The Surefire Way to Gain Final Commitment

When a prospect does not fully understand what you are offering or if they don’t believe what you are saying, objections can and do occur. Remember that if a person was not at all interested in what you have to offer, they would not even bother objecting. Sales in and of itself can entail changing a prospect’s perceptions about your products or services.
Here is an easy-to-use three-step process that will help you to engage your prospect and gain final commitment.

1) Validate

2) Similar situation story

3) What I’d like to do …

Validate

First of all, you never want your prospect to get the impression that you are confronting or arguing with them. This would break rapport completely and not allow you to move forward with any kind of closing attempt. So the idea is to let the prospect know that you respect their opinion and that you understand where they are coming from – even if you do not necessarily agree with them.

It sounds like this …

“Mr. Smith, I completely understand; I can certainly appreciate your concern.” This diffuses a situation that could get a bit tense if you don’t let the prospect know that you are “in their corner”. By validating their concern, you allow the prospect to lower their defenses and they will actually listen to what you have to say instead of mentally checking out. At this point you are still in the game to make the sale.

Similar situation story

Secondly, people like to relate to others and stories make a black and white picture into color. Remember the old saying, “Features and facts tell while benefits and stories sell.” Here’s an example, “Mr. Smith, I had a similar situation with another one of my clients. They too were concerned that there would be a lot of change fees on their financial printing order. They decided to go with us based on our reputation of excellent customer service and they’re glad they did. What they found was that, not only did they not incur exorbitant change fees to their order, they actually paid less than what they had budgeted for that line item.”

When you are using stories, the more details you can offer, the more impact they will have on your prospect. So start collecting stories of great customer service and how your company “saved the day” for a client. Record examples of how their initial concerns were proved wrong by world-class attention to detail, celebrity service, going above and beyond etc. This helps to move a prospect past their concerns to a higher level of trust with you and your company. It sets you up to close the sale.

What I’d like to do …

Any time you are making a closing attempt, remember to approach this part of the process from the paradigm that “sales is service”. You are serving your customer by helping them make the right decision for them and their company. Lead them to the natural conclusion of the process by being strong and yet still having a balance between frankness and diplomacy.

It would sound something like this coming off your similar situation story, “So, what I’d like to do is get the paperwork signed so we can start providing you with excellent value today.” This is both assumptive and seamless as you come off the positive emotion created from your similar story.

This simple process overcomes the objection, creates a positive perception in the mind of the prospect and closes the sale with a smooth transition. Start collecting real stories that you can use for your similar situations today.

-Michael Stahl