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Overcoming This Common Sales Objection: No Budget

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

Overcoming This Common Sales Objection No Budget No ProblemDo your prospects often tell you “I don’t have budget?”

This is one of the most common objections sales professionals hear. But as a business owner and CEO of Sales for Life, when I reflect on the last few years, most of the big ticket items we’ve purchased, or big changes we’ve made—were rarely included in our assumed cash flow statements and P&L reports for the upcoming fiscal year.

What we end up spending money on is often quite different than what we had budgeted for in our business plan.

We look at our priorities every quarter. Each division of Sales for Life reports in, and we discuss what we need to do, if we’re missing anything, and our priorities. I kid you not, every week some of the priorities are changing! We then evaluate the priorities for perceived value, and shift and reallocate our funds accordingly.

So, when you as a sales professional or sales leader hear that objection “I don’t have budget,” the reality is that most of the solutions you’re selling aren’t budgeted. An organization may have a broader goal to improve quota attainment, but in our case, the CFO of a potential client wouldn’t have budgeted for Social Selling training.

So how can you overcome this common sales objection “I don’t have budget?”

Using digital to identify the buyer’s priorities

If a prospect is telling you they don’t have budget, you haven’t aligned your solution to one of the company’s top tier priorities. So your job is to learn the top five things those companies need to work on, and how your solution can solve one of their priorities.

At Sales for Life, if we’re presented with a solution that doesn’t solve what we’ve outlined as a priority in our quarterly reports for the next 90 days, it won’t be purchased. But if it checks one of our priority boxes, it’s a different story. We’ve hired, purchased dozens of tools, invested and changed office spaces—all outside of budget. We reallocated our funds and shifted our priorities.

1. Leverage any resource you can by speaking to a variety of people in that organization to get a sense of their priorities. However, you need to make sure you’re connecting with the right people in the organization. Sometimes, you may be talking with someone who’s too far down the totem pole and won’t be able to influence budget.

2. Use free online resources, such as Google and SCC filing reports. This will give you an idea of an organization’s goals and priorities.

3. Listen to what the CEO or CFO are saying in interviews and podcasts.

Aligning your solutions to their priorities

When you talk to senior executives, there’s no such thing as “I don’t have budget.” What they really they mean is I don’t see enough value in your solutions to redeploy funds. So it’s your job to do your due diligence, find out their priorities and align your solution to their priorities.

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