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HOME » NEWSLETTER & ARTICLES » NEWSLETTERS & ARTICLES ARCHIVE » Handling Objections, Part 2, July 2007
Handling Objections, Part 2
Bill McCormick
The Best Sales Professionals Respond Skillfully to Objections
What are the most common sales objections? How can you improve your ability to respond to these objections?
This month's newsletter is the second of a 3-part series on handling objections. All salespeople encounter objections, but the best salespeople are more creative and confident in their ability to respond to objections. This newsletter series will share some creative ways to deal with common objections such as "I'm happy with my current provider" and "Your price is too high".
What Do You Do?
We want to hear from you! Please send us an email at wm@salestrainingandresults.com with your answers to the following two questions:
1. What is the most difficult objection that you encounter from customers?
2. How would you handle that objection?
Examples of additional objections sent in by our readers:
- "It's too expensive for us to reformulate."
- "We just signed a long term contract with another company. "
Please send us your feedback because it would be great to share "best practices" from the best audience that we know, namely our readers.
Common Objection: "Your Price Is Too High”
This newsletter will address the second objection mentioned earlier: “Your price is too high”. The May STAR newsletter addressed the other objection: “I’m happy with my current provider”.
Average sales professionals tend to respond poorly to the “price-is-too-high” objection. The best salespeople, by contrast, have learned some effective ways to respond. Think about how you or your sales team are currently responding to price objections.
Depending on the industry that you are in, and the type of selling that you do (product or service sales), here are four effective ways to respond to “Your price is too high”.
1. Highlight the value that your company, product or service can provide. Have the courage to express in a clear and compelling way why your higher price is justified. For example; lower shipping costs, inventory management, productivity gains, reduction in waste, and technical assistance. Whenever possible, quantify the value by using ROI, and cite the payback time or time savings.
2. Offer to substitute a less expensive product or service. In many cases, the competitor can offer a lower price because their product/service is not at the same quality level as yours. If so, recommend that the customer use one of your other products or services instead.
3. If you must make a price concession, get something in return. Don’t make the most common mistake that average salespeople make, which is to meet the lower price without getting anything in return.
4. Instead of making a concession on price, offer an “elegant currency” instead. We discuss the concept of “elegant currencies” in-depth during our negotiation workshop, but if you haven’t heard the term before, an elegant currency is something that has high value to the customer but is low cost to you. For example: “I can’t reduce our price any further, but I would be willing to extend your warranty.”
Where Do You Go From Here?
There are other responses to the “Your price is too high”, but we hope that the above four answers offer you additional ways to respond. If you have other suggestions on how you have handled this objection, send us your thoughts. Next month we’ll share the answers from the other newsletter recipients on how they respond to difficult sales objections. We hope that you take the time to send us your thoughts. Please visit our Newsletters Webpage for archived newsletters.
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