Pressure testing

Dog: I’ll find you… I’ll find you.

Bacon: ‘Course you will sweetheart!

Dog: I’ll find you.

Bacon: What d’you think this is? F*cking hide and seek?

• Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

By now you should have clarified what you’re offering, listed out all of the features, put yourself in the shoes of your customer and thought about the benefits for them.

I now want you to poke as many holes in it as you can.

In sales world juniors are trained to have answers already lined up in response to objections. This is called objection handling. When you’re a more senior sales person or consultative seller you are able to navigate past these much more smoothly, your experience, expertise, and ability to frame from the perspective of the customer help navigate the sale to where it needs to go.

You won’t have to rely on either of these when you start.

But you do want to get a sense of all the reasons a customer will put up resistance to what you’re offering so you can answer those concerns in your offer in advance.

Have you ever been in a shop where you’ve done your research, you know what you’re looking for, you tell the assistant what is important and why that is, and they sail past that information and try and give you something else?

That’s what is going to happen to your offer if you’re not designing it with objections in mind.

My offer is bulletproof I hear you say.

Well read through these questions and see if it really is:

Pricing

• How much is it?
• How does that compare to other providers in the market?
• What’s your response when you’re told that price is unreasonable and unfair?
• What led you to make it that price?
• Can I get it for half of that? Why not?

Delivery

• What am I getting?
• When is it coming?
• Why can’t I get it sooner?
• How am I going to receive it?
• Where is it going?

Service

• How long do I get this for?
• What if it doesn’t do what I need?
• What if I’m unhappy with it?
• What if it doesn’t work?

Quality

• Have other people got this?
• What do they say about this product?
• Have you got enough experience to deliver this?

There’s plenty more where that came from.

The goal here isn’t to have answers to an inexhaustible list of challenges but you do want to have a sense of how to answer these questions in advance, and try to weave them into the words around your offer.

Make enough sales, and you’ll need to answer every single one of these at some point.

Marketing doesn’t answer or solve all of these. But you can position your offer in a way that softens risk, addresses what’s on the customer’s mind, and sounds compelling.