How to Get Your Buyers to Stop Objecting to Price

November 14, 2014 by Rosemary

By Scott Dailey

Imagine this scenario:

You just finished making your product presentation and yes, it went as you planned Â as you hoped even. Your buyer now knows the costs, and was sincerely engaged throughout. As for the other stakeholders in attendance, they leaned forward often and peppered you with good questions. Things looked good. As you were shaking hands with everyone, you even made sure to ask if you could field any lingering questions. After all, youÂre not new to closing and Âno, no, no,Â is all thatÂs uttered. You, for a moment, feel triumphant.

ÂNow to close,Â you silently meditate.

But suddenly, just as youÂre getting ahead of yourself Â just as youÂre feeling unstoppable — the key decision maker pipes in.

ÂThank you Scott. Very thorough presentation. I learned a lot. Of course, IÂm going to need to think about it. And besides that, I also have a few other vendors BobÂs located, that I want to have a look at. Yah know; before we decide anything.Â

Imagine this happening to you. ItÂs probably not hard to do at all. Surely you have encountered this very set of circumstances. Fired out of a cannon, you slay the room and ready your kill shot when seemingly out of absolutely nowhere, youÂre faced with this very objection and its brawn threatens the close, the win, YOU!

Well then what would you say? What sort of ironclad retort would you have prepared ahead of your meeting? I mean, surely you would have had something cued up, right? What go-to answer would be cocked and loaded, ready to dispatch with absolute haste this oh-so common sales hurdle?

Remember that, in this scenario, you almost certainly spent hours preparing your presentation and dammit, that preparation has covered well your productÂs features and has earned your audienceÂs respect. Kudos! But at that pivotal moment, when your buyer suddenly tells you, Âno,Â how would you have remembered that meeting? How would you recall that particular opportunity? Your presentation had done the heavy lifting. Your buyer believed you. Believed in you. Yet the objection emerged. What didnÂt you do? Or said differently, what did you not, perhaps, do well enough?

Would your meeting be remembered for your failure to produce an irrefutable argument that squashed that objection as it grew wings? Would you, at that moment, convert your prospect into a buyer?

What DidnÂt I Do?

Now letÂs be clear on something. WeÂve all heard this objection registered in a thousand different styles. But every time you do hear it, no matter the delivery or the packaging, I assure you, itÂs the same old objection and an easy one to negotiate if you know why itÂs being tendered.

You are getting this objection because you didnÂt convince your buyer sufficiently that the benefit to using your service outweighs the benefit of keeping the money it costs to buy it. If your buyer values the money it costs to purchase from you more than the value your solutions yield your buyer, then you have no chance to make the sale. Only you can persuade the buyer to see value as something that has more appeal than cost. This your responsibility, not your audienceÂs.

You cannot simply prepare a world-class presentation, do your research and hypnotize your listeners and expect that the work is done. As a matter of fact, your research must be more immersed in how to field this objection, than it ever is in showcasing your productÂs features.

Your products, their features, what makes them shine — itÂs all for you and means nothing to your buyer. You must make them see that the value had in using your solutions creates the outcomes they seek. Do this and youÂll begin to help your buyer see that retaining the funds it costs to buy from you is less critical than getting hold of your solution.

Next time you encounter this objection Â no matter the flavor itÂs dipped in Â try this:

“Great! I think that’s great, Sue. You should totally look at alternatives to me.

But if you’re shopping for a less expensive vendor, or what I mean is, if the continuing shopping exercise for you deals in finding the most inexpensive provider, then we don’t fit, IÂm afraid.

If you’re truly going to shop around, then look for someone who is better than me, not cheaper than me. Better than me, you won’t find. But cheaper? I can throw a rock out of this conference room window right this very second and hit someone in the head who will do less for you, for less than me.”

If we’re tabling next steps because you want it less expensively, then this isn’t a fit, Sue. I’m the best. And I want to be clear on this point: I wouldn’t begrudge you a bit for looking for better than me. I actually encourage that.

But I don’t compete with cheaper than me. I won’t compete with it.

How about this: you’re the best at what you do, Sue and IÂm the best at what I do. Let’s get this right the first time?Â

In this scenario, Sue may actually believe she needs to shop around for competitive pricing, while never realizing sheÂs mistakenly comparing value with cost. There is no comparison to be made between average outcomes and successful ones.

Lead with value in everything you present to your buyer. This will not only help keep the conversation in your control, which is critical to the sales process, but it will also assure your prospects that benefits, when satisfying the buyerÂs wishes, always outweigh cost.

