“It's just not the right time to buy.”
There are a lot of objections that highlight the weaknesses of a salesperson:
These are all examples of lies prospects tell salespeople to kick the can further down the road or to do absolutely nothing. They are very effective because once you hear one of these, there isn’t much that a salesperson can do without creating a fight.
“It's not the right time to buy” is in the same family of objections, but it can be the worst trap of them all. Why? Simply because it is rarely the right time to buy. It works nearly every time the starts aren’t aligned.
Think about it. To be ‘the right time to buy’, EVERYTHING must be aligned. Here are the top 10 most important things:
If your prospect had ALL of those things in place, what do you think the likelihood that they would say “It’s not the right time to buy?” they would be buying right now!
Objections and blowoffs by prospects are not solved by making weak salespeople “stronger.” When companies set out to do that, they create high-pressure salespeople that focus on ‘handling the objections’ rather than preventing them altogether. Strengthening salespeople is about making them more effective. It is about getting decisions AFTER they are sure that all of the above 10 things at a minimum are in place before ever thinking about getting a prospect to make a decision.
The next time you hear from one of your salespeople that “It isn’t the right time,” run the opportunity through a little test. Ask them to grade the opportunity against those top 10 things and see where it scores.
The reality is that they are chasing opportunities that never existed in the first place. Of course it is the wrong time then!
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