Alan Leach, the CEO of West Wood Clubs, Ireland, shares two simple sales tools to help eliminate sales resistance.
Your first step in closing sales is to discover your prospect’s No. 1 goal. Because when you know your prospect’s goal, you can show them how you can help. This is a sale going well.
Your prospect may not always tell you what they want. This reluctance to open up is caused by “sales resistance” — when your prospect has the mindset “you won’t sell me today no matter what you try.”
We often trigger this sales resistance by the questions, like, “What prompted you to call in to see us today?” This can be the worst question to ask. Why? Because they may elicit the responses you don’t want to hear, such as “I’m only looking around.”
Here are two simple sales tools to help eliminate sales resistance:
1. The Menu Question. A menu question uncovers your prospect’s No. 1 goal, and it comes after you build rapport. But a great sales menu question has three components. First, it tells your prospect what you do. Second, it makes it easy for your prospect to tell you what they want.
An example of a sales menu question: “At ABC Gym, we specialize in helping clients lose weight, get fit, tone up and be stronger. What are you most interested in? Is it to lose weight, to get fit, to tone up or to be stronger?”
2. Adding the Conditional “if” Statement. If your prospect sees you as a salesperson, they may still be sales resistant and say, “At this stage, I’m just inquiring.” The best way to avoid this is to be conditional and insert the word “if” into your menu.
So, your sales menu question changes to: “At ABC Gym, we specialize in helping clients lose weight, get fit, tone up and be stronger. If at some stage you were going to get started at ABC Gym, what are you most interested in? Losing weight, getting fit, toning up or getting stronger?”
And with very resistant prospects, you can even be more conditional: “If in the future you were ever thinking about getting started at ABC Gym, what is it you might be interested in? Would it be to lose weight, get fit, tone up or be stronger?”
The point is the more “conditional” you make your menu question, the more likely they are to tell you what they want earlier in the sales process.
