By: Jason Dizon

“I don’t have the budget for all this.”

How many times have we all heard this sentiment that our customers usually have. For us salespeople, we have probably heard this a lot during our entire career in sales. We believe enough in our product/service that we price them in such a way that justifies this belief. More often than not, we price them higher than what our customers think they’re worth. Because of this, we often hear our customers say that they can’t afford our product/service.

What a salesperson does afterwards defines his attitude and aptitude towards sales. Do you give in and offer your customer a discount? Do you stand firm and defend how your high pricing justifies how good of a product/service you might have? Do you try and find a compromise that would work for both parties? Whatever approach one might have, we can all admit that it’s not that easy dealing with this type of objection.

With this in mind, we can become better at dealing with our customers’ budget constraints by following these tips from The Advanced Selling Podcast.
 
1. Check your head.
The first thing you need to do when a customer says that he/she cannot afford your product/service is to think hard on the situation at hand. You shouldn’t let yourself get easily sucked into your customer’s words that you begin to doubt your product/service.

I remember how I used to have a client who thought our service was a bit too expensive for them. At that point in time, I was still fairly new to sales and I started having doubts about whether or not our service was worth what we were charging. After talking with our CEO and a bunch of our colleagues, I became more certain about our service and I didn’t have doubts anymore when it came to pricing. Because of this, I was able to get my client to believe in our service.

Always remember that your customer will not believe in your company when you yourself start having doubts about it.
 
2. Try to understand the logic behind set budgets.
There’s a saying that goes, “If you want to understand someone, try walking in his/her shoes.” This is especially true for us salesmen. We try to pitch to our customers and make them trust in our companies. However, the only way for us to get our customers to trust us is if we try to understand where they’re coming from.

Sometimes, budgets aren’t that well thought of. Usually, a company budget is first set with some careful consideration until it comes to a point where people simply add constant percentages annually. Budgets in these cases simply become numbers.

As a salesperson, we must not get ourselves down and think that it’s all over once a customer says that they can’t afford our product/service. I remember how one of our clients had a service provider who specialized in a similar set of offerings as ours. That client had a set budget at first. However, we were able to convince him that our service can bring different results and got him to do business with us.

Budgets may be well thought out but they aren’t necessarily set in stone.
 
3. Make sure that you are calling on people who are not constrained by budget.
A single company may have different budgets for different departments and different positions internally. This is because a company would tend to focus on some key areas wherein they can grow their business. The key here is to find those people who are willing to spend more.

A rule of thumb here is that it would be better to talk to someone of higher position within a company. Whether it’s a middle or top manager, or even the CEO, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s someone who has some decision-making power and the flexibility to spend a bit more. This is why our company does business with CEO’s and top managers. These people atop the corporate structure would be more than willing to spend as compared to their other colleagues especially if what you’re offering to them is something that actually works.  

4. Work through the budget together.
When your client says that he/she can’t afford what you’re offering to them, you should go through the budget together to see if both of you are looking at it in the same way. While it is true that you have a certain price for your product/service and your client has a budget, you shouldn’t simply stick to your way and say that it’s either this or no deal.

You should make your client think of how it would be like doing business with you versus the cost of doing business without you. Once you do this, you should be able to engineer a deal in a way that would work for both parties.
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This happened to me in the past. We had a certain pricing scheme and my client said that they thought our solution was a bit expensive. After talking through their budget and what we could do to help improve their company, we came up with a compromise that ended in a win-win situation for the both of us.
 
In the end, pricing and budgets are all just numbers. As salesmen, we need to talk with our customers and understand where they’re coming from so that we can find a way in which both parties will benefit from one another. 

By: Jason Dizon

​“Be a student. Always.” These are the words of Hiten Shah from The Startup Chat. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Why should I keep being a student? I’ve been done with all that years ago!” In fact, I myself am about to graduate college and finish with my entire education. I have no immediate plans of pursuing further studies so this statement from Hiten really made me confused.
 
The reason why most of us would feel reluctant about being a student is that it reminds us of our time in school. It makes us reminisce all those hardships, sleepless nights, and countless hours of listening to boring lectures in class. I mean, who would want to relive something they just got themselves out of? Right? We have become so averse to learning because we always think of it in the context of academic institutions. We think that to learn, means that we should be in school. Therefore, a lot of us think that learning stops once we graduate from school.
 
However, this isn’t what Hiten meant by his statement. He meant that we should be students in the sense that we never stop learning. Even as we graduate and get illustrious careers, we should constantly try to learn new knowledge and skills.
 
Strive to become a life-long learner. Try to infuse learning into your everyday life.
In learning, we don’t have to confine ourselves to the academic setting. Doing so would only lessen our enthusiasm in learning new things. Learning does not need to be strictly confined to academics. When Hiten says that we should be students, he meant that we should try to learn something new, something that interests us or something that we didn’t know before.
 
When I was just starting out as a sales person, I found it difficult to close deals. I lacked the confidence and mastery of the product knowledge for our company. Clients at first found it difficult to trust me with their business since I couldn’t answer basic questions. I had to learn and improve on my closing skills. I rigorously read our company materials and asked my colleagues for tips. I even practiced my sales pitch with a colleague. After all these, I became a lot better in closing deals since I got to learn techniques in sales.
 
Apart from sales, I’ve been trying to learn more about playing chess. I know how to play it but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert. That is why I try to play when I have the time. I constantly learn new moves and strategies from playing with different opponents.  
 
Trying to incorporate learning into our everyday lives can make things seem easier and more pleasant. After all, we aren’t being forced to learn. We are learning for the sake of learning and improving ourselves.
 
Learning by doing can be the easiest way to understand things better since it can take you to a deeper level.
A desire to learn is good and all but oftentimes, the problem lies in the fact that we don’t know where to start, especially if what we are trying to learn is completely new to us. In this case, Steli Eft & Hiten Shah said that it might be best for us to learn things by doing them. Manuals and tutorial videos can only take you so far. You’d still have to do things yourself.
 
However, a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of learning by doing since this implies a lot of trial and error. Mistakes and failures are bound to happen. However, the only true way to learn and succeed is by making these mistakes. As Robert F Kennedy, an American politician puts it, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
 
I remember when I applied for my current sales job. I had close no nothing when it came to sales knowledge and background. Yet, the CEO of our company tasked us with cold-calling clients without introducing ourselves as part of the company. Since I had not done any type of cold-calling in my life, I wasn’t familiar with the process. Instead of looking at tutorials and tips online, I just decided to dive in and give a call to one of the clients. Naturally, I didn’t succeed with my first few calls. However, because of those failures, I got to find out what I should be saying to clients and what I should refrain from doing. After some failed calls, I finally got to engage a client in a lengthy conversation. I learned because I kept doing amidst my failures at first.  
 
I’ve also recently tried learning how to surf. I literally knew nothing on surfing and I didn’t know where to start. I’ve seen people surf in videos and movies but I couldn’t quite grasp how to do it. In order to learn, I just simply tried doing it. After countless falls and numerous liters of seawater swallowed, I finally learned the basics of how to surf. Had I not tried surfing I wouldn’t have learned it at all.
 
Take a look at yourself from a year ago, and see how far you’ve come today.
In order to have that unquenchable thirst for learning, you’d need to look at yourself before and compare it with how you are right now. Is there anything you’ve done in the past year that seemed stupid and wrong, or you found to be really difficult, but now it’s easy? If you can’t answer these questions, chances are that you’re not learning enough.
 
If I can leave you with one statement to take away, it’s this, “Never stop to learn and never learn to stop.” Continuously strive to learn new things and never be contented with what you know.