “I’m sorry that you had that experience Mr Client. As I said, we pride ourselves on our happy customers.”
- Move to the next stage. This could be done in several ways, the most common of which would be to ask them what they want to happen next or to organize a face to face meeting with them.
Simple though this process is, many salespeople struggle with it as they take the client’s comments personally and do not listen and empathize with them effectively. This will derail the whole process and can destroy rapport.
“I don’t like you!”
This purely emotional complaint is designed to make you feel bad. What’s more, for many salespeople, it usually works!
Most salespeople like people. Most salespeople are people oriented. Most salespeople work hard to get their clients and prospects to like them. Being liked is important to them. It’s not surprising then that this little line hits them where it hurts.
Objections are not personal! Selling is not personal. Business is not personal. Selling and business are professional activities so don’t take them personally.
Try, “Then it’s a good job I don’t take myself too seriously, tell me John…” and move to a question. Taking this route shows the client that you cannot be rattled that easily.
“I’m not interested!”
In the highly competitive and sophisticated markets of today, salespeople face a lot of objections and rejection. Salespeople know that a lot of their prospects will not have any interest, need or desire for their products, services or solutions.
For this reason, the “I’m not interested” objection is quite effective from the client’s point of view because many salespeople expect this response even before they pick up the phone and believe it totally when they hear it.
Firstly, it is highly likely that this objection is quite simply untrue. Most clients have found that this objection works so they use it even when they don’t mean it and even when it is not true.
Secondly, even if they do mean it, it doesn’t mean that you can’t build rapport, find out more about them and their business and uncover some areas of mutual interest.
Try, “I wouldn’t expect you to have any at this stage. The reason for my call is to…”.
So there we are, over the last 3 blog posts we have looked at 10 sales superstar strategies for dealing with 10 very common objections. Invest some time now in writing down some of the most common objections that you get. Think about what effect they have on you, decide how you want to feel and behave in the future instead and then plan some responses that you can use to get more productive results and make more sales.
If you want to catapult yourself towards sales superstar status and become a master of objection handling strategies and techniques then make sure that you get hold of a copy of my sales training book Objections! Objections! Objections!. Many of my clients find it useful to have it on their desks when they are selling on the phone. Maybe you will too…
Sales Training Tip For Handling Cold Calling Objections, Part II
Here is part II of my short article on sales training tips for handling cold calling objections…
“I use someone else!”
This is a very common objection and one which salespeople and business owners can get very upset about. What they often hear in their heads is, “So I have no need for you!”
Try replacing that self-talk with, “Yes, and?” Obviously, you’re not going to say that out loud but that’s what you need to think to yourself!
Clients change suppliers all of the time. Clients moan about their suppliers all of the time. Clients have problems and challenges with their suppliers all of the time. Most clients are not totally happy with their existing suppliers. So this “objection” is actually an invite…
Try, “That’s great John and I am not asking you to change now, merely have a look at what we do. Problem is, I’m really busy at the moment and I won’t be able to come and see you for at least…”
“I’m happy with my existing supplier!”
Yeah, righto! That old chestnut. They might be happy, but they more than likely aren’t. Either way, it makes no odds to a sales superstar. You do not want to displace the existing supplier anyway. Not yet and not at this stage.
You haven’t even decided if you want to work with this client yet so how can they make an informed decision about you and your services?
All good companies stay abreast of what’s going on in the marketplace. Just because they are in an existing supplier relationship does not mean that they don’t keep their eyes open for alternatives and back-ups. Doing otherwise would be foolish.
Try,
“Many of my clients were happy with their existing suppliers when I first spoke to them and they found it really useful to assess our approach, using it as a benchmark to ensure that they were getting the best possible solutions from their existing suppliers.”
“I’ve got no budget!”
This is probably a lie. How can a client know if they have a budget before they speak to you? In any case, budget for what? You haven’t even had a conversation yet.
Try,
“At this point most of my competitors would ask you when you will have a budget and arrange to call you back then, however, I believe that business is built on relationships and I’d still like to come and see you now. How’s your diary looking…?”
“Is this a sales call?”
This objection is just an attempt to make you feel bad. For many salespeople this is tantamount to the client asking, “Are you the shit on my shoe?”
Don’t fan small flames. Take a moment and calm yourself. Dealing with this is so simple, “No, the reason for my call is to introduce myself…”
Watch out for the final part of this article on handling objections next soon…
Sales Training Tips For Handling Cold Calling Objections, Part I
One of the biggest challenges facing many salespeople is cold calling for new business meetings and winning new sales on the telephone. In many industries cold calling is the most cost effective way of uncovering new business opportunities. It is also an activity which strikes fear into the hearts of even some of the most proactive and confident of salespeople. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is one of the most commonly sought skills for sales training and sales development sessions.
One of the reasons for this is the amount of rejection that a cold calling session can attract. Even the best cold callers can expect a wide variety of client objections and client evasion tactics during even the shortest bout of activity on the phone.
For this reason, many salespeople spend far too much time avoiding cold calling and far too little time actually doing any cold calling. When consulting and sales training with businesses I am always impressed by the imagination that salespeople display when dreaming up their excuses (or SATs – Sales Avoidance Tactics) and reasons for not cold calling.
It’s amazing how interesting an admin tray can look when the alternative is cold calling!
