Where do objections come from?
I continued reading SPIN Selling book. Today I read page 106-142, and once again am amazed how brilliant this book is. After reading about how stating advantages/solutions too early raises objections, I recognise how in a lot of my behaviour I do exactly that!
It’s now more clear to me how offering to call (and idea extract) is actually providing a solution to a problem they haven’t even stated yet. That explains why my earlier openings where more successful: I wasn’t offering anything. I did a quick (you could say messy) introduction that did create some trust. And then I asked an implication question about wether they are spending a lot of time on making price quotes.
A lot of times this got people talking. Sometimes the call would end after a few minutes. When I then offered to do a proper call on a more convenient time (offering a solution) the ‘implied need’ was not developed yet
Your Idea Extraction calls are the product to be sold first
While I tell people I don’t have a product to sell yet, I came to realise offering the actual IE call is a product in itself. It wouldn’t cost your prospects money, but time. I handled my offers like a ‘small sale’, because I thought the time investment would be small. I’m starting to think otherwise. The time investment might be small, but the information about their business is very delicate. Let alone the effort thinking about changing their business.
So I’d better develop the implied needs to a more explicit need before I offer to help.
Building my call proposition
I was having a hard time explaining my offer so I thought about refining my offer. After trying to improve it myself for weeks now, I thought it would be wise to ask some help from a professional.
But, the objections I’m facing might not even be because of my unclear proposition. Of course I think it’s still a good idea to work on my proposition. But after realising I’m talking about my offer way too early, I think it’s much more important to ask the right implication questions early in the call. Those would lead the way to an explicit need after which I should state my offer.
I’m in the middle of chapter 7, opening the call. So I might learn more about that.