This week’s question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.
Hi David,
I’ve been focusing on sales, sales, sales this past week. During my sales calls, I keep getting objections around money.
One person knew she wanted to work with me (she said it was a “no brainer”). But before I could tell her the price, she said, “I can’t afford it right now. I just got back from traveling to another country and I’ve spent all my last money on getting home.”
I pointed out that I hadn’t even shared the price yet. She laughed and said she just needs a few months to get her stuff together. How do I handle this kind of objection?
When she said she couldn’t afford it—the moment you realized she didn’t even know how much the price was—your response should have been:
“Do you have any intention of saving the money? Or do you just not want to do this? Because you said ‘no’ without even knowing what the price was.”
You need to get down to what the real problem is,
and cut the BS.
Otherwise, you’re not dealing with the real problem.
This is a person who’s afraid to tell you, “No.” One of the most difficult things for a human being is to tell another person, “No.” You have to give the person permission to say no, if you think that they’re BS’ing you.
Anybody who says “no” or “I can’t afford it” without knowing the price, probably isn’t someone you want to work with anyway.
When someone says, “I can’t afford it”—what they’re really telling you is, “It’s not a priority in my life right now.” That just means you haven’t conveyed the correct urgency in that call.
If it’s urgent enough, a person will move it to the top of the priority list in their life.
If it CAN be urgent enough,
your job is to help them see that it’s urgent.
To tap into a person’s urgency during a sales call, it’s very simple.
Ask them, “What do you want?” And get to the core of what they really want. Ask them, “What’s going to happen if you don’t change?” Ask, “How serious are you about changing this right now?” That’s it.
