No Risk Selling

Probably the greatest fear that prospects have, is the fear of making a wrong decision.  Haven’t you experienced this yourself?

The what if’s get in the way

And when they do, procrastination can deprive our prospect of the wonderful benefits that our offering can provide them, and we can lose the opportunity to serve them and to have another happy customer.  It is much easier to not make a decision, then it is to make a decision.

At the point of decision our prospect’s brain can “flip flop”.

It can flip from “Yes it feels safe to go ahead” to “I’m not so sure, maybe I should give this more thought.”

Fear of making the wrong decision can be very powerful and we can relate to this because we have all experienced this ourselves.  So how can we help our prospect…

Remove the fear of making a wrong decision?

Can we take away all of the risks associated with making a decision?  I often ask this question of participants in our TOP GUN Sales Workshops. What are the very real fears that our prospect may have in their mind?

If this is not the right decision then I’ll,

• Lose my money
• Waste my time
• Look stupid

In the end, all buying decisions are made emotionally, in the right hemisphere of the brain, while the left hemisphere looks for all of the logical reason why we should go ahead or not.

This is why it is not enough to get our prospect emotionally excited about going ahead.

We must also give them enough logical (left brain) reasons why they should go ahead, in order to justify their emotional decision.  This is why we need to ask our prospect questions which evoke both emotional responses, as well as logical responses.  We must then present our solution (product or service) so it addresses both emotional as well as logical reasons to go ahead.

So how can we remove any risks associated with going ahead?

I often ask sales people in workshops, what will you and / or your company do if your client is disappointed in your product or service?

• Will you take your product back?
• Will you refund your client the money they have paid?
• Can you make them happy?’
• Can you reassess their needs and offer an alternative?

In most cases these sales people say YES we do that now.

So my question to them is does your prospect know this?

“Well I guess they do!”  “Or do they?”

If you can eliminate the risk associated with making a wrong decision, then there is no risk, is there?

You want a happy customer as much as they want to be a happy customer

So why not make it clear to your prospect that you and your company will take all of the risk?

This is called RISK REVERSAL

Tell your prospect that you will take all of the risk and they can make their decision risk free.

• If you have a money back guarantee, then tell your prospect
• If you have an exchange policy then tell your prospect

But won’t some prospects take advantage of us if we do this?

The short answer is yes, some will.  We have offered a money back guarantee to our clients for 32 years now on all of our workshops, seminars, coaching programmes, CD and DVD programmes

Have we had clients who have taken advantage of us?  Yes we have, but I can count these on one hand.  Have we made extra sales and profits through this policy – ABSOLUTELY YES.

Reversing the risk makes it easier for our clients to say yes.  So if you have policies that reverse the risk for your clients tell them.

We’ll take it back if you lose your job within the next 12 months

At the time I am writing this, we are facing hard economic times across the world. One automobile manufacturer has taken the unprecedented position of offering to take back their customer’s new motor vehicle, if their customer loses their job within the next 12 months.  Will they have to take back some vehicles?  Probably yes.  However will they sell some extra vehicles because of this guarantee?  That’s a BIG YES!

The same things that can cause a missed sale are the same things that can cause a “missed approach” on final when landing my Beechcraft Bonanza. When this happens, I have to make a very definite and quick decision to abort the landing and “go around”.

Click here to discover how to handle objections and close more sales in less time

As any pilot will tell you, the last critical 2 to 3 seconds of the landing is mostly determined by how well you set yourself and your aircraft up on the “final approach” and all of the work and careful preparation you have done beforehand in getting into the circuit pattern.

There are many things that can challenge a pilot on this final approach like unexpected turbulence, cross wind, windshear etc. However, good training and lots of practice prepares us for the “unexpected”.

Selling and landing a sale is just like that.

So many sales people (and even some sales managers who should know better) that I meet, say “Teach me how to close the sale and then I’ll be successful in sales.”

Like landing a plane, that final 2 to 3 seconds of your sales interview when you want to land the sale, is determined by how well you’ve set up your “approach” to this “landing”. If you are skilled and have for example, asked the right questions to determine your prospect’s real needs early in the process, then you will probably be making the right recommendation. If you then know how to make a persuasive presentation without being “high pressure” and overbearing, then you’ll be on the “glide slope” for a nice landing.

Like flying, knowing how to do these things properly comes from good training, re-training and practice, practice, practice. All of the most successful sales professionals that I know have invested hundreds of hours and thousands of their own dollars in this training.

Our recent 4 day TOP GUN® Sales Bootcamp in Melbourne reminded me of this. We had a mixture of very experienced and very successful sales people, and people new to sales too who were deadly serious about their success. Yet I see sales people who think they can learn by trial and error and just pick up the skills along the way.

Can you imagine if pilots took that approach?

Don’t laugh, when ultralight aircraft were first introduced into Australia in the 1970′s this is exactly what happened. People would build these aircraft themselves and then teach themselves to fly. They were killing

themselves all over Australia for years until the Government changed the legislation to mandate proper pilot training.

If you’ve done every thing right before you begin closing the sale, then will you smoothly land the sale?

Well not always. When you are on final and just about to land, just like flying there may be some unexpected “turbulence” in the form of objections.

Again if you’ve been trained properly you’ll know exactly how to handle these situations. If you haven’t, then your sale may crash and burn at the end of the runway.

There are strategies for handing objections properly and in

my experience 90% of sales people don’t know anything about them. We teach them and it makes all of the difference.

Make sure your skills are up to speed. Happy landings!