How to stop prospects lying about their remaining contract lengths!

Yesterday I had an email from someone who had attended one of the telecoms seminars I presented at recently, who had a question that I believe many of you will identify with and benefit from.

The Question

“Gary, whenever I ask how long someone has left on their current contract they always reply by telling me they’ve only just renewed it! Can this be true or more than likely are they simply fobbing me off? Any suggestions?”

Ok, so I’m guessing, because my sales and telemarketing teams used to get exactly the same thing, that this has become the, ‘Standard get out of jail’ response to stop a prospect from being sold too.

My response was something that has been massively successful for not only my own sales teams when I was a Reseller Sales Director but has worked consistently with other resellers and distributors too.

You Do Exactly The Same

Let’s first place this problem in a completely different context and one in which you might have found yourself in when trying to relax at home after a hard day’s work.

Naturally if you’re sat at home and you receive a call from a kitchen company suggesting you might qualify for a FREE Kitchen Upgrade and as part of their pitch they asked how old your current kitchen was. How would you get them off the phone? Be truthful and say 10 years or fob them off with it’s only 12 months old?

Exactly, you’d tell them that the kitchen was only installed 12 months ago or even sooner because you know that this will utterly prevent them from carrying on with the call as you are just not suitable for them to carry on selling to you.

Sound familiar?

Why The Traditional Approach Does Not Work

What you are about to read is so brilliantly simple, yet you will have a massively different response from your prospects.

Typically you would ask questions such as:

“How long do you have left on your current contract?”

“When is your current contract up for renewal?”

Isn’t this exactly the same as asking you how old your kitchen is? It’s far too easy for a prospect to lie and send you on your way with a date for you to call them 18 months in the future!!!

How To Prevent Prospects Fobbing You Off!

Unquestionably, this new approach works with contracts for calls, lines, maintenance, system leases, ADSL, Co-location and mobiles. [In fact any form of contract!!!!]

Instead of giving the prospect an easy route out by allowing them to fob you off, my approach not only shuts the door but opens a couple of others enabling you to sell your products and services.

The Salesology Approach

“How long do you have left on your current because typically the longer the contract the more likely we’ll be able to save you money against it?”

“When is your current contract up for renewal? The reason I ask is that typically the further the renewal date is away the better the savings we can make.”

The Strategy Explained

Notice how, by adding a simply suggestion that the newer/longer the contract is then the more savings you are likely to make, will now encourage the prospect NOT to adopt the ’We’ve only just renewed’ approach because that will actually HELP you in selling to them!

So now to prevent this from happening what do they do? The prospect replies with a contract renewal date of 6 months or the exact date which then surely enables you to follow up with...

“That’s perfect because our [XYZ Service] provider have recently released to us some exclusive packages for businesses with [Their Current Length Contract] or less left on their current agreements.”

How much is this information worth to you and how much time will it save making calls to prospects who currently KNOW HOW TO GET YOU OFF THE PHONE AND OUT THE DOOR?

Bonus

NEVER use the phrase... “We can BUY you out of your current contracts”!!!

Would you trust a financial advisor who told you that he could “BUY you out of your current mortgage?”

Simply rephrase it as... “Because, as you can imagine, everyone business we speak with has some sort of existing arrangements, we like everyone else, are able to settle any existing agreements on your behalf”

I think you’ll agree that this approach is in no way as scary as the traditional statement of BUYING people out of contracts and makes it sound like it is common practice which we all know it is.

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