We’re going to get into dealing with COVID 19- sales and price objections in this episode but first…
Don’t stop selling! Deals are still happening. Your job is on the line if you’re not seen to be generating revenue right now. So keep on selling #SalesNation!
We’re still getting deals done at Salesman.org. Last week we closed and started delivering on the second biggest corporate training program we’ve ever done. Deals are still happening.
Now with that said, I’ve no doubt that when you’re speaking with potential customers you’re getting all kinds of objections about the COVID-19 pandemic.
So in this video I’m going to share how you can overcome any COVID-19 buying objection and continue to thrive in sales.
When you get a “I can’t buy because of COVID-19” objection. You need to reframe it.
The process of reframing is when you change the window that people see the world out of. Let me show you this visually…
From the example on the whiteboard. Person 1 at the top has a narrow frame. They don’t see much through their window other than what is right in front of them. Even though this person logically knows that there are other unexplored possibilities around them.
Now person two on the other hand is open to expanding their frame of the world. They now see both the chump change that was right in front of them and also the opportunity to make some serious cash in this market too. This opportunity was there all along but they didn’t see it before their frame widened.
So your goal when prospects give you COVID-19 objections is to widen their frame so they can see both opportunity alongside the threats they’re focused on.
I went through a moment of frame expansion a few months ago. I was selling our Salesman.org membership to individuals. I love helping individual salespeople become wildly motivated and destroy their sales quotas. That’s why we build the Salesman.org platform int he first place.
It wasn’t until a listener of the Salesman Podcast who happened to be a sales leader in a large organisation asked if they could buy Salesman.org it for their entire sales team that my frame changed. II realised that there was a lot more revenue available in the training budgets of enterprise sales teams than what the average salesperson is willing to spend on their own training.
I went from seeing a pile of pounds to a mountain of new revenue OVER NIGHT.
This enlarged view of the opportunities in the market doubled our revenues within a few sales calls!
So that’s the concept of frames and reframing. But wow do we use this to deal with objections about COVID-19 that are stopping our buyers taking action?
Well you need to reframe their fear as opportunity to take market share. So for example, when you call upon a prospect they say:
I’m not spending any money right now because I’m unsure if my customers will keep buying because they’re working at home because of the COVID-19 issues.
So firstly, acknowledge the objection and then reframe it by saying: “Can your customers still use your product from home? It seems like right now they might be even more willing to buy your product because they need to become more efficient in their business to survive.”
See what I did there? I shared a statement of “Can your customers still use your product from home?” which widens the frame the prospect is seeing the world through. Then I gave them a supportive statement to let them know that I’m on their side.
I’ve a perfect example of this from just a few days ago.
I was waiting on a purchase order from a large fortune 500 organisation. They were planning to sign up their sales team to the salesman.org platform. So I jumped on the phone to see if I could push the deal through quicker.
I got hit with the objection “I’m not sure if we can commit right now, our sales team are all working from home”.
I widened this persons frame of the world by saying “GREAT! They’re going to get even more use out of the Salesman.org platform each day. In the time they’re usually commuting they can login, do some training and have better sales results than if they were still working from the office”.
It was an “ah-ha” moment for this VP of sales and he got the paperwork over minutes later. They got access to our training the same day and he was really happy with the results they got.
So that’s how to deal with a true objection by widening your prospects frame on the issue.
But I did have one of our Salesman.org members ask me question on a our office hours live chats today that is relevant here too. They said they got the objection of “I can’t spend capital right now as I’m worried about what’s unfolding”.
During the live-chat I explained to him that, that is not a real objection. That is someone telling you how they feeeeeel about their environment right now.
So when dealing with an objection based around feelings rather than facts, instead of jumping in and trying to deal with what they’re saying. You should get the real objection out of them by saying “can you tell me specifically why you feeeeeeeel that way…?”.
Now they might say one of two things:
- They could say “I feeeeel this way because well I sell to airlines and they’re closed down right now”
- Or they might say “I feeeeeeeel this way because I sell to marketers and I don’t think that they’re going to want to buy right now”.
The first objection is real. Airlines are closed and now that you know the truth you can logically deal with it.
The second objection of “I don’t thiiiiiiink that they’re going to want to buy right now” is their feelings about the situation. This is not a real objection and so you again ask them “why do you feeeeeeeel that way…?”.
Keep doing this until they give you something logical and then you can attempt to counter their logical objection by widening their frame on the situation.
