Handling Objections – We are already working with another supplier

Let me know if you find this “Objection Handling Technique” as compelling as I did.

Every now and then you come across a really great sales tip. This happened to me yesterday. I saw a post on a LinkedIn Sales Group. Someone asked a question that peaked my interest — How do you handle the objection, “We’re already working with another supplier.”?

I read through a series of fine, but predictable responses, and then I found a real gem of an answer posted by Aaron Pollack. I tracked down Aaron through his profile and found that he is President of Capital Promotions, http://www.capitalpromos.com/

Aaron was kind enough to allow me to post his response.

There are two really strong ideas to overcome this objection.

The first way rests on the premise that it is very important to always have a few suppliers in case something happens to the primary supplier they are not stuck in a bad spot. It also keeps the suppliers competitive knowing. The role of this line of thinking is to turn the prospect into an open state so you can keep probing and find a way to solve a problem they have better than soneone else.

Ex.

(Prospect Name), most companies have a few suppliers as a safety so they are not left in the lurch in case something happens to their primary lone supplier. How many suppliers are you currently working with right now? (If they say just one)….Doesn’t it make sense to have a back up to make you more secure? If they say yes, then close for a meeting.

There are always trade offs. The way to deal with this is to identify a weakness in the supplier and identify at the same time the things important to the prospect.

Ex. If there was one thing your current supplier could do better what would it be? If they answer with anything (e.g. new ideas, service, pricing etc…) then feed that back as a hypothetical trial close.

(Prospect name), if we could provide you (that thing) would you be open to the opportunity for us to show you how we can give you that?If they say yes, then close for meeting. If you can’t meet then probe for more info so you can submit bid.

Here is an example of how I used it to land a client that ended up spending $500K a year with us. We import premium incentive and promotional items direct from overseas. Often we work with ad agencies who run the program for clients. I cold called one of the biggest agencies in Canada and made my pitch. She said that they currently are buying direct overseas themselves and that she just came back from a China buying trip. At this point it sounds like a dead end. Wrong! Knowing that agency people are so stressed for time, I used a hypothetical around that commodity. I explained that we have deep relationships with overseas suppliers and are experts at overseas sourcing. Because this is all we do, we can likely do the job better and get better pricing that you can. If then asked “Christine, if we can do all the work for you and give you that time back and still deliver you a price that is the same or lower than you are currently paying, would you be open to working with us?”. She said of course and it was all downhill from there.

All of these objections are just words. The most important thing to make them work especially in cold call is too make sure you a good tone so the words are connected to your heart and said with the utmost sincerity. A nice humble tone always works well for these particular objection statements.

Hope this helps you close more deals.

What do you think of this objection handling technique?