Salesmanship University

Sales Techniques – Using the Affordable Close

Having the affordable close as part of your arsenal of sales techniques is a must. It helps you get around one of the biggest obstacle – the price objection. With this technique, you can help your prospect purchase what he desires without compromising the price of your product.

In order for this to work, you have to be sure your prospect is genuinely concerned about the price. Price objection is frequently a smoke screen that hides other issues. Due to a lack of rapport or trust, your prospect is unwilling to share his true concern with you.

Thus you must spend time to build strong rapport and be on the same page as your prospect. Ideally this is done before you begin your presentation. As that happens, you must also win his trust. Presenting your accolades and testimonials may be useful to this end.

Here is a simple way to work around price objections by using the affordable close:

1. Determine what is the budget your prospect has in mind.

2. Restructure the payment by breaking it up into months or days.

For example, upon hearing the rental for his new accommodation costs $3,000 per month, your prospect starts complaining about the price. Having determined his budget was $2,500, you now present to him the benefits of the house, then tell him for another $17 per day, he can enjoy them all.

By reframing the objection in this way, the additional payment seems small compared to the benefits he will get. At this point, he’ll take another serious look at the offer, giving you a chance to re-emphasize those emotional benefits to him.

Car salesmen and property agents are well versed in this technique…they have to. Prospects are more careful when purchasing big-ticket items. They also become more price conscious, as bad purchases can adversely affect their lifestyle. But let me show you how things are done in this arena.

You can easily get prospects to cough out $50,000 more for their dream home. All you have to do is get them to stretch $200 more per month over 30 years. Sounds more affordable now, isn’t it? Almost magically, your prospects will begin to move you toward the close if they really desire to own this house.

As powerful as this technique is, we as business owners and sales professionals have to use it with integrity. If we overstretch our prospects, he may end up in financial difficulty. If this happens, we will also lose repeated sales that can otherwise come from him in the future.

Thus you should always strike a balance when using the affordable close. As you stretch your prospect’s budget, you may also employ the trial close to get a feel of how comfortable he is to the new figures.

You can practice this skill everyday by breaking different payments down to days and months. Observe how other businesses are doing it with interest free installments and deferred payments. Also experience how your emotions shift as other salesmen use this technique on you. Go to a car dealer and learn a few tricks from them…

After a while, you will gain confidence as you employ this technique and soon you’ll be using it unconsciously each time you face a price objection.