If you are trying to set appointments for an outside sales team, or even if you’re trying to generate leads so you can do an over the phone demo later, then you know all about put offs and stalls. While I’ve previously discussed the common ones like, “I’m not interested,” and “Just email me something,” there others that are somewhat harder to overcome…
One of the more frequently encountered objections is “We handle that in house so we don’t need you.”
Many sales reps are taught the normal, “old school” approaches of things like:
“That’s fine, but when was the last time you did an apples to apples comparison to what it might run you if you outsourced that?”
OR
“But if I could show you a way to save money, then surely you’d want to know more about it, wouldn’t you?”
While either of these responses can be used effectively in the right situation, there is a better way to handle this objection. What you want to do is offer value in your visit or demo, and then leave it up to your prospect to decide if it’s worth taking your call or visit any further after you have.
Try the following rebuttal (obviously, customize this to your particular service or product):
Objection: “We handle that in house.”
“That’s fine – glad you have a way that’s working for you now. Here’s what I’d recommend you do though: I’d be happy to drop by and show you how we’d go about taking care of that for you, and what our processes would look like.
At the end you may still choose to keep doing it the way you are, but at least you’d have a different perspective on it and you may even find some ways to save money or time. The visit wouldn’t take long and everyone we visit with finds a benefit.
What’s a good time for you next week…”
As you can see here, you’re not pitching necessarily, instead you’re offering to enlighten them as to a better way. What they do after that is up to them.
Try using this for the next couple of weeks and see if you can get past prospect’s natural resistance to setting up a meeting. If you use it consistently, you’re going to set more appointments, open more doors and close more sales.