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Buying signals: What they are, and what to be alert for

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Buying signals are clues that the mood has shifted and the other person is now ready to agree . . . or at least to be open to what you propose.

To clarify, a “buying signal” doesn’t just mean readiness to purchase; it also includes readiness or openness to take interim steps along the way—such as to hear you out, to hear more, or to take the next step.

These buy signals may come as words, as facial expressions, even as body movements such as relaxing tension, leaning toward you or your product to see it better, and so forth.

Precisely what these buying signals consist of will depend to a large extent on the individual’s own mannerisms. Nonetheless, we all share certain subconscious signals. Here are some buy signals to get you started; in time you will develop a sixth-sense for when the mood has changed.

■ Change in manner or tone. The other person may become more informal and relaxed in the way they sit or speak.

■ Questions are often subtle buying signals. Watch for the switch from questions about the product (which are basically looking for reasons to say No), to questions that relate to practical things like where you are located, or when you can come in.

■ Some statements may be indirect buy signals. A Screen who says, “Our budget won’t allow anything like that this quarter,” is, consciously or not, likely telling you that you’ve won, and it’s now just a matter of finding the right time when some budget dollars will be opening up.

■ Curiosity is itself a buying signal. Be attuned for subtle clues. If you’re selling, for example, productivity improvement software for the office, the Screen might probe for reasons to say No. But the Screen might also be wanting to know more because he is very eager for a way of easing his own workload. Often, the difference will be perceptible in voice tone, energy, and enthusiasm — perhaps even in the kinds of questions. If the questions are somewhat technical, that may be a clue that they have already begun looking for something like you offer.

Continue reading → Buying signals: What they are, and what to be alert for

Finding prospects: how to handle it if you find you need to raise your level of contact within the prospect organization.

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Situation: you’re making a call on a prospect, and you initially think  you are making your sales call to the right person at the right level, but then you get the sense you have come in at too low a level (of budget or authority).

Indicators: Suppose you make your presentation and feel interest on the supposed decision maker’s part. But then you encounter a string of weak objections, one after another.

Remedy: Look through the objections to what is being said underneath. Perhaps the person is ultimately saying, “I can’t really make that decision,” or “I can’t make it alone,” “That’s beyond my spending authority.”

 

Sometimes decision makers suddenly find that they don’t have as much authority as they assumed they had. They start to make the call, then get signals or orders from above, saying in effect, “Better check with upstairs!”  Or perhaps your proposal surprised them by coming in above their purchasing limit.

Or perhaps they picked up on changing political undercurrents in the organization, and realize that it’s prudent to get higher-level sign-offs to cover themselves.

Remedy: If you find out fairly late in the sales cycle that your contact really does not have full Authority, Need, or Dollars, you need to make your contact at a higher level within that organization.

In raising your level of contact, you have two main choices:

First choice: You can withdraw from the call at this point, and attempt to re-establish your contact with the organization at a higher level.  In simple terms, fold your briefcase now, leave this person’s office, and go out and call their boss, or boss’ boss.

But if you leapfrog over your present contact, you may lose a business friend whose feelings are hurt that you went over his head.  It may turn out that although she’s not the Decision Maker, she may be a significant influencer of the final decision.

Or you may come back a few months from now, to find that the person you cut around is now sitting in the decision maker’s chair.

Second choice: It usually works out better to try to move upward to the appropriate level, while taking this person with you. That gives you the chance to make your case directly to the person with real decision-making authority here.  At the same time, that will give your present contact an opportunity to gain favorable exposure to a senior manager in a way that he might not otherwise have been able to arrange on his own.

To accomplish this shift, you might say,

“I agree with you, and I’d be very pleased to meet with Mr. Jackson. I’d like you to come with me when I make that call. Shall I set up an appointment with Mr. Jackson, or would you prefer to do it for us?”

If the present contact agrees to set up the appointment with the senior manager, set a time to check back with him to confirm the date. The knowledge that you will be checking back reduces the likelihood of procrastination.

However, if you do try back a couple of times with this contact, and each time find that he has still not made the call, step in and offer to make the call yourself.

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Sidebar:

Caution! Warning! Never Delegate the Sale!

When the sale moves up to a higher level within the organization, make sure that you move up with it.

You can count on your message being garbled if you let someone else try to do your selling for you. No matter how enthusiastic this other person is, the reality is that he does not know your product and its capabilities the way you do. He simply won’t be able to handle the senior manager’s questions and objections.

Besides, a lower-level manager will tend not to be very aggressive in following through, or in pushing for a Yes decision. After all, naturally enough, his main objective is to keep his job, not to make a sale for you.

