Is Your Customer Stuck?
Category: Closing
How to Be Assertive Without Being Rude or Pushy
Assertiveness is an important skill in sales that can make your work much more enjoyable, but, unfortunately, it’s also vastly misconstrued. Sometimes it’s difficult to be assertive, or make your position known, while still maintaining professionalism and understanding.
Assertive people often come off as rude or pushy. This is because generally people don’t like to be told what to do or how to do it. The trick is in learning how to stand up for yourself without making others feel imposed upon. This is a skill you can develop with a little know-how and practice.
Try using the following tips in order to properly assert yourself:
1. Choose your words carefully. This is especially important if you’re going to assert yourself in situations where you were previously passive. Think about the different ways that your words can be interpreted. Write them down and read them back to yourself if that helps. Oftentimes the mistake that many make in sales is that they don’t leverage the advantage of using scripts. With scripts the words have been selected very carefully and have been tried and tested. New salespeople are more concerned about the perception of “being themselves” which leads to bad wording in important selling situations.
- Remember that there’s a fine line between being assertive and being aggressive.
2. Develop good listening skills. Being assertive takes some great communication skills. Remember that communication has two sides – speaking and listening. Truly listening will help you clearly understand the situation at hand. Additionally, when actively listening you will oftentimes learn exactly what you need to say, but in the other persons words. When you follow up with thoughtful and assertive response or request, others are more likely to value your opinion.
3. Avoid taking things personally. Since being assertive can be touchy, sometimes you’ll do everything right and still end up rubbing someone the wrong way. You’ll never please 100% of your listeners, 100% of the time. Learn how to brush off comments that don’t matter.
4. Be humble. You can combat resistance to your assertiveness by being humble. Avoid bragging about yourself, even if it’s in a joking manner. There is an attachment to ego in sales, and it’s important, however that attachment can bring upon negative results in times of being assertive.
5. Show confidence. People enjoy being led by people who ooze confidence. If you’re going to be assertive and take charge, show the confidence to back it up. People will sense your lack of confidence if it isn’t truly there, so give yourself permission to feel good about yourself and your accomplishments. Share what you have accomplished with your listeners, not to impress them, but to impress upon them that you’ve been in this scenario before and here is what you’ve been able to do, presumably for your listeners.
6. Handle negative issues quickly. If problems arise, jump on them immediately. It’s a part of being assertive. Handle issues with kindness and respect and people will remember you for it. If you let problems linger or treat them in a negative manner, people will remember that too. Assuming that by ignoring issues early in any conversation that they’ll be less likely to reappear later, you would be wrong.
7. Deal with feelings of superiority. You’re only human, so perhaps you do feel superior in a situation where you’re being assertive. If so, be careful to avoid acting rudely.
8. Apologize for mistakes. When you’re being assertive, you’re no doubt in the spotlight. When you make a mistake in the spotlight, everyone knows about it. Act appropriately and apologize, and people will respect you for owning up to it.
Remember that the skill of assertiveness is something that develops over time. It may be overwhelming to try to make drastic changes overnight. Ease yourself into it and test the waters. It’s always best to think with clarity and make your changes slowly.
With a gradual change, others will be more likely to accept your new assertiveness. Before you know it, you’ll have their respect for the new, improved you!
4 Steps to Negotiating When You’re Intimidated By Rejection
If you’re terrified of getting the door slammed in your face, negotiation must be difficult for you! Just the thought that your efforts could be met with rejection might be enough to discourage you. If you are new to sales confronting rejection will become a common occurrence.
So where do you go from here? How do you get past rejection even if your first attempt fails? Getting past rejection may not happen overnight, but it’s certainly possible. In fact, what you really need is a few easy-to-apply steps to successful negotiation. Getting tips that keep you focused on your mission can ensure that you persevere. As you begin to make these easy steps part of your daily habits there are more advanced techniques in addressing and reducing rejection.
