Categorisation is a technique that enables choices to be made more easily by setting out small steps that will lead your customer towards making the decisions you desire. To do this, you first need to place prospects who have concerns, questions or objections into one of two broad categories.
- Those who are not sufficiently motivated to take action or make the next step.
- Those who don’t fully understand what you are proposing.
Now you can see clearly what you need to do to encourage your prospect to make the right decision. For example, if they fall into category one you can set out a number of steps to help drive desire. If they’re in category two then you can set out a series of choices around a particular benefit or feature of your product or service.
Keep it simple
Above all the art of categorisation selling is to steer your customer towards more general choices before drilling down into detail, so when you formulate your series of steps keep it simple.
Always be aware that even the best of us can be drawn to a micro view and end up getting stuck, locked out or objected against because we have unwittingly been drawn into concentrating on minor differentials when we should be taking a more general view.
The power of choice
Done well categorisation is an extremely powerful tool to handle all but the most stubborn of objections. It’s a technique that’s based on retail psychology and relies on our ability to perceive differences between options and make choices.
These choices will result from the easy to understand options you’ll put in front of your customers to form a path along which you can guide them to make the right decision. However…
Beware of the pitfall
There is a potential pitfall to categorisation selling that you need to be aware of, and that is, if it’s not done correctly your customer may feel that you’ve been spoon-feeding them a little too much. In this instance it will be worth rebooting the situation, looking your customer in the eye and saying something like:
You: “Do you mind if I just break this down into what may seem obvious choices for you so that we can both see we’re on the same page here.” Then slowly lay out the path of obvious, simple, general choices that for some reason your customer hasn’t followed to reach the destination and result you desire.
Closing a sale
It goes without saying that you must always close the sale. But how do you know when to close? The Closing Circle is a technique you should employ when you’ve decided that you’ve done all the selling you could. When you reach this point, round up all the highlights of your conversation, and attempt to gain a positive response for each. When you’ve done this, you can ask for their business.
In this example, your contact is Joanne and you’re selling software:
- YOU: So Joanne, we found your current system isn’t providing what you need?
- JOANNE: Yes.
- YOU: You told me about the extra workload that’s being created by not taking care of this?
- JOANNE: Yes.
- YOU: You don’t have any concerns about the product and service my company can provide?
- JOANNE: No.
- YOU: And you’re happy to deal with me as your contact?
- JOANNE: Absolutely.
- YOU: Then I’ll just need a couple of signatures here and here.
If you identify doubt at any point during this process, this technique will enable you to ask your contact exactly what the problem is, address it and Segway back into the close.
