Get Rid of 'Get-Backs'

3 Reasons to Get Rid of "Get-Backs"

In sales, people are familiar with the danger of the “be-back.” If you’re in real estate, a be-back could be the potential buyer who spends an hour looking at one of your open houses and promises to be back. But never comes. B2C salespeople, let's say in a consumer electronics store, who often have just one opportunity to make a sale, dread the be-back who consumes 45 minutes of their time reviewing every facet of a product, and then walks away promising to be back. But never comes. B2B salespeople have their own version of the be-back in a customer that eagerly takes a first meeting and then, no matter how positive that meeting is, goes radio silent. Online marketers deal with the problem of abandoned transactions and be-backs many, many times every day.I’ve found that the best way to deal with the problem of be-backs is to eliminate “get-backs.”What’s a “get-back”? Every time a salesperson can't answer a customer’s question on the spot and says, "I'm sorry, I'll have to get back to you on that," that salesperson is creating a get-back. Get-backs hurt sales in three ways: 1. They inject unnecessary delay into the customer buying process (i.e., your sales cycle). Taking an extra day, or even an extra hour, to provide information that a customer needs now is never a positive. Lengthening the buying process increases the chances that a competitor will jump in and demonstrate the complete responsiveness needed to win the customer's business. 2. Get-backs impede your ability to build trust and confidence with the customer. If your salespeople are always having to “get back” to the customer, the customer will remember that experience —and that’s not what you want them to remember about you. 3. Get-backs hurt your competitive position. Sales teams that can eliminate get-backs put themselves in the pole position to win a customer's order. Remember, every get-back disengages you from the prospect. This pause, this momentary momentum crusher, creates an opening for the prospect to become a be-back. Open the door to this possibility and the customer will walk through it.How can you eliminate get-backs? In Zero-Time Selling, I discuss a practice called Selling with the Sharp End of the Stick. The savvy sales organization puts the people with the deepest product knowledge closest to the point of attack, closest to the customer. For many companies this means upgrading the expertise, experience, and skill set of their sales team to enable them to be immediately responsive to the information requirements of their customers.Selling is a service that you provide to the customer. Provide great sales service to the customer by being instantly responsive to their need for information and you’ll win more orders in less time.