Sales Technique: Beat the “Too Small” Objection With Flipside Selling

Danita Bye

Of all the objections an office supply salesperson – or any salesperson, for that matter – is likely to hear, one of the most dreaded is the “You’re too small” block, a protest that comes in many guises. A company the size of yours can’t serve a company the size of ours as we’d prefer, they’ll say. Or You don’t provide the kind of choice we’re used to seeing. Or worse yet, We’d like to deal with you, but you’re just too expensive.

Ouch. Chalk up another one for the mega retailers and upstart e-tailers, right?

Just a minute, there. Hold your horses, as we liked to say when I was growing up in North Dakota. Every Achilles has his heel. And every one of those objections – and dozens of others in the “You’re too small” family – is an sales opportunity, if you take the customer’s protest and turn it on its head.

Try this Sales Technique

I call this “flipside selling,” a way to reframe the perceived strengths of the big box boys as the fatal, deeply engrained weaknesses they really are and a means of turning your small business’s supposed downsides into selling points that are hard to argue.

To get started, grab a sheet of paper and draw a line vertically down the center. On the left side of the line, list the various ways customers have of saying you’re too small. As you work the list, ask yourself if there’s a particular class of products, such as office chairs, that tends to bring up a distinct form of the “too small” objection. Also, be sure to note if a certain type of customer tends to raise the objection in question.

Once you’ve corralled all the specific, detailed objections you can think of, you can begin to flip them. On the right side of your paper, restate the objection, turning weakness into strength. Then, turn your new strength into questions you can ask prospective customers when they raise the corresponding objection.

Let’s say you’re having trouble selling task chairs. When you approach new customers, you get shot down right out of the gate with objections like I’d rather deal with Office Monster – they’ve got a bigger selection than you. Or you might hear Why would I buy from you when I can get chairs that are fine for my needs for x dollars less at Necessaries?

Put those objections on the left side of your sheet. On the right, state the flipside of the objection. Take the first one: you might write Office Monster does indeed offer a wider selection than we do, but ours is deeper. They carry a few task chairs from many manufacturers, and they stick to the units they can sell cheapest. We, on the other hand, stock the chairs that are going to last more than a few months and increase comfort and productivity in the bargain. And so on.

With the flipside on paper, you devise questions to get the customer talking and ultimately bust the objection wide open. In the above example, you might ask, How comfortable are you buying task chairs built for the lowest common denominator, chairs which practically guarantee lower back problems – and absenteeism? Or how about this one: Did you see the recent $49 task chair recall by the CPSC? The one where the chairs dumped unsuspecting users onto the floor? Are the savings from cheap chairs like that worth the hassles or potential legal bills?

If you do it right, your prospect will begin to see that the perceived strengths of your competitors – unrealistically low prices, wide selection, etc. – are not so strong after all. Now that you’ve got your customer’s objections on the ropes and they’ve begun to question their assumptions, it’s time to move in for the knockout by pointing out some of your other strong points. Here, you can mention that your buying group gives you the power to offer prices similar to – and often better than – the competition. What about the wholesale distribution network that lets you deliver next day anywhere in the country? You might even mention that buying from you supports the local tax base and helps to ensure that a great place to live and work remains that way for a long time to come.

Once you get the hang of flipside selling, you’ll come to realize that even the mightiest big box warrior out there has a bad heel or two. So turn Achilles on his head. Find the weaknesses masquerading as strengths. Question them, hit them with all the arrows you can, and knock the legs out from under your competition.

Bio: Danita Bye

Nationally recognized sales management and leadership expert Danita Bye built her reputation on building and inspiring process-oriented, no excuse, high-performance sales teams that deliver bottom line results. With her unique Fortune-100-turned-entrepreneur perspective, Danita helps CEOs and company presidents take their businesses to the next level. Her practical, no-nonsense approach to sales management, combined with her leadership acumen, enables sales leadership to increase sales, creating predictable revenue streams.

As a 10-year veteran of the Xerox Corporation, Danita consistently achieved award winning sales performance before leaving to become an equity partner and national sales manager for a Minneapolis-based medical device company. In this capacity, she increased annual revenues from $300,000 to a run rate of $20 million in just ten years.

Danita has authored numerous articles on sales management and leadership. In addition, she was a featured as a sales development expert on the TV show, “The Ruthless Entrepreneur,” which is currently airing on the Oxygen Network. Leadership Shift, Management Acceleration and a library of eBooks on critical sales management issues are available on the Sales Growth Specialists’ website.

Danita can be reached at Danita@SalesGrowthSpecialists.com, 612-267-3320 or 800-256-2799.

For more insights on Sales Strategy and Sales Process, visit www.SalesGrowthSpecialists.com.