One sales skill which can significantly alleviate the pain of prospecting and dramatically improve your cold calling skills is learning how to handle sales objections effectively. One of my clients directly attributes £1 million pounds in extra revenues to practising and using the sales techniques outlined in my first sales training book on objection handling. What! You haven’t bought it yet? You can get your copy any time you’re ready here, objection handling book. If you make cold calls, it really is a must have sales boosting resource.
Handling objections professionally requires a combination of the right mindset and the right linguistic skills. Here are 10 proven strategies for smashing some of the most stubborn objections.
“It’s too expensive!”
Most salespeople think that their product, service or solution is expensive. In sales training sessions, I have asked thousands of salespeople where they think their product ranks against their competitors and roughly 80% think that their product is priced above averagely. If you think about this statistic, it cannot be right. So why do salespeople think this?
The answer is simple, because clients and prospects are forever telling us that we are too expensive, that’s why. The more we hear it, the more we believe it. The more we believe it, the more we tend to hear it. This plays right into the hands of clients because if salespeople think that their products and solutions are too expensive, then they are going to be much more open to client negotiation tactics.
Prospects are not going to stop using this objection any time soon but you can change your attitude to it today, right now. In my sales training sessions, we start by focusing on your beliefs – you need to believe that your product adds more value than you charge for it. The more you believe in the value that your product adds for your clients, the less this objection will affect you.
Why not try asking, “When you say that it’s too expensive are you looking at the cost on a piece of paper or the total cost of ownership?”
“I’ve not got enough time!”
As salespeople we spend a lot of time trying to catch up with prospects and clients. Secretaries, personal assistants and prospects tell us daily how busy they all are. That gives this objection a ring of truth.
What’s more, this objection not only has a ring of truth to it, it may well actually be true and that can make it difficult to deal with. Because many salespeople believe this objection to just be the truth, they do not handle it particularly well.
So remember this, you’re busy too!
And if you’re not, you soon will be once you start applying my sales training techniques and strategies. If you’ve had a good conversation, built some rapport and uncovered some value that you may be able to add for your prospect and their business, then try something like this,
“John, I’m busy too so I won’t waste a moment of your time. I wasn’t thinking of meeting for at least 2-3 weeks. How’s your diary looking…?”
“I don’t need it!”
For many, this objection sets off feelings of despair,
“I knew no-one was going to buy anything today. No-one’s got any money being so close to… Christmas, summer, Easter, Thanks Giving…”
You can substitute your own moan or a tide of angry frustration instead…
“Why is our product so over-priced?! Why does no-one want what I am selling? Why does nobody ever buy?”
Stop! Here comes the truth. How do they know? How do they know if they need it or not? How do they know if it will add value or not?
You’ve not met this person yet, you know little or nothing about them or their business and they know even less about you, your products or your solutions. This objection is totally meaningless so try,
“When I first spoke to them many of my other clients said that they did not need it either, however they found it really useful to have a look at what we do and see how it complements what they’re already doing…”
For part II of this article and more sales training techniques for improved cold calling and objection handling check back soon. Got your own objections that are giving you grief? Use the comments form below and let me know what they are…
The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Week 12, The Final
The final of the Apprentice. Cool, professional Kate versus passionate, entrepreneurial Yasmina. Their brief, design and pitch a new brand of chocolate. Sir Alan said they were his best candidates ever and that it was his hardest decision yet. Either could have won. Yasmina did.
So that done (!), I thought I would sum up some of the core sales training lessons from this year’s Sales Apprentice…
On sales motivation and mindset…
- Top sales performers perform, they don’t talk about performing. Sales is not about what you say you’re going to deliver. Sales is all about what you actually do deliver.
- Sales success is all about action. Success in sales does not come to those who watch the game. Success in sales comes to those who pick up the ball and play their hearts out, right the way to the final whistle.
- Maintain your focus because sales superstars are focused. They know what they want. They work out how to get it. And they take action to achieve it.
- Sales success is about taking responsibility – responsibility for yourself, your sales activities and your sales results.
- Sales success is directly related to effort.
On prospecting…
- Know your client, know your client, k-n-o-w your client.
- Set objectives for all sales activities and prospecting calls.
- Get proactive and get your prospecting done. Procrastination and lethargy are the enemy of successful new business winners.
- Get yourself in the right mental state for cold calling. Attitude is your ability to access your skills.
- Know where to expend your energy. Working smarter is the route to success.
- Know your product. Know your product. Know your product.
On selling…
- Under promise and over deliver. Delivering on your promises is essential in any business.
- Develop trust and credibility if you want top class client relationships.
- Always give 100%. Nothing short of 100% if good enough if you want to be a sales superstar.
- When negotiating, sound like you believe in what you’re saying and plan your negotiation tactics and strategies.
- Sell on value and not price.
- Maximize the impact and effectiveness of your sales activities.
- Understand your clients, their markets and their needs. Your sales presentations need to be matched and tailored to suit their wants and needs and not just your own.
- Ask better questions. Listen harder. Seek to fully understand your clients.
- Know that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.
On presenting…
- To make powerful and persuasive sales presentations you need to know your stuff, you need to know what you’re presenting, you need a solid and proven structure.
- Know your audience. Know your audience. Know your audience.
- Do your preparation and planning.
- Have a call to action. People need an incentive and encouragement to buy now.
- Practise. Practise. Practise.
- Give 100% and be yourself.
