Podcast episode
The science of asking better questions and handling objections (David Priemer, Founder @ Cerebral Selling)
30 Minutes to President's Club7 Jul 202132 min
Description
Join the most tactical sales newsletter in the world: https://hubs.ly/Q01-R33G0 Four Actionable Takeaways: * “Cut” your prospect before showing them the band-aid - solidify the enemy. * Utilize stories when you hear a clear prospect pain-point. * Ask related questions before the big questions. Start small before going big. * Plant landmines with credibility and aligning yourself with the features your prospect cares about. ====================== David’s Path to President’s Club: * Founder of Cerebral Selling * Lecturer at Smith School of Business at Queen's University & London Business School RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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And then if I ask you afterwards, how many times do you ask your vendors for support? You're already on defense because you've already defended your relationship with your vendor versus if I lead with, hey, how many times do you ask your vendor for support first before I ask you how happy you are with your vendor? “They're more likely to bring me in the right direction.” Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. They're much more likely to have an emotional reaction. Now, again, it's a calculated question because if they say, actually, I haven't called my vendor at all in the last year, then they're going to have this like positive halo effect from the first question. So you need to be mindful of the questions that you're asking and use calculated questions,
And then if I ask you afterwards, how many times do you ask your vendors for support? You're already on defense because you've already defended your relationship with your vendor versus if I lead with, hey, how many times do you ask your vendor for support first before I ask you how happy you are with your vendor? “They're more likely to bring me in the right direction.” Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. They're much more likely to have an emotional reaction. Now, again, it's a calculated question because if they say, actually, I haven't called my vendor at all in the last year, then they're going to have this like positive halo effect from the first question. So you need to be mindful of the questions that you're asking and use calculated questions,
When the customer says, oh, it's too expensive. We love, hey, no, Armand, we love your product, but it's just too expensive. One of the ways that we can handle that objection is what I refer to as consider the alternative. So I challenge the customer to say, hey, look, you know what? Maybe this product isn't for you. And maybe you're right. Maybe you don't need our product. “Maybe you could get away with a slightly less expensive product.” What might that look like for you? Right? I get you to kind of go down that road. Now, I would only use that tactic per se if I believed that you were actually better off with my product, because otherwise I'm going to push you further into the camp of the other product, right? So we always have to be mindful of the emotion, emotional response that our questions create
We would say, well, hold on a second. Like we had this whole discovery call where you said you didn't want this. Like you wanted what we had. You wanted the more progressive, you know, ongoing coaching thing. And they said, no, no, no, we do. We do. And we just don't know how to write the RFP essentially to ask for this. And so sometimes when we take a step back and we “say, Hey, look, based on these requirements, I don't know if we're a fit for you. And we” re-qualify. Sometimes they come back, but sometimes, you know, we, if we give them the option to say, no, Hey, look, I don't know if this is a fit. Most of our clients, they typically look like this. They act like this. This is kind of what they're looking for. I'm not seeing that here. And if that's not what you're looking for, like that's okay too. Like we can part as friends.
ongoing maintenance then they're going to align with me. If they want something that's infinitely configurable they're going to go with the other vendor and the other challenge is it has to be at the right time. You know one of the challenges a lot of sales people fall into one of the challenges they have is that as soon as we get a little bit of resistance from the customer or “they've ghosted on us then we immediately start with like the breakup emails and like oh have I” lost you do you not want our solution and they're just like no like it's been it's been a week and you email me twice like I was busy you know it's not just selecting the right tone and the tactic but doing it in the right context with the right timing that's why and I couldn't agree more with
do you think about getting the deal done this week whatever it is. We have to stop doing that. We have to give our customers, and by the way, salespeople do that inadvertently. You know, often, for example, when we do prospecting and I reach out to Nick and I say, Oh, hey, Nick, it's David from Cerebral Selling. Hey, so listen, you know, I was thinking we work with leaders like you all the time to do A, B and C. “If you'd like to spend 15 minutes, how is Wednesday at 2 p.m.?” Like that's another example of how I'm trying to like you think to yourself, oh, I'm making it easy. All Nick has to say is like, yes. And then boom, calendar invite. But what I'm really doing is I'm pushing Nick away by having him think, who's this guy? Why was he shooting times to meet next week? No, I mean, if I decide to meet, it's going to be on my terms.