MAKING PROFFESIONAL SELLING DECISIONS

Tyler Houston sells for Thompson Engineering. He has been calling on Hudson Distributors for close to
two years. Over the course of 15 calls, he has sold them nothing to date. He thinks that he is extremely
close to getting an order. Houston knows that Hudson is happy with its present supplier, but he is aware
that they have received some late deliveries. Tom Harris, Hudson’s senior buyer, has given every
indication that he likes Houston’s products and Houston.

During Houston’s most recent call, Harris told him that he’d have to have a couple of weeks to go over
Houston’s proposal. Harris really didn’t have any major objections during the presentation. Houston
knows his price, quality, and service are equal to or exceed Hudson’s present supplier.

Questions

1. Harris told Houston that he needed a couple of weeks to think about his proposal. How should
Houston handle this?

Harris is using what is called a time objection also known as stalling technique. In this particular case
study Harris already has the need fulfilled by a different supplier and while they have had a few late
deliveries Harris need to determine if it worth going through all of the work to get set up a new vendor.
The time objection is often one of the hardest objections to gauge because it can mean many different
things. In certain cases changing product can be a major process and can be very time consuming. With
such a major change it is understandable that buyers want to take some time to think about the decision
before committing and revamping everything. If this is the case it is still a scary situation because even if
the buyer was initially giving the product serious thought, two weeks and millions of distraction can
dampen the excitement. In other cases however the time objection is used as a passive way of saying
no. In many situations buyer will use the time objection because they know that if they can get off the
phone or out of the meeting that it will be easy to avoid the situation at a later date. In my own personal
life I have received the time objection more times than I can count and just like the course text said I
believed that every time a buyer would tell me they needed time I felt they were going to buy. There
was a while when I doing product placement for a company and I attempted to reach a buyer at Dollar
General for over a month and I finally got ahold of him. I laid my pitch on thick and he seemed very
intrigued, but asked me to call him back in a week so he could think about it. I must have called 400
times after that and was never able to get ahold of the buyer again.