I went out of order in my last post and presented #6 from my list of 10 Sales Competencies That are Key to Building Sales Cultures.
In this post I present the real #2, The Enemy is Resistance. I've written about this before too.
The gist of Resistance is this: Selling would be far more simply for many more of your salespeople if they would focus on recognizing the resistance rather than attempting to overcome the many forms it takes:
- lack of interest
- happy with who they're using
- price
- quality
- features
- benefits
- claims
- satisfaction
- problems
- reputation
- service
- questions
- put-offs
- timing
- perceived need
Rather than dealing with these objections individually, if your salespeople could just recognize the earliest stages of resistance...
- a certain look
- a change in posture
- a nod
- "well..."
- "maybe..."
- "I'm not sure..."
- "but..."
- a shoulder shrug
- a stated objection
- a loaded question
- etc.
...and deal with it right then and there - at the earliest stage - by simply:
- agreeing ("Yeah, I would have reacted that way too" or "You're right" or "You didn't react too well to what I just said...")
- acknowledging ("I understand")
- questioning ("Out of curiosity, why do you feel that way?")
- questioning ("Can you explain?")
- questioning ("What if it (or I) could?")
- etc.
Resistance itself is pretty easy to deal with because you can lower it very quickly. But if your salespeople aren't able to recognize it early, or worse, they ignore it, then they'll have to deal with the objections. When they deal with objections, as soon as they attempt to overcome them, by using:
- reason
- logic
- facts
- figures
- features
- benefits
- selling points
- explanations
- validation
- rationalizations
- charts
- graphs
- testimonials
- defending
...they will be seen as putting on the hard sell, resistance will go up, not down, and their position will worsen!
Make sure your salespeople become masters at overcoming resistance. Speaking of which, I am presenting a Sales Master Class on the very subject on behalf of The Sales Experts on October 15.
(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan