Marcus Evans, November's JCI Cambridge speaker, tells us how the workshop went and give us spme tips on how to close a sale:

It was a wet and windy night on the 8^th of November and the JCI were having an event to hand over presidency. There were flowers and awards and the old president stepped down in style.

Then it was a case of on to the workshop. I was taking a short training class on sales. I work as managing director of an office relocation company, but also run an I.T company that helps people with their systems and computer hardware, with no company to small. The most enjoyable part of my job is sales training which allows me to talk to people one on one, or as a group and teach them about the art of sales. If anyone is interested in this just drop me an email to Marcus.evans@nutbourne.com

Over prepared I had four topics to go through but in this case we only went through one. This is to the credit of the JCI as they asked a number of questions and had a higher level of engagement to normal audiences. We went through a number of ways to deal with objections and then split into groups of three to see how these worked in practice, with one person playing the client another the prospect and the third observing. The pitch was to sell Coca Cola to a restaurant. I chose this as everyone is familiar with Pepsi and Cokes rivalry and also it's an easy concrete product to deal with. A service based product would have been much harder to deal with.

After five minutes we broke and then one by one the observers reported back what had gone well, what badly, and how the pitch had gone. By and large the feedback was positive, and each group used different objection handling techniques to deal with the questions that arose. As with all groups it was mixed as to what jobs people did and how experienced at sales they were but it was gratifying to hear the techniques and was also a great bonus to see so many good budding sales people there, especially as I had picked the groups at random.

The techniques themselves are relatively simple with each being a logical response to an objection. Some work by using the objection as a method to close, (Conditional Closing) whilst others allow for a slow moving in on the client by building credibility and overcoming specific difficulties (LAARC).

After this we went through a round of questions before I started onto the second round of objection handling. Before I knew it an hour had passed and we were nearing the end of the talk. People asked more questions as we went and I rounded off with a very brief chat about telesales. Below this blog I have included the more lengthy chat about objection handling and if anyone who was there or anyone who missed it wants to contact me or ask me anything further please let me know.

 

Objection-handling techniques and methods

 

Boomerang: Bouncing back what they give you

LAARC: Listen, Acknowledge, Assess, Respond, Confirm

Reprioritize: So ones you can't handle are lower

Renaming: Change the words to change the meaning

Objection Chunking: Taking a higher or lower viewpoint

Writing: Write down objections then cross them off as you handle them

Conditional Close: Make closure a condition for resolving their objection

Humour: Respond with humour rather than frustration

LAIR: Listen, Acknowledge, Identify objection, Reverse it

Pre-empting: Handle them before they happen.

Pushback: Object to their objection

Reframing: Change their cognitive frame

Deflection: Avoid responding to objection, just letting it pass

Feel, felt, found: A classic way of moving them

Justification: Say how reasonable the objection is.

 

Don't attempt to answer an objection until you are certain you know you have identified the true objection. E.g. 'It's too expensive' could mean:

Costing more than I thought

Outside my budget

More than I can authorise

I'm not convinced of the value

I don't need the product

Four don'ts

Pouncing: Don't pounce, let them talk

Glibness: Don't be glib, you'll sound like you have eaten the sales manual and appear slippery

Don't argue: If you argue you become the enemy

Don't point score: Bluntly proving them wrong will make them unhappy