Understanding The Prospect’s Game
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Understanding The Prospect’s Game: How to Close More Sales
Prospects and salespeople play all types of games to help in their negotiations. As a sales professional you may often wonder why, if your prospect is interested in your product or service, they are still so hard to close. In this guide, we will explore the different games salespeople and prospects play and what you can do to counter them.
Prospect’s games
Prospects often lie because they are worried they will be taken advantage of. After all, this is more likely to happen if they reveal their real wants and needs.
They want to gather as much information as possible. Prospects are often unsure whether they are ready to buy and want to make an informed decision before letting salespeople know their level of interest.
Even when prospects are ready to buy, they may still make excuses as to why they are not ready to buy or are unwilling to buy from you.
Prospects may also say or ask questions about things that are not actually relevant to their situation or what they are looking for. This can often be an attempt to stop a salesperson from coming on too strong.
Salespeople’s games
Salespeople want to reveal as much information as possible about their offer. They want to ensure the prospect has all the info required to make a decision.
Usually, salespeople are motivated by their own reasons for the sale, money, not the prospect’s wants and needs.
They often mistakenly believe that every prospect they speak to is a qualified lead and needs their product or service.
Often, salespeople will lose out on sales because they feel too desperate to close the deal.
Why do prospects play these games?
The prospect will play their games to try and make the salesperson feel not okay. This is because when the salesperson feels not okay they are more likely to negotiate lower prices, reveal more information, and act desperate to make the sale.
How to recognise when they are playing a game
When a prospect is playing a game with a salesperson they will try to discount a salesperson’s question or statement. For example, in response to your probing about budget, they might say something like ‘we’ll have it (the budget) if we like what we see’. This or any other statement that implies ‘don’t worry about it’ is a solid indication that they are playing a game.
For all the full details on game playing in sales and how to respond effectively when a prospect tries to discount your statements, download our free guide.
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At Sandler UK, we run in-person sales training sessions on the full range of sales approaches, techniques, skills, and strategies. For those looking to level up their sales game, become better sales leaders or close more deals, we’re the number one choice. For more information on what we can offer you and the rest of your sales team, we suggest you get in touch and one of our team will be happy to explain what we do and benefits we bring in more detail.
