Please note that some content is for members only. You can join now for free
Soft selling does not mean giving in to price objections - far from it! Handling price objections is an area of sales that many accidental sales people struggle with. What do you say when people question your prices?
Here are 3 soft selling strategies which make it a loss less scary.
Anticipation
I was chatting to one of my Soft Selling clients recently. Sally was asking for advice on how to convince someone with no money to invest in her services. Sally’s prospect desperately needed her services but ‘could not afford it’. She was considering dropping her rates to something she felt her prospect could afford.
‘This keeps on happening to me’ said Sally ‘I know the other person needs my services but I just don’t have the heart to turn my prospect away or to exploit the pain’
I have worked with a number of clients lately who were really struggling in competitive terms. Their weaknesses were getting in the way and they were struggling to counter the objections they were getting from their prospects. No combination of clever words were helping them to overcome their real weaknesses when compared with their competition.
You can avoid some serious diseases by receiving an inoculation. You can handle price objections in a very similar way.
The smallpox inoculation works by infecting an individual with a mild case of smallpox and the body builds up natural defenses. Using the same idea, you can inoculate prospects against serious price objections by using the concept of inoculation. This will help enormously when closing sales.
The other day a business man was complaining to me that certain buyers were not recognising the difference in value between his product and those of his competition. He was providing a much superior level of service but it was failing to register on the buyer’s radar. All they seemed to be interested in was price. He was an accomplished sales person and yet this one had him stumped. He wanted my advice on how to get the buyers to value the extra services.
Handling objections, and especially price objections, is an area of sales that people often find tricky. One of the main reasons for getting lots of price objections is caused by not taking the time to filter out unlikely prospects. In sales, this part of the sales process is known as “qualifying”. It’s about sorting the wheat from the chaff.
