Selling Is Hard Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle by Garin Hess

Author:Garin Hess
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: River Grove Books
Published: 2020-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

Preemptively Address Common Objections

Along the way, your prospects will have concerns.

The 2017 Gartner Technology Buying Dynamics Survey provides, “Surveyed buyers report that ‘cost’ is the No. 1 most frequent objection internally to purchase decisions. ‘Risk’ follows as the No. 2 most frequently cited objection, and both are cited as the two most time-consuming objections to resolve.”5

Figure 23: Gartner’s “Objections to Purchase Decisions”: Research from Gartner shows objections thrown out during or after the meeting and the most time-consuming objections to resolve. We encourage you to make your own list and then decide when you proactively bring them up.6

As a trusted partner and guide through the buying journey, instead of trying to sweep the risks under the carpet, you should bring them out in the open before they ever come up, but then educate the buying group on the reasons it is worth it and how you can help mitigate those risks.

As I mentioned earlier in the book, research shows that objections lengthen the sales cycle by several months, so the earlier you educate your buyers on overcoming objections, the faster the purchase decision becomes. And, as a side benefit, it’s a less painful emotional experience for your buyers. Because you bring those common pitfalls up early, before they become concerns, buyers perceive those as educational experiences rather than concerns that were addressed.

Many salespeople will make a list of common objections and how to handle them. I suggest you take it a step further and organize the list by role and stage of buying process. Think of objections as frequently asked questions (FAQs), and guide your buying group to the questions and answers they should be thinking about.

If a typical buying group consists of an end user, marketing leader, human resources leader, IT professional, C-level leader, and legal, you would need to personalize stories, demos, and so on for each of those roles. The end user may have questions about ease of use or how your solution integrates with their favorite email system. The IT professional wants to know how it meets GDPR requirements. These are just a couple of examples of the many questions that can come up.

Personalize the concerns and questions that come up by role so that you and your internal champion know how to address them. Equip your internal champion with these personalized FAQs to be prepared for concerns that frequently come up when they evangelize inside their organization. Not only will this prevent them from being caught off guard as often, but it will also build confidence in you as the trusted partner. (Not sure where to start? I’ve put together some ideas to get you started on this in the “Risks to Consider and Mitigation Strategies” template recommended in the Appendix.)

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