You must avoid getting drawn in by red herring objections at all costs. A red herring is something your stakeholder says that diverts your attention from the objective of your sales meeting.
The term red herring is thought to originate from the practice of dragging a dead fish across a trail to pull hounds off the scent. And this is exactly what happens to salespeople who abandon the objective of their call to chase a red herring. Rather than controlling the agenda and moving toward your targeted next step, you:Start pitching.
Get defensive.
Become impatient, talk over your prospect, and shut them down.
Get into an argument.
Skip steps in the sales process.
Immediately start talking about price or negotiating.
Answer hard questions out of context and without clarifying the reason for the question in the first place.
Attempt to overcome objections before understanding whether they are real objections and before discovery.
Introduce objections that did not originally exist.
Red herrings usually emerge early in initial sales conversations, at the beginning of discovery meetings, at the start of demos and presentations, and during introductions when presenting to a group of stakeholders. Red herrings often seem innocuous—just simple statements or questions:
“Look, before we go any further, I need to know chile telegram data that you aren’t too expensive.”
“You need to know that we are not going to sign a long-term contract.”
“Just so you know, we’re not buying anything from you today.”
“We tried this with your company before, and it didn’t work out.”
“There are several things about your software that we don’t like. We’re going to need you to add some features.”
“We are already in discussions with your competitor.”
Stakeholders bring into sales conversations the emotional baggage accumulated over a lifetime of dealing with salespeople. They are suspicious of your motivations and don’t trust you. They don’t want to be manipulated.
Red herrings are essentially walls that stakeholders erect to protect themselves from being taken advantage of by salespeople. They’re often part of the reflexive buyer script. In some cases, though, red herrings are conscious and direct challenges designed to take you off your game and test your mettle.
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