Overcoming Objections

Sometimes people say "no." Great for the existence of free will, anti-smoking campaigns and getting television abominations like "Dads" cancelled, but not always good for your bottom line. It should go without saying that that little two-letter word can be bad for business, and yet here we are talking about it. Why?

Because in sales, the word "no" doesn't have to be final.

See, behind every "no" is a reason—an excuse even—and those are rarely ironclad. If you can beat the excuse, you can make the sale.

1. "Sorry, but it's just not in the budget."

Sometimes, "it's not in budget" is an honest admission of a company not having the money to pay for your services. Other times, it's a failure of creativity and budget-understanding on the client's part—two problems you can help them solve. As Bob Schwei, director of print and packaging for iPROMOTEu, Wayland, Mass., explained, the key to beating a tight budget is understanding it, especially how it was calculated and how funds are allocated throughout the year. He said that if an order can be looked at as a potential revenue stream, rather than just a marketing expense or similar cost, many times people's objections on a purchase will change.

Schwei also said that on the print side, many times a budget is dictated on the frequency it's bought instead of a one-time purchase. "Many times, when there are alternative choices to buy the same print work, just in a different frequency, this can be a work-around where the budget is concerned," he said. "For example, Print ABC was awarded a 500,000-piece run because they worked out a warehouse release program where the print was printed on-demand and billed on release, versus the traditional method of paying for the entire run upfront. Let creativity help dictate where the budget really falls."