Check out these great ideas for scoring the upper hand with negotiations:
(1) Believe in your product or services. By far, this is the most important element of successful negotiation. While this may sound like an obvious point, the reality is there are many sales professionals that do not believe in their product or service. The lack of belief makes rejection almost an expectations, rather than an anomaly. In some cases it is not that sales professionals lack belief in their offering, they do not fully understand the problems that their service or product solves. You absolutely need to believe in your product in order to sell it!
When you’re confident, it shows in your eyes and body language. People are quicker to pay attention when they realize you stand 100% behind your negotiation point.
If you’re not sold on your product and the problems you are able to solve, chances are the other person may fail to take you seriously.
Standing behind your product gives you the bargaining ability to win over your potential customer.
(2) Prepare your case. Now that you've bought into your product, it's time to plan your approach. Decide how to express your case for the best possible results. Write out your high-level points and how those points tie-back to the needs of your customer. Think about what possible reasons the customer may object to. Give thought to both logical and emotional reasons. Is there any backup information you need to help support your case? Prepare it in advance. Know your case inside out. If you're selling something that you know somebody wants, be able to negotiate and tell them why they want it! Try to have a "yes" for every possible "no" the other party may pose.
(3) Embrace your human equality. At the end of the day, you’re just as good as anybody else. Avoid allowing your feelings of inadequacy to convince you to shy away from negotiation.
Remember that rejection doesn’t make you a failure. It simply gives you the opportunity to fine tune your approach. After all, experience is the best teacher!
Avoid contemplating that the other person may not want to negotiate with you. Think positively! You’re just as equal as the other person. Tell yourself that everybody wants to hear what you have to say.
You’re very deserving of the opportunity to negotiate your point. Seize it and make the most of it!
(4) Consider the worst that could happen. Take a moment and really consider the possible outcomes. What’s the worst that could come out of your attempts at negotiation? Just how life-crushing do you think the rejection could be?
If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize that you’re probably making it seem worse than it is.
The worst thing you can hear is “no.” And so what if you do? What possible damage can that word do to you? Absolutely none! Selling makes for a very interesting career for individuals who cannot learn how to deal with the word “no”.
Being rejected doesn’t make you any less worthy. In fact, consider that the other party is missing out on what you have to offer!
Rejection is a natural, ever-occurring part of life. You can expect to face rejection from time to time because not everybody sees eye to eye. But that’s what makes life so interesting!
Can you imagine how boring life would be if nothing you did was ever met with rejection? It would limit creativity and imagination. So do your part to keep constantly evolving. Be bold and ready to take on whatever is thrown at you!
Why do customers stall?
One thing I take a lot of pride in is that I was able to have some of the best years (at that point) of my sales career during the 08′-12′ Great Recession. While many of my counterparts were frozen (rightfully so- it was brutal) in how to move forward in that business environment, I was busy doubling down on my craft and subsequently finished many of those years as the #1 sales person in the organization. I don’t say that to impress you, but to impress upon you that there are opportunities to be had during this time. You just have to begin using the right strategies & stay in the right frame of mind moving forward.
Today I want to share some strategies on how to move deals through your sales cycle that may have stalled.
In consultative sales you’ve got four outcomes: a sale, a no sale, an advancement, or a continuation (another word for stall). As with any type of selling, you want as many sales as possible, limited amount of no sales (they happen), absolutely no CONTINUATIONS/STALLS, and more ADVANCEMENTS than no sales.
Some examples of continuations from a prospect: “call me next week”, “send me a quote and I’ll follow up with you”, etc. Anything where there’s a perception of a next step, but there’s no commitment or plan on what that next step may be. An advancement is where there is a solid commitment on what the next steps are, and a commitment on what you, as the sales rep, and the prospect will be doing.
What we don’t want are continuations- when you get one it’s important to be able to identify whether this is a STALL or a CONDITION to not moving forward. A condition would be any legitimate reason as to why the prospect cannot move forward- examples would be; there’s an approval process, another decision maker needs to be involved, a payment stipulation (bonus coming). It’s easy to identify stalls- if you’ve done a good job in your presentation, things line up- you’ve gained agreements along the way, and then all of sudden once a decision needs to be made, you’re given reasons that just don’t seem consistent to what’s been discussed and agreed upon.