Sales professionals must believe passionately that they have an obligation to get buyers to stop asking questions about cost by producing answers that deal in value. Therefore, every action you take should be meant to provide satisfactory answers to questions your buyer may not even know he or she is asking.

Author’s Bio: Scott Dailey is the Director of Strategic Development for the digital marketing company Single Throw, in Wall, New Jersey. Scott leads the marketing and sales department for Single Throw and is an ardent lover of all things digital marketing and lead generation. You can follow Scott on Twitter at @scottpdailey.

Start in the Middle on Your Report, Blog Post or Presentation

March 26, 2012 by Liz

Put a Sock in It, Julie!

Who hasn’t heard Julie Andrews sing it?

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
When you read you begin with ABC, When you sing you begin with do-re-me.

–the character, Maria, sung by Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Put a sock in it, Julie.

Starting in the beginning might work well when you know the story, but when you’re first forming your ideas it can really screw you up. By the time you figure out that clever beginning you might forget the what the story was going to be about. After all, when planning a special occasion, it’s not usually the best idea to start with what you’ll say on the invitation … we have to know what the gathering will be about.

Turn off, Julie Andrews and the tape recordings in your head that tell you what you’re supposed to do. They just get in the way. Unique problems require unique solutions.

Beginnings Have a Part to Play in Setting Up Your Conversation

Who cares about how the fire began if you need to get out of the building NOW? Get the facts and worry about how it started later.

When you’re creating something new, problem solving, or envisioning what could be, information is nebulous and coming from many directions. The challenge is to order it and give form–not to find the beginning. Here are some tips on how to get your idea going before the blank screen and the beginning knock you down.

Write your idea as a compelling question you want to answer. Then write the answer as – bullet points.
Describe an action that you’re looking to make happen.
Write the list of important points that you want to share.
Outline the steps of the how-to.
Lay out the key point of the product review.

If you do one of those first, you’ll know what it is that you want to say.

Then, you can consider one of two things key to context:

Connecting to prior knowledge: What will most of your audience already know about what you’re going to tell them? How can you connect that to what you’re adding to the conversation? That connection is the place to start.
Building background: It might be a fair assessment that most of your audience won’t have experience with what you’re about to tell them. What information or analogy will give them a setting in which to place your conversation? Make that setting the beginning.

Now the beginning is an integral part to play in setting up your most important statements.

Do you ever start in the middle when you’re preparing a report, a blog post, or a presentation?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Are you performing or just presenting?

January 27, 2011 by patty

by Patty Azzarello

Using the stage

Iâm paraphrasing something that Simon Cowell said to an early contestant on American Idol.

You do not seem to be taking advantage of using this stage to perform for millions of people.Â You are acting more like this is a try-out than a performance.

I got to thinking about how people go about communicating, presenting, and behaving at work, and I think this is such an important point:

Are you performing when it counts?

â¦OrÂ are you just presenting, clarifying, and getting through the information?Â Are youÂ defensive â like this is a try-out or a test you need to pass?Â Or are you really owning it and using the opportunity to its full advantage?

Itâs a valuable insight:

Think of any communication as an opportunity to perform.

And I donât mean a shallow, disingenuous performance.Â Or one that is data and quality free.

I mean a performance that is compelling because you really care about it, you invest in how you will present not just what you present, because it matters to you personally to have an impact.

Make something happen.

Own the Outcome, not just the communication.

A good way to think about this is, what would you do differently if you were taking responsibility for the outcome and the actions this communication drives, not just the transmission of the information?

To turn a communication into a performance, you need to think about not only what you want to communicate in terms of the content, but how you will capture and hold their attention.

How will you motivate, interest or excite them?
What is the difference that you want this communication to make?
How will peopleâs point of view be altered if you succeed?
What will they do differently?
What will they remember about the topic? About you?
How will they be entertained or bored?

This is really one of those things that sets high achievers apart.

They have the ability to inspire others with their ideas â to cause motion and action with their words.Â They invest in the performance.

Here are some examples:

Performing a product roadmap presentation

If you are presenting a product roadmap recommendation, your goal is to share the information clearly. You can show timelines, technology choices, product feature additions, costs, competitive data, etc.

Get people excited.

But If you are performing a product roadmap presentation, your goal is to get people excited enough about the future that they give you the funding now, and continued support along the way.

You might include videos of user experiences and requests, physical prototypes, an interactive demo, or mock headlines that trounce the competition.

Performing a Business Review

For these, we always spend so much time on the data, presenting â covering every detail and defending against every hard question in the financials.

You are so much better off if you spend some time performing proactively, off the defense.

