I went to our Centreville, VA location today and was explaining to the staff how I do my job, when one of them asked me a question. She said "Do customers ever call afterwards and ask to cancel? For example do they say 'My husband thinks it costs too much.'" I replied "Of course they do." You can't deal with thousands of people and write hundreds of contracts without have a few people call and ask about cancelling. That could have been the end of the question, but what kind of a post would this be then?
I told her it is the same as in the stores, but the more important question is "Why are they attempting to cancel?" When working from an overcoming objection based model of sales one needs to be careful not to paint a customer into the corner. With a bit of practice it becomes very easy to overcome every objection that a customer throws your way. If you do this then invariably when you are not there to counter they will try to cancel. If you work for the sort of company that will force someone to accept something that you bullied them into, maybe you should consider working for another company...if you work for the kind of company that will let someone out of a contract because they are unhappy what was the point in boxing them into it in the first place?
Getting past that, the real issue is to determine what the issue is and address it. Some companies will throw money at any problem (example, it's too long...how about we give you $250 back and you keep it) I suggest a more discriminating approach. In the above example the customer asserts that her husband thought it was too expensive. If you've really done things right then the husband should have been at the house when you did the whole thing, but we'll assume he wasn't. If you have painted her into a corner and she is falling back on her husband as a way to get out then nothing you say is going to result in a happy conclusion for all parties. If her husband really does think it costs too much then you can work one of several ways.
The first thing to do is ask what price range he/they wanted to be in. If we are going to assume you didn't get the husband there to meet you then we might as well assume you didn't determine their budget either. Good thing this example is about you and not me. If the amount is a smallish difference it may be possible to simply apply a discount to save the sale. If the amount is a larger figure they may be a way to modify the existing selection to decrease the cost (less fullness, less expensive lining, removing trim or other surcharge laden items), if the amount is LARGE then either selecting an alternate treatment/fabric may be in order, eliminating entire pieces, or sometimes...just sometimes you can sell the customer the fabric only, and they can do the labor themselves (or pay you to do it at a later date).
More than once I've had a customer who demands (I'll use their words) an "obscene discount". The only way to handle it is to decrease the fullness to the minimum and use the least expensive option for each of the items discussed. Since these requests always come from only my absolutely wealthiest clients I also show them what they had initially selected side by side. Either way they would like the order I am happy to do it. Naturally what they really want is the expensive one with proper fullness at the lower cost, but given the two options, they nearly always chose the more expensive one. NOTE: Don't ever do that to a client who can't afford the expensive option. You will guarantee that you make no sale and that they feel bad.
So, in review: If someone tries to cancel determine why. Address the objection with an appropriate response. And finally go help the next person.
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