You have a stellar meeting, they loved the product and it’s a fit. You do your close and ask for the sale. Only to hear those dreaded words “I like it Mark but I want to speak with my Business Partner/Wife.” This objection is going to require some serious work so I want to give you a few rebuttals that you can consider that might help.

What is it you need to speak about

You could use the “Look I totally understand that, Can I ask you though just for your clarity, what is it you need to speak with them about, because I might be able help right here and now.” From there you can figure out if it’s a timing thing, the price or they don’t understand part of your solution and it’s a smokescreen caused by uncertainty.

Let’s get them on the phone now

Suggest calling them on a two way phone call there and then, call them and resell to the partner or wife on the phone. You never know the partner might just want the job done and say go ahead and do it and then your in. So, you need to just say something like “Oh my bad, I thought that you were the only decision maker I should have asked… You know what, what’s their number let’s give them a call that way I can run them through what we do and how we do it, if they like what they hear will you proceed?”

Get their commitment

This is an opportunity for you to get thier commitment, say “Ok I understand you have a business partner and you need to run big decisions by them, that’s understandable, but how do you feel about this? Are you happy with myself and the team running this for you? Great so promise me one thing ok? I want you to speak with the partner now, while all this information about the product/service is in your mind ok.. As otherwise you might want to do this but you will get busy and it goes on the backburner and it’s ashame because you liked our solution. Can you promise me that? Great I’ll call you tomorrow for your final decision.”

Bypass the Wife

Perhaps they do need to speak with the wife about this decision however you can try this… “I’m sure you make alot of decisions on a daily basis right? And I’m pretty confident in saying you wouldn’t consult your wife on every single decision right? And she would be OK with that, because she trusts your judgement. It’s not like I’m asking for your entire life savings over here, only a small amount to get started and the opportunity to prove myself to you. Take ownership of this decision and your wife will trust you more to make your own decisions, trust me on that!”

What would happen if they said no?

This is a risky one but you could ask the prospect, “Ok great I understand that, what would happen if they say NO, they don’t want to do it?” If the prospect says they would go ahead with the service anyway, then go ahead and close the sale from there.

Setup a call time, a commitment

Ask the prospect “So if you do speak to your wife about this and you talk about the thousands of dollars you need to spend, what do you think she will say? That’s right, it”s too expensive. You see the problem is that she didn’t see my presentation so she doesn’t know the value of our solution. So when you talk to her tonight, how are you going to overcome this issue? Do you think that it would be helpful to setup a threeway call to answer any questions that she might have to make sure she is clear on everything, the value, because I don’t want you to move forward if you don’t have the buy in of your wife, because you are doing this together, I get that. So what would be a good time to have the 3 way call? Ok great. Now, during the call my job is not to convince your wife OK, but what I do want to do is answer any questions that she might have just so she understands what we are doing here and why and how it can help, does that make sense?

Collapse the issue

This method is to uncover the prospects real issue and bypass the need to speak to the wife.

Salesperson– Hey, what part of our service delivery do they think they will not approve of?

Prospect– its not that its just that ive made a couple of bad decisions in the past

Salesperson– Let me ask you, do they approve of your current struggle of losing jobs because you don’t have ISO?

Prospect– No ofcoarse not

Salesperson– Well, do you think they would disapprove of something that is evidentially going to fix this struggle?

Prospect– No ofcoarse not

Salesperson– Ok, what if the roles were reversed and your wife had a problem and she found a solution to that problem, would you be opposed to going ahead?

Prospect– no

Salesperson– Ok, so why would it be different for them?

Prospect– True

Salesperson– Ok, so let’s play this out, let’s say you don’t go ahead and you miss some $3m job you could have won, you get angry and blame your wife, is that fair on your wife? And yourself?

This little script reminds me of recently having not invested in a certain stock I wanted to because my wife wanted to be cautious… The stock quadrupled, fair to say I was abit angry at the wife for a good 24 hours, I was more frustrated at the favt that I didn’t trust my intuition though.