How are you going to inspire your reviewers most about the business?
What kinds of ideas will they personally respond to, over and above the numbers?
Why do you personally believe in this business?
What are the most exciting customer stories about how your products and services changed their business?
What is your top sales person doing that you are excited about replicating?

Iâm not suggesting that you skip the data and put on a song and dance show instead of managing the business.

But you can get a lot further with your stakeholders if you take responsibility to excite them with the right images and stories, instead of only boring them with a straightforward presentation of data, progress, and plans.

Performing a Budget Approval presentation

Not just numbers

If there was ever a reason to step up your performance, itâs to get your budget approved.

Loads of data and metrics will not help as much as exciting them about what they will get for the money, and showing them how much you are personally motivated to make a big impact on the business.

Even the most number conscious executives will respond to a compelling story about something that transforms the customer experience or the market.

If itâs a big deal, invest the energy to get your creative, marketing, and sales people to help you with content.
One good story can be worth a thousand spread sheet cells.

What works for you?

What are your techniques to make sure your presentations inspire the right outcomes? Share your thoughts in the comment box!

—–
Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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How to Avoid Using PowerPoint in 5 Easy Steps

October 22, 2010 by Liz

A Guest Post by Scott P. Dailey

You’re losing business because your presentation sucks, not because your fee is too high or someone else is smarter, more creative or more accomplished. You’re going in scared that you won’t compete and that same fear drove your preparedness and your crappy presentation.

… I’ll explain in a minute, but for now, wanna see 200 photographs of my recent business trip to Indianapolis? It’s loaded with killer shots of the thoroughly unremarkable office building I worked from. No? OK. Well what about video of surgeons removing the deceased section of my sigmoid colon? No!? Man, you’re tough to please. Oh I got it! How about I talk to you for an hour about how awesome my six-year-old son is at soccer? …

Seriously. How many of you are remotely interested in any of these topics, let alone eager to view, watch or listen to me carry on about them for an hour?

Now to be fair, maybe if some of my readers work in Indianapolis, they may take an interest in my trip to their fine city. They may, for instance, want to know where I stayed, or if given the right time of year, had I taken the time to catch a Colts or Pacers game. Maybe some among you have also been diagnosed with chronic diverticulitis and like me, had to have abdominal surgery to remove a damaged part of your colon. I bet that segment would want to engage me, if only to relate their experiences to mine. Or possibly your child rocks on the soccer field too and you’re dying to ask what position my son plays, so that you can tell of your child scoring the winning goal as time expired.

So what I’m getting at is that if I’m not able to relate on a visceral level that reflects directly on what’s important to me personally, I’m not likely to care very much about what you want to share with me.

If we know this and somewhere deep down most of us do, why then would we care about your long-winded, one-way presentation? Or an over-detailed dominating PowerPoint presentation?

These pitches, sadly often aren’t about the prospect at all. It’s about what you think of your ability to do a thing or even worse, all things. It is nothing more than what your prospect sees all the time from potential vendors: an overtly talkative brochure, peppered with gratuitous look-at-me platitudes. But what specifically is it doing apart from forcing people to pretend to be enthusiastic about you purely because they’re trapped in a room with you?

Reinvent the presentation experience

In which of your 100 slides do you get me emotional? I ask because that’s actually where I want your presentation to begin. Flip to that slide right now and please begin. I’m listening. Oh your presentation doesn’t have a slide that stirs me? Well in that case, here’s your hat, there’s the door and have a nice day.

Everyone has an unnecessarily verbose and egocentric PowerPoint. I know of no capabilities presentation that is ever justified in being as long as it is. The problem with most of them are that they’re authored by our fear of failure, not our ability to solve the audience’s problems. And so I challenge you to be the anti-presenter! Be the salesperson who goes in there and kills it because fear of:

* leaving something out
* not being good enough
* not getting money

did not color your pitch. If you’re not going to win the business, lose it because you suck, not because your awful presentation messed you up. Here’s five things I do on sales calls that have helped me not lose the business.

Never bring a presentation to a sales pitch.
I bring a business card and the team that will steer the project and that’s it. If I’m responding to an RFP, my response honors (to the letter) the RFP guidelines and requirements. Nothing unsolicited is ever included. I never voluntarily talk about business needs nor present business solutions that fall outside the prospect’s requirements or curiosities.
Research your prospect.
I focus on key players and read up (on and offline) on what is available on each stake holder. I research their successes and failures and because what I do is Web related, I look at the BBB information, along with sentiment surrounding the company’s social and emotional footprint.