On sales leadership…
- Watch out for sales terrorists in your business who focus everyone on the negative and undermine your business. In today’s turbulent economy you cannot afford to have negativity like this in your teams.
- Utilize the skills of your team effectively. Different people have different strengths and different weaknesses and using these to best advantage is key.
- Be approachable and personable so that your team will communicate with you, confide in and support you.
- Encourage involvement and participation and create team spirit.
- Take responsibility and make decisions.
- Judge the reality of a situation not just what you believe it to be.
- Learn to delegate. Being a great leader is not about being able to do everything yourself.
- Get the right salespeople into your business to build high performance sales teams and get great sales results.
So that’s it for another year. What did you learn and what are you going to do differently to get the sales results that you want?
The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part II
So, we entered the second show with 14 apprentices left fighting it out for the “top job”.
730am – Sir Alan entered the apartment, “I hope you’re all enjoying this luxury penthouse I’ve got for you” he barked. “Your task today is all about supplying a service to people who work in the City… the task is that you are going to be setting up a catering service… first of all a lunchtime service … (and then) an evening service for these high fliers.”
As always the team who made the most money would win and one of the losers would be fired.
On the Boy’s Empire team, young Rocky Andrews, who runs 15 sandwich outlets puts himself up for the team leader’s role. Meanwhile, on the girl’s Ignite team, Yasmina Siadatan, restauranteur, promoted herself as the top choice. Yasmina to the camera, “I think my employees might describe me as rude they might describe as brash, they might describe me as little blunt…”
Why do these apprentices say these things? Do they really think these are good qualities in a boss, leader or manager?
The girls quickly decided on a Mediterranean theme and the boys on one of the Olympics for the sandwiches and Greek for the evening do. Our apprentices had one day to plan and prepare and prospect for some lunchtime clients, the evening clients being selected for them by Sir Alan. The girls were quick to start to promote their theme as were the boys with their range of chicken tikka and peanut butter sandwiches to name but two… what?
Back at the penthouse Rocky and the boys were discussing wearing costumes… sometimes you just despair don’t you? Yasmina, meanwhile, was working out what ingredients they would need and was then planning to shop for the cheapest, lowest budget produce she could get her greedy little mits on.
Sales training tip: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again but you have to know your market and provide what they want. Any muppet knows you do not serve cheap and tasteless “value” tuna to professional peeps at professional dos, nor do you wear togas for city drinks after work.
Not surprisingly the girls won contracts for their pleasant sounding lunchtime menu of Mediterranean flat breads – it’s just a shame that the experience that they were going to deliver is actually going to be more shell suit than dinner jacket. Equally unsurprisingly, the boy’s odd sandwich fillings failed to entice any customers at all. Who did they think was going to order peanut butter sandwiches anyway?
Sales negotiations…
Each of the teams had a meeting organized with the company that they would be providing with canapé style refreshments in the evening.
First up, the girls at a top City accountancy firm. Yasmina had created the menu and Kate was going to be selling their offerings to the firm. now, excuse me for asking the obvious question but why would you, as a team leader, send someone who had no idea what they were talking about into making a critical sales presentation? Surely, this was one of the fundamentally most important tasks?
When Kate got asked about one dish she responded, “I’m guessing that it’s grilled in some way, I’m not the chef”. And then when asked, “Can you do blinis?” she responded, “I’ve heard of blinis.”
Oh dear.
The boys, on the other hand, fared even worse with possibly the worst sales negotiation I have ever seen on the Apprentice and one from which there are many sales training tips to be had…
It started with the boys’ totally absurd notion of asking for £65 per head for canapés based on one phone call made by Howard to an event’s company.
Sales training tip: One call does not equal market research!
Leading the negotiation Philip had little belief in a positive outcome at the start of the negotiation and it showed. “£65 per head. I don’t know how that sounds to you?” queried Philip sounding totally dubious about the price himself.
Sales training tip: Putting aside the fact that this was an absurdly ridiculous figure, when negotiating you need to sound like you believe in what you’re saying, otherwise you’re doomed!
Philip clearly had no faith whatsoever in what he was selling. Not surprisingly, the client was dismissive telling him that it was not acceptable and that the figure was more like what it would cost for a sit down 3 course dinner.
“Let’s get realistic, if we were talking £35 per head?” asked Philip sounding every bit as unsure as he had at £65.
Sales training tip: Wow! A virtual 50% reduction in cost, just like that. What message does that send to the client? What does it suggest about your original figure? About your integrity? About how much further you might be prepared to slide? And where are any concessions or variables? When you negotiate it should not just be about price and money. As Philip was negotiating he should have been talking about the different menus and options available for the different prices not just dropping the price on the one offering… over and over and over…
The only response this got was a shake of the head from the man and a short, “Not in the least”. This client had not even “engaged” in this negotiation at this stage whilst Philip was making all of the running and all of the reductions. This put Philip on the back foot and won the client this from Philip…
Philip, “No? Not even close? If we went down to something like £17.50 a head and looking at that sort of figures I think it’s incredibly realistic.”
Sales training tip So Philip tells us what he really thought it was worth in the first place. And reduces by another 50% now making his initial offering preposterous and, had this been a real negotiation, he would have shown his company as nothing short of crooks…
And he has still left room for negotiation with the words “that sort of figure”.
