Sales Negotiation Training: Identifying a Customer’s Fears & Concerns

When it comes to sales negotiation training, why do so many courses focus on the importance of identifying a customer’s fears and concerns? More importantly, what role does these issues play in the overall sales process? Well, when it comes to closing business, no salesperson can move the process forward without first identifying the customer’s concerns.

Unfortunately, a number of salespeople are unable to identify the subtle clues customers provide about what concerns them most and why. In the end, it's these issues that hold the keys to closing more business.

Reflecting on our own Fears and Concerns as Salespeople

In order to have a better understanding of just how powerful these customer fears are, you must think about your own fears. As a sales professional, you’re likely concerned about a number of things. You may be concerned about closing sales, meeting sales budgets, providing an accurate sales forecast, moving inventory, making enough money, and ultimately, whether you’ll be able to connect with your prospect. I know because I’ve spend the majority of my professional career in sales.

Unfortunately, I always concentrated on my own concerns. As such, I’d enter every sales negotiation entirely focused on my own fears and completely oblivious to those aforementioned subtle hints the customer was giving me that they weren’t ready to move forward. Instead, when I was confronted with a customer objection, I ignored it and immediately tried to refocus the discussion around alleviating my fears, my concerns – not the customers. Did this help me close more business? No! Did my customer relationships suffer because of this? Yes! Something needed to change and it started when I understood why customers have these fears, and ultimately, how to address them.

The above video is taken from the post: Five Customer Concerns That Cost You Sales and Market Share

Understanding Customer Fears and Concerns

Customers have the same concerns we do. Ultimately, they are concerned about making the right purchase, getting a good price, buying a quality product, reducing their company’s inventory costs and ultimately, whether or not they’ll have to deal with an honest salesperson, or one who is trying to take advantage of them. These customer fears are summarized below.

Fear of Price (The Unknown): This customer fear is always present when a customer is purchasing from you for the first time. With no prior reference with your company, and no reference point on pricing, they are ultimately at the mercy of the salesperson. No matter how much your company has done in its market, to this customer, it's an entirely new relationship, one that is unproven and unknown.

Fear of Quality (Uncertainty): Customers are often concerned when they have no prior history purchasing a product or service. This fear encompasses not only the quality of the product, but the quality of the company’s service and support. In this case, it may appear "too-good-to-be-true" for the customer.

Fear of Reprisal (Being Challenged): No customer likes to be challenged on their decisions, either by the salesperson selling to them, or the person they report to. Understand that customers must justify their purchasing decisions. Questioning them is not good business.

Fear of After-Sales Service: Of all the customer fears, this is likely the one that confuses sales people the most. Regardless of how good your company’s product or service is, if this customer has never purchased from you before, then none of it matters. They may choose to stick with what they know, than decide to risk working with an unproven commodity. In this case, their concern rests with whether you'll be there after the sale is done.

Fear of Not Controlling the Sales Process (Comfort Zone): Your customer must have the final say. After all, they’re the customer and have the right to decide on a “go/no-go” decision. However, when you subtly take control of the process your customer will push back for fear that they’ll lose control of their decision.

When you think of these aforementioned customer concerns, think of how your product or service can alleviate these fears. Most sales negotiation training exercises provide salespeople with insight on how best to recognize these fears. The basic premise is to use your own judgment, insight and intuition.

To help hone those instincts of yours, be sure to come up with a list of pre-proposal customer objections. Think of all the reasons and excuses why your customer won’t purchase from you and come up with answers to those concerns. Performing a pre-visit checklist is essential. Once you anticipate how to answer these concerns, you’ll be more able to identify them when your customer brings them up.

To read more about sales negotiation training, please refer to the following posts (or do a search in the search box below the navigation bar).

1. Improve Sales Training & Negotiation Skills with Role Playing

2. Sales Negotiation Training: Cost-Per-Use Product Sales Strategies