Handling sales objections: outrageous closing lines
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Dec 29, 2008 @ 03:15 AM
This week many of my customers are in "shut down" mode as people take vacations. So instead of giving my usual sales techniques tips, today's post is about a couple of funny responses to objections from my past. Read ahead, and share your own classic objection handling lines with the blog.
"If I had your money, I'd burn mine." I worked with Tim Mattis at the 2001 Dating Service, my first real sales job, where we put lots of nice folks together in the pre-internet dating era. It was commission only, and people would walk in to talk with Tim and I, who were the only salespeople. For $420 a year, each person would receive a monthly envelope with 6 "matches," consisting of a photo and a little background on the person. When a potential customer objected to the price, Tim would respond: "Oh come on, Jim, if I had your money, I'd burn mine."
"It's so easy to use, even Ray Charles could do it!" Vince Amodeo was my sales manager at Modern Office Machines, where I sold photocopiers, coincidentally my next sales job after the dating service. Many of our sales were made by placing a copier for evaluation at a customer site, training the people to use it, and letting it stay there for a week. We closed 90% of our business that way. Occasionally, someone would voice the concern that the controls were difficult to use, and Vince would get a big smile on his face, hold up his hands, and say "This is so easy to use, even Ray Charles could do it!"
Now these are two techniques I DON'T teach in my telesales training course, but when I sit around with other salespeople and have a beer or two, we end up talking about outrageous closing lines we've heard, and these are the two I usually bring up. What are yours?