“I’m still unimpressed” said the client with still closed body language. Note how the client now engages verbally slightly more as he seeks to extract even more discounts out of Philip…
“I think we’re going to find it very difficult to stack up at anything lower than around 15 pounds a head” responded Philip obligingly.
“That sounds feasible, I think, we can justify that” agreed the client and the deal was done.
Sales training tip: I’d be very careful if estate agent Philip was negotiating the “best” deal for me on my house and had I been this client the words “around 15 pounds” would have drawn me to go for a final concession from the desperate Philip, perhaps something like, “Then if we can make it £13.50 and you can throw in a drink for each head, we’ve got a deal”. Philip was getting a pummelling.
In the kitchen Yasmina was psyching up her troops as they started to open the cheapest cans of tuna I had ever seen. Why oh why did she think this was the way to go? I am confused, so I wandered off to check out her website and I quote you off her website for her restaurant…
… It makes culinary sense that the shorter the produce journey from source to plate, the fresher and tastier the meal will be. Hence the idea of a British restaurant. If all the ingredients are coming from within the boundaries of the UK, the impact we are having on the natural environment is minimised. Eating seasonally, ordering daily, and being creative with fresh vegetables and fruit all lead to healthy customers and an amazing menu….
And…
… If you are limited for time the fresh food can still be cooked to perfection without compromising on quality…
Which makes her decisions all the stranger. And her “real world” restaurant looks and sounds nice… maybe one of my readers has been and can share their thoughts…
In the boys’ kitchen, Rocky was ambitiously planning to knock up 500 sandwiches and sell them on the streets. Had he not got a sandwich shop background I could have excused him this but to me it just felt like “finger in the air” stuff and he should have know better. We never did find out how many sandwiches they did actually sell but given their final sales figures the answer would have to be, nothing like 500!
Serving their first clients their lunchtime sandwiches the girls were immediately running into quality issues such as not enough sandwiches per person, lack of filling, and a hair on one sandwich. “I’m not sure that it would get through the Pret test” said one customer. Surely, one of the girls would step up and demand an up in the quality before the evening? Err, no!
I just cannot talk about what then went on for both teams because it was just preposterous. I find it hard to believe that none of them on either team had not been on a semi-decent work evening do and that they just didn’t stand up and yell out, Harry Enfield Righteous Brothers style, “Oi, no! I’m not prepared to accept this shoddy performance!”
After a thoroughly appalling performance both teams were ready to go into the board room and we had the pleasure of Yasmina to camera, “Having met and worked with all of the other girls I firmly believe that I am better than all of them and as the weeks go on I think Sir Alan will start to realise that as well.” Rocky meanwhile was surfing his own ego too, “If I get past today then I think there is a good chance that me and Philip could be here to the end, fighting it out.”
Well, there’s certainly A chance Rocky…
The results…
Ignite and Yasmina spent £354.77, took £1006.20 and made profits of £651.43. This included reduction on their evening event from £750 to £500 for poor quality.
Empire and Rocky spent a whopping £821.37, took £661 and made a loss of £160+. This included a reduction on their evening event from £750 to £375 due to being overly tacky, inappropriate food and poor service.
That’s two weeks on the trot that these apprenti have run into difficulties because of their inability to deliver on their promises.
“A loss. Unbelievable” muttered Sir Alan. And then to the ladies, “Very, very, well done, even with a few complaints” and then again, “Very well done. A 200% margin nearly.”
Hmmmm….
I disagree. From what we saw the girls were a shambles too and Yasmina’s decisions about food quality were totally unacceptable. Business is not about maximum charge and minimum quality. Their food was a disgrace from what we saw… poor quality, poor ingredients, low on quantity, badly presented and unoriginal. Admittedly, compared to the boys, their performance was amazing but compared to any real world standard it was not good enough.
Tips for selling in a recession: One of my most popular keynote speeches for sales conferences at the moment is Selling in a Recession. How to survive, thrive and grow in difficult markets is essential and of key importance in any market, especially the markets of today. Cutting costs and fleecing your customer is not the answer; adding value and going the extra mile is. For someone who runs a restaurant, Yasmina did not even put any thought into presentation or variety – things that would be critical for a high class client. In the real world, she would not get repeat business for the performance that Ignite turned in.
Many non-business people watching The Apprentice carry the impression that business is all about making profits at the expense of the customer. This performance and Sir Alan’s subsequent comments will have done nothing to allay their fears. Had the girls lost, Yasmina should have gone but the facts remain that she won, she made four figure profits and she hammered the boys to boot, so in Sir Alan’s mind she did well…
If she can keep out of trouble for a few programmes now she may go far…
I feel a little sorry for Rocky because he was so clearly out of his depth. I have no doubt he is good at what he does and I cannot understand what, at 21, if he is running 15 sandwich shops and employing 350 people, he is doing here. What was he going to do if he won? Sack them all? Why couldn’t he accept and build on the real world successes that he has already had? For some the grass is always greener… But he won’t win and he won’t be here because he knows what he knows but he didn’t even have the flexibility to use that knowledge in a task he should have been able to smash for six.
Rocky decided to return to the board room with Howard and James. Howard seemed surprised at the choice but really there was no choice as this failure was primarily Rocky’s and there was no-one else to blame. Rocky should have known how to ace this task, he should have known how to pull profit. He didn’t. He had to go.