Continue reading → Finding prospects: how to handle it if you find you need to raise your level of contact within the prospect organization.

Sales objections: How to handle it if you hear an endless string of sales objections.

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Indicators: It seems that as soon as you demolish one sales objection the prospect raises another, and then another.

What this indicates: A string of relatively insignificant objections, thrown out one after the other, usually signals that there is a deeper underlying problem that you have not dealt with.  That underlying problem may rest with the person (the prospect with whom you are dealing), or with the organization itself

Before you can make any progress you MUST break out of the pattern of reacting to these sales objections one-by-one, and PROBE to the core of the root difficulty.  Perhaps the real core of their objections is not really the product, or the price, or delivery . . . or any of the usual things like that, despite what they may say.

In other words, the series of seemingly-focused sales objection may be cover for a deeper concern, OR even for a lack of authority to buy, or lack of budget. That string of objections, or other kinds of “phantom” objections, could even be thrown out to cover the fact that this organization has run into some serious financial difficulties.

Sometimes, the customer may throw up this string of objections because she’s embarrassed to admit that she doesn’t have as much buying authority as she had claimed. Or that the rules of the game in the organization have changed since you first talked, so her authority has been diminished.

Or it may be that although she does have Authority, Need, and Dollars, she is worried about the economic climate over the next few months.

In some cases, the prospect herself may not consciously aware of just what that ultimate difficulty is, and has only a vague feeling of unease about proceeding to place the order with you.

Remedy: How to deal with the string of objections?  First, rely on the five-step for handling any kind of sales objection, hesitation, or question:

(1)    PROBE. Explore. Ask questions. Be attuned to subtle signals.

(2)    LISTEN THROUGH to what is really at issue.

(3)    RESTATE.  That is, paraphrase, if appropriate.

(4)    RESPOND in a positive, can-do manner.

(5)    Move on. Don’t get bogged down.

But in this case of the string of sales objections, you’ll need to be flexible and creative in how you probe. For example, you could begin by confronting the hesitation head-on, in hopes of unblocking the prospect’s root concerns:

“You’re raising a variety of issues, but I sense there’s a deeper concern that’s troubling you. Can we talk about that?”

Alternately:    “We’ve discussed a number of your concerns, and I think I’ve dealt satisfactorily with each of them. But when I encounter this many sales objections, that’s usually a signal that there’s a deeper concern operating. Can you help me with what that might be?”

If that doesn’t break through, draw on a combination of intuition and experience, and say something more directive, on the order of, “I sense that behind your hesitation may be some concerns about which way the economy is heading. Could that be at the core of it?”

If the customer concedes that Yes, what you suggest is indeed the root cause, then RESPOND POSITIVELY to it. DO NOT slip into a defensive mode.

Thus, if the concern is the economic climate, you could respond by showing how the savings resulting from installing your product will more than pay for the out-of-pocket expense. Thus the purchase would make sense regardless of the direction the economy takes.

Another possible reason the prospect may be hiding behind a string of phony objections

Sometimes the string of objections is used a cover story to disguise something that the prospect is perhaps embarrassed to talk about . . . perhaps that he or she doesn’t really have the level of buying authority he led you to believe, and is now reluctant to admit it.  (Yes, you should have explored early-on whether this person had buying authority and budget, but perhaps they fibbed, or whatever.)

If that is the case, you may need to try to raise your level of contact in the organization, while taking this person “upstairs” with you.

In other words, you may need to get to a higher level  of decision or spending authority within the organization.

But, caution:  you don’t want to cut out your present contact, or otherwise antagonize them, as, once you have obtained the purchasing OK,  you may be forwarded back from above to this same person.  You don’t want to have alienated them.

How to raise your level of contact within the prospect organization without antagonizing your existing contact.

 

Continue reading → Sales objections: How to handle it if you hear an endless string of sales objections.

5 savvy steps to take in responding to questions and objections

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If you’re making a presentation, or even just sitting in a one-on-one meeting, and someone throws out a question, or even an objection, it seems only natural to respond directly to it.

But that’s not always the best approach, for a variety of reasons. First, you may not really understand the point they are raising (for that matter, the other person may not themselves really understand the issue they are raising). If you respond, more or less blindly, then you may fail to address the issue; worse, you may open up other issues.

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Consultative sales skills: Why and how to set the context

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Consultative selling is selling by asking the questions that prompt the prospect to recognize needs for what you offer.

A key point:  In using a consultative sales approach, ask questions, but shape the meeting as a conversation, not an interrogation. Good consultative sales skills means projecting that you want to learn all you can about the situation, so you can help, NOT that you are there to cross-examine . . . and DEFINITELY NOT that you are seeking to learn their sensitive proprietary information.

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