Objections

14Buying Commitment Objections

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes but no plans.

—Peter Drucker

From the opening pages of this book I've been hammering home the brutal truth that if you don't ask, you don't get. Over the course of the sales process, you'll be asking for initial appointments and micro-commitments that advance your deal. Once you've made your final case, you'll close by asking for the sale.

Salespeople seek out closing techniques with the same fervor as Crusaders on search for the Holy Grail. But like those ancient knights, their search is futile because they're looking in the wrong place.

There is not and will never be a secret code that unlocks a buying commitment. There is no technique that will suddenly turn your stakeholder into a buyer—with little effort. It doesn't exist.

In his groundbreaking book The Lost Art of Closing, Anthony Iannarino systematically and correctly lays out the case that the act of closing is not a single point in time, but rather a series of micro-commitments that occur throughout the course of the sales process. It's why asking for and gaining next steps is so critical to advancing your deal and moving to closed.

This doesn't mean that there isn't a point at which you explicitly ask for a buying commitment. Especially in transactional and short cycle sales, you must ask for the sale, confidently and assumptively. Even in long-cycle and complex deals, where closing is much more a process, sooner or later ...