Sir Alan, “Rocky you’re on the ropes… James you look a bit hurt… Do you think your mouth got you into trouble?”
To Rocky, “Who should get fired?”
“James.”
“Howard who should get fired?”
“Rocky.”
“James who should get fired?”
“Both of them.”
Way to make friends and influence people James!
Sir Alan, “I think I’ve heard enough… Rocky you stood up and said you would take this job on and I would have thought that this was the right bloke to do this job …. Howard I think that because you run 10 pubs you could have grasped the nettle, you could have helped him out… You James… your resume is the thing that is confusing me… you can be a total plonker… I’ve concluded that Rocky you’re 21 years old but one cannot ignore a series of what I call immature mistakes… at Middlesborough you were taken off the pitch in a stretcher… this time, you’re off the pitch in a black cab. You’re fired.”
So that’s it for another week, what did you learn, recoil from or enjoy this week?
Tips For Negotiating In The Toughest Of Negotiation Scenarios
How to negotiate like a sales superstar when it seems you can only fail…
As with all of my sales training tips and sales strategies it´s important that you know how to apply tactics in the real world. Here is a negotiation question that has been asked of me several times and in several different guises:-
Gavin. I´ve got a client who is already using us. He is using one product list value 3000 and another worth 2000. Total value 5000. He has only been paying 1500! He now wants to drop the 3000 product and continue with the 2000 product but is expecting a discount from his current investment of 1500. What can I do?
Great question and one which is not at all uncommon. The first problem here is that this client has obviously been seriously under sold in the past and this has set his expectations. Whilst there is not a lot you can do about this situation now it´s important that you learn this and do not fall into this trap yourself when signing up new clients yourself…
For this case, here are some negotiating strategies you may be able to use:-
Work out your walk away price.
What is the least that you will be happy doing this deal for? You need to decide before you ever go anywhere near your client. In the heat of the moment salespeople often sign deals that shouldn´t be signed. If you are certain about your walk away then at least you can´t make this mistake.
Work out what you think the client is going to want.
You should have a good idea about this. Based on past conversations and history – what deal do you think the client will be going for?
Work out what the client will settle for.
What´s the most you think the client will pay? This is crucial because this is what you are going to be negotiating up to.
STOP.
Now you have 4 possible deals:-
1. Your opening price 1500
2. Your walk away
3. The client´s opening stance and,
4. The client´s walk away
Hopefully, there is some overlap!
Work out your concessions
What variables can you add or remove from this deal that you can negotiate with? In all of the sales cases and with all of the sales people I spoke with in similar scenarios we managed to find several…
Work out how much the client needs you
It may be that this client is about to play hard ball but that really they need you and they know that they have been getting the deal of a lifetime in the past.
Now you need to consider how you are going to run the client negotiation meeting itself. Some planning on the steps of the negotiation could well be rewarded with a successful negotiation here.
Set client expectations
You have to tell this client that they have been getting a great deal and help them to understand that you may not be able to continue with it but that you do want to walk away with a win win if at all possible. Try and get them to agree that they need you and link it to their business. Don´t discount the possibility that you might be able to upsell them on the full package again.
After resetting client expectations try and get them to commit first on price. It doesn´t matter how low they go really, it´s a starting point and one from which you can only go up. This will allow you to start to judge the likelihood of a positive outcome. If the first offer is really low don´t be scared of shrugging it off and asking for another more realistic one.
Once you have a starting figure you can make your first offer. Make it as high as you "reasonably" can. Only now can you start to trade concessions and variables whilst using all of your negotiation skills.
For more on the process of sales negotiation that will help you to negotiate win win end games and close more sales more profitably, join my RSS feed and then join my newsletter wihch is packed fulls of tips, tricks and strategies free.
Happy negotiations!
Getting To The Sales Negotiation Mindset
Our sales training blog has just been referenced by this rather nice blog site on how to break into and excel in medical device sales, Non Sterile. Although there are many skills that are required for successful sales negotiation I think their point about being in the "right frame of mind" is critical.
One of the communication skills employed by all successful salespeople at whatever point in the sale is the almost psychic ability to know what the other party is thinking. This skill, of course, is not psychic nor is it magic it is purely a matter of asking the right questions of yourself and focusing your mind.
Try asking yourself the following questions before going into a sales negotiation situation…
- What do I know about the buyer’s background?
- What is the buyer hoping for from this negotiation?
- What do I think their likely starting points and walk-aways will be?
- What games are they likely to play and what tactics are they most likely to use?
- What is the best way for me to get rapport, build a win win scenario and negotiate a win win situation for both parties?
These are not all of the question I teach people to ask on my salaes negotiation skills programmes but they are some of the main ones.
Do not expect "magical" sales negotiation results over night, that requires sales training but do know that the more you practise these techniques the better you will get at using them. This will in turn mean that the information you "discover" will be more useful and will prople you to be more successful when negotiating.
The Sales Apprentice: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part VII
Ring! Ring! Ring!
6am and the teams are ordered to meet at the Lloyds Building. Cars will be with them in 20 minutes. Clearly, getting ready fast is important for big business people! How do all those Sales Apprentices get ready so fast?
On arrival we found out that today’s task was all about “buying”. SAS wanted to test the sales negotiation skills of the teams by pitching them into a series of separate sales negotiations. To facilitate this, each team was given a list of 10 items which they had to buy for the least possible amount of money. They would be given guide prices and a fixed amount of money. The team with the most money left at the end would be the winner.