It’s important to memorize these fundamentals because the people you’re meeting with are sure to be emotionally invested in the outcome of the gig, as well as their business in general. Exhibiting a good degree of knowledge out the door will help them see you more as an ally, then a vendor.
Shut up.
This one’s tough, because I yap a lot. But yes, I do shut up. I close my mouth and listen to the prospect talk about themselves. This is always the best of all available opportunities to sell yourself too because this is precisely the stage in the sales process where the prospect shows you their cards. If they’re talking about their stuff, you can be assured that they’re going to get excited talking about it.

This is where many perfectly qualified vendors lose the business and never understand why they did. As the prospect is talking about their stuff, the manner with which they exhibit enthusiasm may be foreign when compared to the way you get excited. Doesn’t mean they’re not pumped. So don’t just match their enthusiasm or overdo it. Rather, replicate it using the tone and mood they’re using to convey it. Again, guide them toward seeing you as an ally, not a money-grubbing vendor. Be similar to them, not dissimilar.
Ask Questions.
Ask them questions that force them to talk more about the stuff that gets them excited. Try, when possible, to limit your questions to only those that relate to the topics they are most passionate about. If you’ve been doing great listening, then you already know what turns them on. Taking this specific action has won me more business and gotten me more jobs than any other sales method I use. And for the love of all things holy, be patient. The longer you wait to add your own anecdotes, the more you’ve got them telling theirs. The more they’re busy telling theirs, the more they’ll want to hear yours when your chance comes. Prematurely grasping for the microphone, or worse, snagging it before it’s been handed to you will kill any momentum you’ve been building in the previous steps. simply put: if you see what got ’em hot and bothered, well hell, sex sells! Make ’em talk about it more. Well done. No go cash some checks.
Relate to them.
Suggestion #5 is last on purpose. Offering anecdotes and casual social banter in the earliest stages of a pitch is a stupid decision. Imagine we’re at a party and you and your friends are conversing about the NFL. You’re a club. A clan. All equally vetted by the other. Now imagine I walk up to your group, unknown to you all, and dive head-long into a rant about the NY Jets losing their season opener. What are the odds you’ll dig me?

Relating to the client is really all you’ve been doing to this point, but you’ve been the guy or gal humbly listening, eventually asking questions as you and your friends talk about pro football. After I have demonstrated my interest in you and most importantly, on your terms, you may then be ready to hear my take on a Jets loss.

The time to crack jokes and secure social common ground isn’t when you first sit down. I’ve seen this over and over. Sure you’re a cool dude or chick. Sure you can slay ’em, but earn your seat at that table. Earn the right to be casual.

How do you relate with your prospects? How do you sell customers? Do you use a presentation? Does it work? What separates you from the thousands that do use a capabilities presentation?

—–

Scott P. Dailey is a Web designer, copywriter and network administrator. Recently Scott launched ( http://scottpdailey.com ), his social media blog that makes connections between social networking etiquette and the prevailing human social habits that drive on and offline business engagement patterns. You can connect with Scott via Twitter at @scottpdailey.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Geetesh Bajaj

Thanks, Scott!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

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Great Find: SlideShare

October 23, 2006 by Liz

PowerPoint Without the Hassle

Thank you to Ann Michael who sent me the tip on this new little beauty. The Boston Globe called it YouTube for PowerPoint. Take a look here.

Great Find: SlideShare
Permalink: http://slideshare.net/
Target Audience: Anyone who gives presentations
Content: What do you get when you cross the sociability of YouTube with the slide function of PowerPoint and then mix in a large dose of individuality? They’re calling it SlideShare, and it’s pretty exciting. You can build and upload your own slide shows OR you can go there to watch shows that other folks made.

SlideShare lets you upload PowerPoint or Open Office presentation files. Then you can share them through a online interface much like YouTube. The joy is that now PowerPoint documents can be stored on the Internet. No sending, copying, or moving them to a new machine. You can even embed them in your blog. People are already finding creative ways to make use of this new mashup. Here’s what they say at their main site.

How people are using SlideShare?

Teachers are uploading their own slideshows and also asking students to upload their assignments to SlideShare so that parents can see their work.

Conference organizers are uploading presentations from their conferences.

People are uploading photo slideshows to memorialize a wedding or other special event.

If you are bored, check out the humour on SlideShare. There’s tons of it there!

It’s so easy; it seems everyone is using it. I’ve embedded on here.

There are many beautiful ones at the site that the type more effectively. I chose this because it shows how things still look when not perfectly designed. (I’m sure you’ll use type more effectively.)

To learn more about SlideShare and to see many more shows go the main site or visit their blog.

–ME “Liz” Strauss