How Can a Sales Team Handle The "Lack Of Budget" Objection?

"I'd love to, but it's just not in the budget for this quarter," says a potential buyer, and most salespeople will take this as a firm "no" and move on to the next on their list. It's surprising how many salespeople do exactly that, and even more surprising that your average sales force training programme doesn't cover what to do in these situations. The truth is, there's a much bigger potential for a sale than most people realise.

Why? Because when a buyer says it's not in the budget, most of the time what they're really saying is, there's no room in the budget for something that doesn't wow me. But does that mean you should give up? Absolutely not: it means you need to figure out what will wow that buyer. They may not be interested in this product, but they might be interested in something else.

When it comes to budgets, most have some built-in wiggle room. And that “wiggle money” is more likely to be spent on a want item rather than a need item. The question is, what does the buyer want?

A fundamental part of sales training is about learning how to determine what a buyer wants, and also about figuring out how to make a buyer want what you're selling. These best-practice strategies still apply here; as always it's just a matter of asking the right questions. Remember, it's all about asking open-ended questions that get the buyer talking; for example:

• If cost weren't an issue, what would you be looking for in a [product]?

• Apart from the cost, what's stopping you from considering [product]?

• What [product] features are most important to you?

This isn't necessarily about trying to sell the product the buyer already turned down; the more important aspect is the fact that you're getting the buyer talking. That helps you figure out what it is they want, and it may be that you have another product that fits neatly into that category. Not only that: it's also a way of ramping up the buyer's enthusiasm for the original product, and sometimes, that's all it takes to override any budgetary concerns and make the sale.

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How You Can Improve Your Sales Team’s Motivation

Increasing employee productivity is something that's always of interest to team leaders, especially in sales, where productivity and effectiveness translate directly into customers, orders, and profit. Successful sales reps tend to be people who are naturally highly motivated and productive, but there's almost always room for improvement. If you're looking for new ways to improve the productivity of your sales team, investigating the self-determination theory may be highly beneficial.

Self-Determination Theory and Motivation

Self-determination theory is a model of motivation, which states that people are more productive when their motivation comes from within, rather than when they are pressured by external forces.

In terms of sales it might, for example, be the difference between a sales rep being pressured to perform by their supervisor, and a rep being intrinsically motivated to perform because they genuinely enjoy the job and want to succeed. The latter situation is obviously more effective, and in terms of sales performance, tapping into this kind of motivation can be a game-changer.

Applying Self-Determination Concepts to Sales Coaching

There are three psychological needs that must be met for an employee to have strong internal motivation.

• Autonomy: the employee must feel that their work and work performance is something they choose for themselves.

• Competence: the employee must feel competent and valued in their working environment.

• Relatedness: the employee must feel that they have supportive and meaningful relationships with colleagues.

Sales training can't teach or inspire internal motivation, but a supervisor or coach can support an employee's drive to develop and maintain it. For example, a sales leader can facilitate relatedness by building supportive relationships with each member of the team, and by creating an environment that encourages team members to form supportive relationships with one another.

The needs for autonomy and competence are partially met when an employee chooses, enjoys, and is suited to a career in sales. It's also something that the working environment must support, particularly in terms of feedback given by coaches and supervisors. For example, it's important for team leaders to provide reps with opportunities to make choices, and to give them all the information they need to make choices that allow them to perform to a high level of competency.

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Sales Force Training: The New Motivational Strategies

Keeping a team motivated and happy can be incredibly challenging for most current day managers. Tough economic times mean that teams are smaller, budgets for external rewards for employees are tighter, and employees can feel overworked or disinterested in the ultimate goal of their company. Managers, too, can be overworked and have less time to dedicate to individual staff members to keep them motivated. Yet, as AchieveGlobal notes, none of these obstacles are insurmountable, if we begin to view motivation in a different way. Research indicates that rather than aiming to motivate employees through external motivation (i.e. the reward or penalty system), they need to focus on what really makes employees tick: internal motivation.

Current-day internal motivation theory can be traced back to the findings of Abraham Maslow et al, who (in the 1960s), espoused that while external rewards could improve performance in the short-term, for long-term success, people reacted far more strongly to internal motivation. Currently, the leading authors in internal motivation are Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. These authors devised the Self-Determination Theory, which they define as “a theory of motivation… concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways.” Deci and Ryan argue that external rewards wrest an employee’s creativity and ability to solve complex problems and aim to reward a worker for something he/she already enjoys doing.

Internal motivation results when a person is performing a job they find inherently satisfying, or when they perform their job to satisfy another inherent need (there are three basic needs employees possess: the need to show their competence, the need to relate to others in a team and the need to exercise autonomy in their job).

Good leaders need to create the right environment in which employees can fulfil these needs for themselves. This can be done by communicating efficiently with employees, adopting their point of view, creating opportunities for them to make wise choices and providing sales force training to those selling the company’s products or services. In the case of sales staff, receiving cutting edge sales training is particularly important, since these employees need to remain highly motivated, even in the face of rejection.

Leaders should give feedback to employees in a non-judgemental manner, clarifying any procedures or roles the employee may not understand and relying on the employee to find a solution to a current problem or issue. Leaders also need to recognise talent in employees, matching workers’ interests needs to the company’s needs and creating a plan to help the employee shine in their chosen area. Finally, positive contributions made by staff should be acknowledged, by showing how their actions have had a positive impact on the team.

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