On the face of it this seemed like a task that would be full of sales training tips and strategies and it was… well, sort of!
Tonight’s intrepid “leaders” were Adam, the car sales manager, and Simon, a Cambridge graduate and internet entrepreneur. This was going to be a tough task for Adam as if his team lost this week he would be guaranteed to be in the board room for the 4th week running! Surely, if this were to happen the programme would end with him towing his suitcase to the waiting taxi at the end of the show!
Segue to SAS who informed us that this task was all about three core business skills… research, negotiation and time management. I agree with him entirely here but I thought that the research bit might have had a bit more credibility if he hadn’t given them guide prices for each of the articles. How much more fun would it have been if they had to research the market and get their own guide prices? And as for negotiation … well there were plenty of sales training tips to latch onto but really we were never talking about negotiation here…
We gradually found out during the programme what the rather random group of 10 items were although I seem to have lost one of them along the way somewhere!
- A pair of leather trousers
- Marble tiles
- Leg wax
- Wet suit
- A white rabbit
- 3kg of Nigella seeds
- A 1997 Peugeot 106 car battery
- A unicycle
- A Brabantia bin
Simon decided early on that the key to completing the task was to make his teams’ negotiations quick and timely. It’s true that time can and does play an important part in many negotiations with clients and sales people alike speeding up and slowing down sales negotiations for many different strategic reasons. In this scenario however, this decision was going to cost him.
By speeding up these negotiations he simply weakened his negotiation stance and gave the client the impression that he was short of time and rather desperate. Although we didn’t see much actual negotiating this would have encouraged the sellers to “stand firm” feeling that Simon and his team would have little time to go elsewhere if they didn’t buy from them!
Sales training tip: Know how to use time to control negotiations. Mis-timing, whether instigated by you or your client, can seriously damage your wealth!
So let’s get to the crux of the day… it was all about negotiation. Or was it?
Well nearly. Let’s have a look at a dictionary definition of negotiation that I use in all of my sales negotiation training seminars…
Negotiate v. confer in order to reach an agreement / arrange or bring about / find a way over, through etc / transfer to another for consideration / convert into money
~ Oxford Compact English Dictionary
So not really a negotiation then.
In none of their negotiations was there anything to transfer to another. This was a simple case of trying to get someone to give you something for the cheapest possible price. But the problem was that there was little incentive for anyone selling to discount…
Sure, it’s an important business lesson to learn that you need to get best prices from your suppliers but asking, “What’s the best you got?” and saying, “You’ll have to do better than that?” do not in of themselves constitute a negotiation! In “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares” he nearly always takes the egotistical chef on a shopping expedition to show him how to buy good food, cheaply. He also haggles with the traders to get best price and in essence that is what we had here… haggling.
Sales training tip: Negotiation presupposes not only that both parties want to reach an agreement but also that that you have something to negotiate with!
The line between negotiating and haggling was lost on our sales teams although we saw many willing, if weak efforts…
Simon on leather trousers: “Is there anything we can do? Nothing we can do?”
Sales training tip: Avoid closed questions of this kind when conducting a sales negotiation. It makes it far too easy for the client to say, “No”.
Have a look at another exchange…
Ghazal: “Is it negotiable?”
Sales: “No”
Adam: “Can you do anything at all?”
Sales: “No”
Adam: “Anything?”
Sales: “No”
Pointless.
In negotiations it is important that you put yourself in the shoes of your client and ask yourself why they are going to discount. In this show I found myself constantly thinking, “Why would they discount to help you for nothing in return?”
Negotiation requires planning and preparation. I know our Sales Apprentices had guide prices but why didn’t they ring around and get several ballpark prices? They seemed to spend far too much time running around in the streets… and far too little pre-negotiating on the phone? Did any of them think about getting several quotes and playing the suppliers off against each other? If they did, we never saw it.
Think about it! If someone turned up at your door, in a rush and with no time left and you knew that they had gone out of their way to get to you and that if they don’t buy they’re in trouble would you negotiate?
No! Me neither! I would know that I was the one with all of the power in this negotiation.
Sales training tip: View things from both your own and your client’s perspective when negotiating. Ensure that you consider the relative power of both parties.
Meanwhile Katie and Kristina were “negotiating” some good deals. This wasn’t full on negotiation but more, “Please can you help us” – smile – "P-l-e-a-s-e". Good on them for getting some good deals but this looked more like good old persuasion and personal rapport to me. A useful tool for improving your negotiations, in fact critical, but not negotiation!
At the end of the task Simon’s team had secured all 10 items but they had only made very small discounts. Adam’s team had only 9 of the items so they incurred an £80 fine. In the event, Simon’s team were fined too for buying “seconds” marble tiles instead of perfect thus incurring a £50 fine. Despite this Simon’s team won by 97 pence!
So Adam was in the board room for the 4th week running. This was never going to end well for him. He chose to take back Ghazal and Katie but had little on them. Even though he had to go I was routing for him. I really wanted Katie to go. She bitches about all of the other Sales Apprentices behind their backs and says really nasty things which often include bad things befalling the other players.
Tonight she pretty much said that all Northerners are stupid…
On Adam she wished that he, “… secures his route to the North and his Northern chums where I feel he belongs”.
