Sometimes it’s difficult to get your prospect to commit to your offer. Prospects get pulled many directions by your competitors, by their colleagues, and by the fear of making a bad choice.

How can you deal with a prospect’s lack of commitment?

You might have a thousand logical reasons why your prospect should choose you. Ultimately a prospect will decide based on something you probably don’t consider important. To get commitment, you’ve got to figure out what that thing is and make it important to you, too.

Know What People Buy

You probably already know that people don’t always buy what they need; they buy what they want. Yet many salespeople try to sell prospects by telling them what they need. But telling isn’t selling. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!” Obviously, telling doesn’t create commitment.

So how do you make your offering something that they want?

Understand What They Don’t Want, Too

Most people don’t always know what they want, but they almost always know what they don’t want!

You can rapidly build commitment by finding out what they want and don’t want, and initially focus on just those two areas of your product. Don’t tell them everything you have, that will confuse them and confused customers don’t buy. Simpler is better when gaining commitment.

Confused customers don’t buy.

Reduce Risk with a Guarantee

If your prospect is concerned about making the wrong decision, ask, “What would you like to have guaranteed to feel comfortable moving forward?” You don’t have to guarantee it, but the question uncovers where they perceive naked risk: risk that they don’t know how to cover.

Your job is to make them feel comfortable and confident about their area of concern.

Skillfully Manage Objections

Objections are part of almost every sales scenario. Your ability to help a prospect make a new choice becomes an essential sales skill.

Here are some scenarios and solutions that can help you create commitment.

“We don’t want to commit right now.”

Your answer: “I understand. If the timing was right, what would you need from me to commit?”

“We’ve changed our mind.”

Your answer: “I’ve changed my mind before. What was it that caused you to change your mind?”

“But I promised the competitor that I would…”

Your answer: “I’m confused. You told me that we had a better solution yet there seems to be some loyalty to the other brand. Can you help me understand what’s behind that loyalty? If I called them for you, would that help?”

“We can’t get budget commitment until. . .”

Your answer: “O.K. Would you be willing to consider writing a letter of intent because I want to make sure that I can reserve your place in the delivery queue. I don’t want you to suffer because someone can’t yet make a decision on the budget.”

“This has to go to committee for review before we can make a commitment.”

Your answer: “Makes sense. Is this something that you’d like the committee to approve?” If the answer is ‘no’, you have lots of work to do. If the answer is ‘yes’, say, “Great. Let me help you create a strategy to get the committee to approve your choice.” Then evaluate what each committee member needs to support the decision and deliver that customized information to each committee member before the meeting.

Now… go get prospect commitment.

Mark S A Smith
Working with leaders to bring in the right customers, fast.

P.S. I have just one opening for my executive coaching services. If you’d like personalized coaching to help you grow your company with guaranteed results, let’s have a conversation about what we can accomplish. You can schedule time at MarksSchedule.com.