Member Article

Getting past the ‘call me after Christmas’ barrier

It’s that time of year again: Christmas lights, Santas, and chilly mornings. The run up to Christmas and New Year’s is certainly hectic, and exciting.

Between the shopping craze of Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays, many business owners and sales people carry on, prospecting, phoning up potential clients, and doing their business as usual.

It’s also a period when many sales people and business owners start hearing a similar narrative when they make phone calls in search of new businesses. It reads like this: Call me back after Christmas or the New Year. Let’s call it “how to lose business and alienate sales people”.

Once the New Year becomes the current year, and you call back to chase those leads, they’ve vanished; there’s no way you can get through to them.

Often, there are genuine reasons for such objection, possibly because key decision makers may be away. In any case, this objection can also be used as an excuse to get away from the telephone.

How to get past the Christmas barrier?

We’re going to point out three ways of getting past the initial objection, get people’s attention, and increase the chances of closing a deal before the end of the year.

Set the tone at the start

Whenever you call someone and they immediately come out with the Christmas excuse, you can say “this is the very reason I’m calling you now”, and move on to state the reasons you need to be calling now. This should get their attention, and if you’re prepared with decent reasoning (it goes without saying you should be prepared for every call you make) you can get prospects genuinely interested in doing business with you before Christmas.

Acknowledge the issue

As a general unspoken rule, conversations overcome conflict, so give it a try, and just talk it through. It’s important to incite the prospect’s interest by giving practical reasons for proceeding with a buy before the end of the year: It may be because the prices are going up, or the ordering process will change. Whatever it may be, explain why they’d benefit from ordering before the end of the year.

Add value rather than make concessions

Touching upon the subject of benefits, find a way to add additional value for example extra licences, longer contract terms etc. as an incentive to close a deal before the end of the year. It’s a simple gesture, and it could be your chance to use Christmas as an excuse to give.

Try to avoid discount, because you risk sounding desperate to close the deal. It’s worth mentioning that the prospects shouldn’t feel pressured in any way. Many sales people subscribe to the ‘pushy’ style of selling. Needless to say, this style is very 90s, and it doesn’t belong in the 21st century, but that’s another blog for another time.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by durhamlane .