Sales Barriers
Handling obstacles is all about perspective

What are your biggest barriers to a sale? Why what are the biggest objections to your sales? Don’t tell me — let me tell you:

1. Your price is too high
2. Satisfied with who we have
3. Can’t get budget approval
4. The decision maker’s on vacation
5. Someone else makes the decision
6. We take the lowest bid
7. They won’t appoint you
8. Need home office approval
9. Our ad agency handles that
10. You need ISO certification
11. Prospect won’t return phone call
12. Prospect is in a business slump
13. Can’t get to the real decision maker
14. You’re not on our approved list.
15. We tried you before and you screwed up
16. We can get it cheaper someplace else
17. We don’t know you
18. We don’t have the money
19. We can get it cheaper on the Internet
20. They won’t tell you the real reason

Is that enough of them? Did yours make the list? More than one of them?

Every salesperson has barriers to a sale and you are no exception. The question is: How do you deal with them?

Traditional sales training says when a barrier (also known as an “objection”) occurs, you have to “overcome” it to make the sale.

Wrong. So wrong.

A salesperson spending time trying to change a prospect’s belief is banging his head against the wall. Hard.

The answer is to look at barriers from a different perspective. The customer’s perspective. The only one that matters. But, what does the customer want? Or better stated, what will entice the customer to buy? If you get right down to it, unless the customer has an imminent need for your stuff, they’re probably going to be concentrating on their stuff.

So, let’s examine the things your customer wants, needs and works for (Hint: It ain’t your product)

EVERY customer and prospect wants:

1. Value to their business
2. More income, more sales
3. No problems
4. Answers to their major issues
5. More leads, more customers, more sales
6. Something to build their business
7. Greater productivity
8. No risk
9. No mistakes
10. Recognition
11. Profit
12. Fun atmosphere

Customers spend 99.9 percent of their time on their own issues. The average salesperson spends zero time on the issues of the customer. See where the gap is?

How are you blending real customer needs into your product or service offering?

Here’s a game plan:

1. Identify (through research or questions) which issues are the burning ones from the customer’s perspective.
2. START your presentation addressing customer issues, not selling your product.
3. Create dialogue that gets the customer to agree that you will help and they will buy as a result of it.
4. Walk away with the sale.

Now, it’s not that simple. BUT it’s an answer you are not addressing. And it’s an answer that will lead you to more sales and less objections. Customers will NEVER object to more profit. Customers will NEVER object to answers to their major issues. Customers will NEVER object to building their business.

The secret is not to overcome objections, the secret is to eliminate them.

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, and Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless. He can be reached at 704/333-1112 or e-mail to salesman@gitomer.com.

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