Increase Sales
So, here’s a question for all you, why do most of your buyers not buy after you give a presentation? The other day in a coaching session, I asked a client, “in the last 30 days what percentage of proposals that you gave turned into money. I mean what percentage of people actually gave you money?”
He told me 26.8%. Now it was amazing that he even knew that figure because most people don’t. So that means 73.2% of people he talked to, 7 out of 10 that he gave a presentation to did not buy.
Why is that? They got money. They want to buy, they are conditioned to buy. Buying would satisfy an emotional need. It would increase their pleasure or decrease their pain. So why didn’t they buy?
I’m reminded of a Peanuts cartoon that has run some variation since almost the beginning of the Peanuts cartoon strip. In the cartoon, Lucy is holding a football and Charlie Brown is running up to kick the football. At the very last minute, Lucy snatches away the football. Charlie Brown falls for that trick over and over and over again.
Just recently, I saw the new version of that where Charlie Brown says just this one time, she promises me she’s not going to move the football. And he runs up again to kick the football and guess what Lucy does, she pulls away the football.
Bad Buyers Experience
Your buyers have experienced the same sort of thing. They have made buying decisions in the past and realized that what they bought was something they didn’t need or it was something they paid more money than they should have or they bought something that didn’t work the way it was advertised on TV.
Example. The infomercial showed a gadget that sliced tomatoes beautifully. You put a tomato in it. You hit the plunger and it gives you perfectly sliced tomatoes only $19.95, $4.95 shipping.
You thought, how cool would that be to own one of those things. You ordered the thingy. It arrived and you couldn’t wait to try it. You put a tomato in it and hit the plunger. Squished tomatoes everywhere. Bummer.
Your buyers have had some variation of that experience over and over and over and over again. Sales people promised the moon and what they delivered were moon pies. Buyers have been screwed, blued and tattooed by sales people forever.
Your buyer is like Charlie Brown and he relieves that miserable experience every time he gets ready to make a buying decision. He’s thinking, “are they going to pull the football away from me this time? Am I going to be disappointed again?”
The older your buyer is, the more buying experience they’ve had, the more sales people they have dealt with and the greater the fear they have of being disappointed again.
Your buyer gets right up to the edge. They want to make a purchase. They want to believe you this time. They’re thinking this time is going to be different. They want to believe, but they don’t because of their previous experience.
You might be thinking OK, “so what are buyers afraid of”?
They are afraid of a lot of things. They are afraid of making a mistake. They are afraid that even though buying from you today looks like the thing to do, that they’ll regret that decision tomorrow or next week or next month. They fear buying something they don’t really need or they fear pain more than they should. And the higher the price and the more choices they have to pick from, the greater their fear. They fear losing respect of self and of others. When people make a buying decision that turns out to be a mistake, it erodes their self-image and they think, “I can’t believe I was so stupid. I can’t believe I made that kind of mistake.”
HOW to Increase Sales
If you buying in what I am saying, here is how to increase your sales. You acknowledge their fear. Most sales people do not want to address the unspoken objections. Most sales people want to give their presentation and close as quickly as they can, get the hell out of dodge and hope the prospect doesn’t change their mind.
Most sales training teaches sales people not to bring up objections. Don’t say anything that’s negative. Don’t bring up any objections. Don’t bring up anything that’s negative about your product. Don’t bring up any of the limitations or the inadequacies or the fallacies and for God’s sake, don’t bring up the fact that the prospect may be struggling about making a bad decision.
I would submit to you that you have got to bring all that stuff up. You’ve got to put it on the table. You’ve got to give it a name and you’ve got to one by one diffuse those objections and those fears before you try to close.
Ninety-eight sales people out of hundred don’t have the communication skills or the guts to address those negative issues for fear that they’re going to lose the sale. They would rather sweep them under the rug and not deal with them. Realize this, whether you deal with them or not, the prospect has still got fears and the more of those fears they have, the less likely you are going to be to get their money.
Be strong, don’t be a wimp.