3.Be Clear. Be Logical. Be Brief. Don’t be brief at expense of being misunderstood. Clarity starts with you. Clear answers to your prospects overriding question... What can you do for me?...will lead to understanding and sales.

4.Maintain Control. Never sit between two buyers. Don’t let prospect read ahead or thumb through your visual aids until you’re ready for him to. Ask prospect to instruct his secretary to hold all calls during your presentation. (It takes guts to sell.)

5.Seek Change of Pace. Put bounce in your voice. Change pace, tempo, and volume. Ask lots of questions. Get verbal confirmation of agreement at each stage of presentation.

6.Prepare For Interruptions. Don’t be flustered or thrown off balance. Expect interruptions and use them to summarize key sales points.

7.Involve The Prospect. Give prospect something to feel, handle, manipulate, examine. Let prospect mentally take possession of your product or service.

8.Gauge Your Progress. Progress should be measured in terms of understanding. No understanding...no sale. The more prospect agrees with you, more progress you are making.

9.Give A Complete Sales Talk Every Time. Your presentation must perform four important functions: (A) Win prospects attention, (B) hold his interest, (C) persuade and convince him of rightness of your proposition, and (D) prove that a buying decision is a logical step for him to take.

10.Seek A Buying Action...Expect To Close. A good presentation naturally leads to a buying decision. Make it easy for customer to buy. If your prospect was properly qualified and your sales presentation on target, you will find selling process goes quickly and easily.

So while any of these factors can turn apathy into your opportunity, sometimes a little divine intervention steps in to help you in overcoming sales objections.

One day a lightning storm and blackout pushes your client's "server" over edge. When power's restored, server cannot even boot up to its welcome or logon screen. So now, small business owner is scrambling with internal guru at 2 a.m. trying to restore company's corrupted contact management database, which contains 25,000 records and three years of data.

Fear of Catastrophic Data Loss and Overcoming Sales Objections

Situations such as catastrophic data loss, although horrible tragedies for those affected, are great motivators for combating apathy and overcoming sales objections. All of a sudden, small business owner becomes extremely receptive to your suggestions about your proposed networking solution, which of course features centralized security and data protection.

Discontinued technical support is another powerful counterforce for overcoming apathy-rooted sales objections, especially when you're talking about vertical, industry- specific software, such as niche applications designed for accountants, attorneys, physicians, realtors, auto body shops and restaurants.

After a certain point, independent software vendor (ISV) selling vertical, industry-specific software draws a line in sand and stops providing technical support, annual updates, and patches for older versions of their product.

So if your client is an accounting firm that needs updated tax tables (they'd basically be out of business without them), your client is forced to upgrade tax software, which often in turn forces an upgrade of server. This results in a call to your firm to upgrade their server (and several related highly lucrative product sales and service opportunities for your firm), all as a result of "domino effect" from an ISV calling shots.

With this kind of scenario, you don’t even need to do much of work in overcoming this sales objection. Your prospect’s, customer’s, or client’s vertical ISV has done "heavy lifting" so to speak in overcoming sales objections.

So besides fears of unreliable systems and vendor-mandated upgrades, you can also overcome apathy by discussing your prospect's, customer’s or client's competition (without naming names, of course). If you work with many small businesses in same industry, and you're seeing a software or more general technology trend that drastically alters competitive landscape in your prospect's or client's industry, by all means call this to your prospect's or client's attention, as a means of overcoming sales objections.

The Bottom Line

If you sell and service IT-related products to small businesses, you need to develop your sales skills for overcoming sales objections. This article introduces you to three different major categories of small business IT sales objections and helps you understand simple anecdotal closing strategies for overcoming those sales objections... and most importantly, closing more big-ticket sales.

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