EXCUSES, EXCUSES

It has happened to all of us at one time or another, we work with a prospect for hours, days, weeks, sometimes months and just as we get to the close of the sales we get the EXCUSE.

The problem with getting an excuse from a customer is we never know if it is a legitimate excuse or just a blow off. The excuse may sound real, the prospect presents it to us in such a way that it makes good sense, we know that some of what we were told is true, we want to believe it because we don’t want to think the customer is just blowing us off. But if we look closely, in many of the cases the reality is we were just blown off.

The question then becomes, what can we do? How can we as sales reps make a decision as to what is real and what isn’t? WE CAN’T! It is that simple. And to tell the truth, we shouldn’t.

Our job is to represent ourselves, our company and our product in a professional manner. We should show the prospect the advantages of our product and the value our product will have within the prospects business.

The prospects job is to conduct their business in a professional manner producing the best results with the maximum profits they can.

These two points of view seem to be aligned, however in some cases the value of a product doesn’t equal the price of the product. In other cases, the value of the product doesn’t equal the price of the product IN THE PROSPECTS MIND! When this happens you hear an excuse.

The best way for a sales rep to get past excuses is to make sure the prospect fully understands and buys into the value the rep established during the sales presentation.

I have seen a rep give an entire sales presentation without ever asking the customer any questions. The customer sits there listening and watching but never gets the opportunity to ask the questions that will assure they understand the product or service and that they understand the value the product or service will bring to their business.

I am a believer that customers, no matter the industry, understand their business better than anyone else does. Therefore, the customer knows what will and won’t help them and has an idea of the value of things in relationship to their business. I call these customers BUSINESS PEOPLE because they run businesses.

Business people won’t pass on an opportunity to either help their business run better or generate more income if they see the value of the product or service being presented. If they don’t understand the value their path of least resistance is to give an excuse rather than say no.

As sales reps we have evolved over the years into machines that can turn no’s into yes’s with ease. There are books written at the 5^th grade level of how to turn no’s into yes’s. Every rooky first year sales rep has enough of the gift of gab and enough talent to turn a no into a yes. Business people know this. The secret is out. So instead of taking the chance that we will turn things around, the customers give us excuses as a substitute for just telling us NO!

Here is where sales becomes a fun and challenging career. It is up to us to listen to the excuse, search through the excuse for what we feel is truth and what we feel is fantasy, and in a split second have a value statement that will once again get the customer back to seeing how our product or service will help them.

Here is a hint, there are really only about 10 excuses. They may be said a thousand different ways, but when you look at what is really being said they all group into about 10 categories.

What you need to do is to make a list of the different headings that the excuses you hear fall into. For instance, money, ease of use, dependability… whatever you are hearing. List out the excuses under these categories and have an answer for each category. It doesn’t matter how they say money is the problem. They may say business is slow or you are too expensive. All you need is one answer to the excuse about one that you can use whenever it comes up. Have one answer for each category you list and next time the customer gives you an excuse, you will be able to follow the excuse with a value statement that gets you back onto the path to closing the sale.

Lorin