Now-think about your projection. How much of your pipeline, or past opportunities, suffer from stalled opportunities? Opportunities- where you may believe you have a chance, but you can’t identify why they haven’t moved forward. They seemingly string you along.
If you are like most, stalled opportunities easily account for 30% and 50%. In a tough market one of the biggest returns you can reap is to reduce the impact of stalled decisions; however, to jump start a stalled sale, you must understand the cause of the stall. Here are a few common causes to investigate:
Lack of connection to a the most important issues to the prospect. Unless your solution increases savings, improves aesthetics, home value, comfort, efficiency, sound, and security, or some other looming implication, you can expect a stall. When purse strings tighten, homeowners will only spend on matters that impact them the most.
A sales rep only has reengage and ask three questions to uncover issues:
- Why do you want this solution?
- Why are those problems important to solve?
- Why does this matter to you?
Lack of perceived value. Most people can really only juggle five or six critical issues at a time. We all live with problems that we don’t need to solve today. However, competing priorities are constant. Can your prospect articulate the value or impact of addressing the issue? If your solution, from your prospects perspective, doesn’t have enough value to get in his top three or four, you get stalled or put on the back burner. Ask the prospect to quantify the impact of resolving the issue. Better yet, ask her how the solution will impact her personally.
Lack of differentiation. Lack of differentiation will cause the prospect to spend more time evaluating, which translates to a stall. If you are unable to differentiate on features and solving problems, you will be forced to differentiate on price.
Decision authority. Decision authority is one of the most common causes of stalled decisions. It’s important to ask yourself, “Has the person you’re in contact with made this type of decisions before? When and how?”. Understanding their decision authority and decision making process early in the conversation will help identify whether you are dealing with a STALL or a CONDITION.
Risk. Making a decision involves risk. The prospects perception of risk can span impacts like lost budget flexibility,(do we forgo our Cruise this year??), lost time, or fear of making the wrong decision. As a prospect gets closer to making a decision, the risk becomes greater in her mind. Common tools for alleviating risk include supplying references, using reliable third-party data, and demonstrating return-on-investment analysis.
My hope is that you can take these above strategies and immediately apply them to begin helping your prospects move forward.
Thanks for stopping by and remember- the best earn the sale!
“It’s way out of our budget”- Oh no!
We’ve all had it happen before, we are in front of a prospect who has completely unrealistic price expectations. What do you do? Check out the video below for a few tips on how to address this scenario.
A potential client wants a 20 product bid. They tell you that they expect the price to be under $10,000; you know it will be considerably more than that. Now what?
Don’t be in a hurry to write off someone with an unrealistic expectation on price. If they called you, doesn’t that mean they need or want your product? Take the time to gather information before you decide they aren’t worth your time and energy. See if you can turn it into a sale.
This can be accomplished with the proper set of questions and a little patience. Start by asking the four basic questions that are needed to get to the contract. At some point, the budget will come up. Ask the question, “How did you arrive at the budget you have set?” You will get all kinds of answers, but the usual sources are other contractors, something from the media, or a hopeful wild guess on the part of the owner.
Give them the three price ranges that their job will fall into. Not one lump sum figure, not two broad figures, but three well-defined ranges based on your experience. You want them to make a decision, and that is why the wording is so important. Start with the middle range, move to the top range and finally explain what they will get in the low budget range.
Will they have sticker shock? Most likely. Will they think you and your prices are nuts? In some cases, yes. Will you get through to them that their budget is unrealistic? Maybe.
Most of it depends on how you present the information. Good questions can lead them to the conclusion you need them to reach. Blanket statements are not as effective. Remember that you have two ears and one mouth and use them in that ratio.
When you have given the three price ranges, ask the question, “Which of these three budget ranges would you like to invest in your home?” Or, “Which of these three budget ranges do you think would work best for you and your family?” There are several ways of asking this question but after you ask it, STOP! One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is that they ask a question, and then keep on talking. Put a zipper on your lip. Button it up. Let them give their answer.