Stay South of the M25 “sweetie” (her words to Adam – patronising girl), I don’t think us thick Northerners will be welcoming you to our whippet racing, flat cap wearing, ferret parties!
Maybe he’s not going to set the world alight but if Adam had missed anything glaring tonight it was Katie stabbing him in the back… (Aside: I do wonder if SAS sees the videos before he make his decisions…).
Katie finished off by saying to Ghazal that she’d had her revenge for last week and the “wrong man” getting fired and that the only thing that would make her happier would be if Kristina went too. Can’t see that myself. She then returned to the house and lied to the rest of the team about what SAS had actually said. Enough said.
So what do we learn from tonight’s Sales Apprentice…
- Negotiation is a two way process and requires concessions and variables to be traded as the two parties work towards a common goal.
- Consideration of the relative strengths of the parties involved is critical to your success. There is no substitute for research.
- Without concessions or leverage most negotiations resort to persuasion, haggling and ultimately pleading.
- Consideration of the other parties’ situation / needs / wants from their perspective is critical to your success.
- Asking the right questions is fundamental to negotiating a better deal.
The Sales Apprentice: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part VI
With the words that he was accepting no excuses about not speaking the language SAS set our intrepid Sales Apprentices the task – “take the best of British food products and sell them to the French”! Our teams were to buy their food and sell it from market stalls in an upmarket French town. With a quick balancing out of French speakers and the installation of Lohit and Paul as project managers they were off. There were plenty of sales training tips to choose from today!
I have to say that I am beginning to wonder where the class is in this show as today’s fiasco was more like watching a car crash in slow motion than a serious business show….
Lohit and Paul both dived into organising their sales teams and discussing products which they could sell. Many of their team members spoke French yet seemed to have no concept of what the French eat or how they behave. No-one seemed to be considering the customers that they were going to be selling to. Not one bit. Maybe we didn’t see it but surely someone should have got on the internet and researched this market town that they were going to be selling in? Are they never going to learn my number one sales training lesson of this series so far, know your customers?!
Researching your sales market and your prospects is critical for sales success. With the resources on hand on the internet today there is no excuse for not doing this!
Do you research your prospects properly?
On Lohit’s team they quickly came up with the theme of a British breakfast sale with smoked fish, marmalade and tea. Upmarket Scottish salmon is respected around the world so that was a good choice, as was British marmalade but their final choice, tea, was an odd one! Have they not seen Renault’s Nicole say “café” to the British man’s “tea”?!
In any case, they were going to get no competition from Paul on the products front. Sausages were the only thing that his team could agree on with Paul suggesting cheese. Kristina, quite rightly, said that the “French are cheese connoisseurs” and she didn’t think this was such a good idea. I’ll say. True to form Paul ignored this advice and bought slabs and slabs of processed cheese, from Makro. He deserved firing for this act of folly alone! From this point they were doomed to fail!
Clearly not wanting to make this his most stupid act of the show Paul was determined to go out in style spending £5 on some sort of Heath Robinson contraption to cook the sausages when he could have had a small BBQ for a mere tenner. Despite the fact that he spent £741 in total, clearly this economy was worthwhile!
Sales training lesson: Skimping on required sales tools, training or support will not pay off in the long run.
Paul had asked Adam to organise a banner for the stall for under £50. Arriving hours late at the print shop they found the banner printed and were told that it was £140. The print shop manager did a good job of demonstrating that the customer is always wrong and was quite argumentative with them! What is it that being on TV seems to do to people?
We never got to the bottom of whether Mr Print had the go ahead to print it or not but given that he later said that they could leave with nothing and pay nothing I would suggest that he conceded that he hadn’t had full authorisation.
There were some good sales training tips on dealing with sales negotiations however:
Adam: “Is there something we can do to get this inside our budget?”
Ok, fair enough. He’s right that he needs to negotiate but firstly this is a closed question that can so easily be answered with a “No” and secondly, you need to negotiate from strength not weakness. Why does he think the client would care about his budget?
Despite this Mr Print said, “£110.” Now that shows the power of asking! A £40 drop, for nothing! I wouldn’t have given it him off that question!
Adam: “Is there something else we can do?”
Another closed question.
Mr Print: “No. Take it or leave it.”
We later found out that Adam got the banner for much less than this (£57 +VAT?).
How?
I suspect because of something called a BATNA – best alternative to a negotiated agreement. A BATNA is what happens when the deal is not agreed and both parties have to walk away. It compares the relative situations of each individual to see who is in the best position if you walk away. In this case, Mr Print would be stuck with a useless sign that he could not sell and that he had already put the work into. Adam would have no sign but would still have his cash to do something else with. Adam was in by far the strongest position. It’s a shame that we didn’t see anything other than the swaggering headline comments of Mr Print and Adam as I would have loved to have seen the real negotiation!
Sales training tip: Always know your BATNA and work to ensure that your BATNA is as strong as possible. Having a strong BATNA increases your “power” when negotiating and reduces your temptation to cave in to threats i.e. “Take it or leave it”.
On the ferry to France Paul was singing the praises of his quality products. He seems a nice enough guy but this doesn’t seem to compute for me. I know people who are officers in the army (which he used to be) and they eat some fantastic meals. They are also well travelled and quite cultured. Surely he did not really believe that his processed cheese was going to sell in France or indeed that it was, as he kept insisting, quality cheese!
Paul’s team weren’t making many sales particularly due to the fact that his Heath Robinson “cooker” was not working at all. Lohit’s produce, however, was selling well. All accept the tea. Ahh well, you cannot win them all.
Kristina really started to show her mettle this week standing up to Paul and asking some insightful questions. She was the first to point out that he went off “selling” with Katie but came back having sold 10 packets of sausages at cost… and having thrown in something that looked like a huge black pudding for free! She also went and persuaded a local restaurant to let her cook some sample sausages to boost their sales efforts. After which they did start to sell.
Whilst Katie and Paul virtually held hands Adam was plugging away selling chutney. He will probably go soon as they all seem to have it in for him but I really quite like the way he just gets on with it. For sure, he’s a little on the negative side at times but who wouldn’t be surrounded by this chaos.
In the boardroom Lohit’s team pronounced him a good leader. So did Pauls’s bar Kristina who said that he wasn’t. Lohit’s team had spent £446 and made £410 profit. Paul’s team spent £741 and lost £225.84. A staggering defeat and, shrieked SAS, a loss!
Paul uttered the comment of the week: “We went for it and had we shifted it we would have annihilated them. They played it safe”
No Paul. You bought too much of the wrong product, you didn’t listen to anyone again, you spent the day “swanning” around with Katie and you ignored the only member of your team prepared to speak sense, Kristina. The other team knew that selling British food to the French would be difficult and bought sensibly.
Paul decided to take Adam and Kristina back to the boardroom. Bringing Kristina back was suicide. I felt sorry for Adam. If he gets taken to the boardroom next week he will probably go. Fortunately this week there could only be one loser…
Paul, you’re fired.
I said a couple of weeks ago that EGO will kill your sales results. Well so does its big brother, Arrogance. Arrogance comes in all shapes and forms and Katie and Paul seem to have it in bucket-loads. Arrogance blinds you to common sense. Arrogance hides the truth from you. Arrogance closes you off to feedback. Arrogance stunts sales development. Arrogance ultimately destroys sales. I wanted Paul and his Arrogance to go weeks ago and I’d like Katie to go soon too. Paul could not admit he was wrong and neither can she.
Sales training tip: You can only ever improve your selling skills by getting over your Arrogance, taking feedback on board and allowing yourself to grow.
On being asked why the task failed Katie was sure of the reasons. It was all Adam and Kristina’s fault:
- Too high costs. It was ridiculous that Adam spent £150 on a banner.
Wrong. Sure Adam spent too much but he then negotiated down to £57 (!) and that was nothing to what your “friend” Paul spent on processed cheese.
- Bad team behaviours. Kristina was difficult.
No, she wasn’t. She was spot on. Someone asked me last week who I think could go all the way. I didn’t want to stick my neck out then but I’m going to now… I think Kristina could. She has to be my “favourite” at the moment.
- No sizzling sausages.
Now I wonder who bought the silly contraption…?
So not Adam and Kristina’s fault at all then Katie! Paul’s.
Katie said that she wouldn’t like Paul to go. He was the only intelligent conversation in the house that otherwise was like a crèche (I think that was her terminology). Maybe Katie and Paul are bright (degrees etc) but neither of them come across as having any business savvy.
If there’s a sales training lesson to be learnt from this sorry affair it’s this:
Self-belief and belief in your product are essential for sales success. This is not the same as Arrogance. It’s easy to confuse Arrogance with self-belief and they may appear to be similar traits but they are not.
Belief builds sales, Arrogance destroys them.
I sometimes get delegates on my seminars who think they know it all. Even if they do, they probably don’t use it all. There’s nothing clever about knowing everything, particularly if you don’t use it. Maybe now is the time to check out what you can learn, review or improve.
Why You Should Start High When In Sales Negotiations
One of my most popular sales training seminars is my Sales Negotiation Skills programme from the "Ingham Sales System". I think that there are many reasons for why this sales seminar is so popular but I am not going to go into them now! What I do want to do however is reiterate one of the simplest sales training strategies from this sales seminar…
Start high in sales negotiations.
As a strategy, there would be few salespeople or sales managers who would argue with this strategy however on my travels I am constantly amazed by how many sales and business people pay little or no attention to it…
Here are 7 reasons why you should start high when negotiating the sale…
- It’s very unlikely you will be able to negotiate up from this so this is the most that you can charge
- If you undervalue your product or service then how can you moan and whine when your client does too?
- Desperation is not attractive in a sales professional (or anyone else for that matter!)
- If you win business on price you will almost definitely lose it on price
- You leave yourself little or no room to negotiate
- Most clients like to feel that they have “negotiated”
- You never know, you just might get it!!!
So, with all of these compelling reasons, why do so many salespeople ignore these proven sales training tips?
Fear of loss. Fear of loss causes salespeople to worry about the client saying “No” . Fear of loss causes salespeople to second guess what they think the most their clients might pay will be. Fear of loss causes salespeople to go in as cheap as possible.
There´s a lot of competition in the marketplace today and most salespeople undervalue their services and offerings. Far too many salespeople tell me that their prospects really do only buy on price! I accept that a few do but most don’t. Let’s face it – that’s exactly what your clients want you to think! So that’s why my sales training tip for the day is …
Start high in sales negotiations. As high as you can reasonably expect to get. Go on, give it a try and remember …. sell with passion.
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