If they come back with the nonsense that they don’t know what it will cost, tell them it will be in the ranges you just discussed. Give the ranges again if necessary. They don’t like making decisions, and are trying to avoid the fact that you provided that info already.
Give your clients good information, help them adjust their budget, and make the sale. If they won’t adjust, move to the next client with a realistic price expectation.
Remember, the best earn the sale!
5 Steps To Addressing the Shop Around Objection
The closing stage of a sales presentation is one of the toughest- it’s fraught with emotions on both sides of the table. Customers begin to feel the tension of making a decision, and salespeople begin to battle the anticipated emotions of rejection, uncertainty, and stress.
Legendary sales trainer Brian Tracy states that whenever a customer experiences the emotions of the close “they retreat and begin to say things like, ‘let me think it over, ‘or can you email me the quote’, or ‘we need to get other quotes’, ‘I need to talk it over with someone else’, and so on.
It’s this sales resistance that necessitates a closing process. Otherwise as salespeople we begin to push for a result. The result is the process!
What’s the point of eating a bowl of ice cream: to get to the end, or savor every bite? My bet is that if you are a results driven person- you want to get to the end of that bowl as fast as possible. How about a goal of an exercise program? Unless you’re a professional athlete, the goal is to maintain a level of personal satisfaction.
Sales Coach and author of “Selling for Dummies”, Keith Rosen shares that “you don’t do a result; you execute a process, which produces the result as a natural by-product of your efforts.” To get better results you must focus on the process.
A well practiced closing process allows you to convey confidence. To address the shop around objection devote your attention to following the process and you’ll find that more of your customers will choose you rather than shop around.
10 Strategies to prevent:”I lost the customer to price”
Nothing happens until a sale is made. There are a lot of things that have to happen before a customer signs on the dotted line, but lastly, a sales rep and customer must agree on a price. At one time or another, we’ve all had our prices challenged. I’ve heard many sales people proselytize their closing abilities and tactics. The question becomes of these great closer’s is, have they protected price and margins? It doesn’t take an expert sales person to seal the deal when they’ve simply folded on price once the customer posed a pricing concern.
Avoid Price Driven Conversations
To persevere through pricing objections, your self-assurance is critical. Being confident in what you say is paramount in presenting price (Want a 1:45 second course on CONFIDENCE ?) When the customer requests a discount, respond by asking, “before we get into that, what value do you see in what I’ve presented thus far?” In reality if a customer can’t, or refuses to, answer that question, then the decision is made solely on price and I bet there are other cheaper options for your customer.
The worst thing sales people can do when a customer is looking for a price break is to give in. Jeb Blount, author and sales expert, states that customers may not have gone to sales university, but they’ve definitely gone to buyers university. Many customers know that if they give the least bit of price resistance a sales person will immediately offer price concessions. To overcome this problem, sales people need to understand, in real terms, how their prospect can benefit from your product or service- from their perspective.
A great example that I learned from Keith Rosen. If I’m taking a trip and my destination is 1,000 miles away, I have several options. I could hitchhike, which would cost me virtually nothing, but wouldn’t guarantee when I’d arrive. I could drive my car, limiting my immediate costs to the necessary gasoline, but my trip could take several days. Or, I could fly, which would probably be my highest-priced option, but would be the fastest.
You can see from my travel example that the cheapest option is not reliable, nor would it save time. In addition, most people wouldn’t want to take several days to drive to and from their destinations. Therefore, because of the time it will save, the best option is to fly, even though it’s probably the most expensive choice. Since time is of the essence for many folks, its value is worth the extra money. Cutting the price is clearly not beneficial or efficient for the customer.
Confidence Is key Everything
To hold firm on price you need to have a high level of confidence. One of the best ways to feel confident is by maintaining a full sales pipeline. When a sales person doesn’t have a full-pipeline, or lacks the ability to generate more customers, or doesn’t fully nurture past customers, they rely on each potential sale that a customer may propose. Sales people become needy, overzealous, and those emotions lead to the inability to overcome price objections.
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