Many sales people will tell you one of the biggest worries in sales, besides prospecting, is dealing with customer objections.  Its true many people do not like dealing with objections or conflict, however, it is also true that many people unintentionally create objections and conflict by not understanding a customer’s real needs or priorities and failing to find common ground.

In my opinion ‘overcoming objections’ is often blown out of proportion in terms of the issue it claims to be. Too much time and attention is spent on objections in sales meetings and sales training rather than focusing on the skills and resources needed to help sales people eliminate objections from the sales process in the first place.

The two key strategies to eliminating the issue of objections are: Having a sound, logical sales communication process that sets you up to understand where a customer or prospect is coming from, what they value, what their real priorities are, why and when they are ready to make a decision to buy, and how sophisticated they are; and a sound knowledge of your offerings and how it fits or serves your market.

Utilising your very best communication skills such as focused questioning, active listening, verifying and paraphrasing, and creative problem solving are keys to eliminating objections and creating a dynamic, productive sales and buying experience for you and the customer.

Let’s rethink labelling every customer question or concern as an objection.  A customer asking a question about your product or service, seeking further clarification on a matter, or expressing confusion over a new product are not grounds for an objection, they are merely trying to understand what you or the product/service does in more detail.

They are often trying to see if there is match between you and them.  As sales people we should welcome these enquiries as the customer is fully engaged, showing interest, and seeking to find common ground as to whether to work with us or eliminate us from the equation. This should not be grounds for fear and loathing.

So what is an objection? An objection, as defined by www.dictionary.com, is a reason or argument offered in disagreement, opposition, refusal, or disapproval.

Based on this definition, in many cases sales people are not trying to overcome objections, they are working with the customer who is seeking information or clarification for a mutually beneficial outcome, the sale.  Dealing with nonconforming ideas or helping a customer coordinate a viable solution requires understanding, collaboration, and creative problem solving skills on the part of the sales person, not overcoming objection skills.

There are four common areas sales people come across which can, if not properly dealt with, lead to objections (and reactions):

1.    Misunderstanding – correct it
2.    Doubt – resolve it
3.    Limitation – compromise or put it into perspective
4.    Question – answer it

The reality is if you and the customer have not found common ground or agreement on an action to move the sale forward to the next logical stage it does not necessarily mean you have encountered an objection.  It may just mean a viable sales opportunity may not exist.  However, if you have not listened to the customer, tried to force your ideas onto them without their consent, or tried to bully them into a sale then the customer may object, and rightly so.

If during any stage, especially the last stage of the selling process, you encounter strong objections or indecision from your customer, it likely means one or more of these problems may exist:

• You didn’t really understand your customer’s/prospect’s needs or priorities in the first place and tried to put forward solutions they do not want
• Your customer/prospect doesn’t perceive having a need i.e. they maybe an uniformed buyer
• Your customer/prospect is not looking for a solution, i.e. maybe they are just on a fact finding mission
• You have not shown your customer/prospect what they think they need, i.e. there is a clash due to a mismatch between what you perceive as important and what they perceive as important
• Your customer/prospect cannot see any real value in your offering
• Your customer/prospect is not ready to buy yet
• Your customer/prospect does not have confidence in you or your company
• Your customer/prospect has unrealistic expectations you will never meet
• Your customer/prospect has other agendas or loyalties that do not understood, i.e. they have biases and are unlikely to buy from your not matter what

These situations and others like them are the realities of selling.  Our job as sales people it to properly understand our customers, their situation, their preferences, priorities, challenges, goals, and come up with viable solutions that are a win:win for both parties, or determine that a ‘no sale’ exists.  Either way everyone is in the know about what to expect which should reduce the need to object.  However, sometimes there is no simple solution to a customer’s concerns.  A customer will hesitate to move forward and if you can’t find a solution, maybe you can negotiate a resolution.

If you do happen to come across a real objection, below is a seven step process for handling objections:

1. Deal with the objection straight away, don’t ignore it.
2. Be trustworthy and empathise with feelings that are expressed; Use an appropriate manner by remaining calm, showing respect, and using positive language (talk about what can be done rather than what can’t be done).
3. Utilise your most effective communication skills, remembering to:  actively listen, question, solve problems, avoid making personal judgments, be flexible, and work together.
4. Ask questions to determine the real objection.
5. Restate objections to clarify the issue and gain agreement from the customer that this is their real concern.
6. Work towards seeing the situation from the customer’s point of view
7. Select a course of action which may include negotiating a resolution.

In short, the key to handling and eliminating objections effectively can only occur when open communication, cooperation and collaboration exist, however it is important to check and make sure it is a legitimate objection first.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

Building on my article ‘Where is my inner six year old when I need them?’  using effective questioning techniques is one of the most significant key differentiators between a person with good sales skills and a person with outstanding sales skills.  However, many sales people find this the most challenging aspect of the sales process.

Questions are used to not only assist you with gathering information about the customer i.e. their needs, situation, issues and priorities but also, when used effectively, assist the customer with coming to a clear understanding and realisation about what they need to do for themselves, hopefully with your assistance.

Although questions are asked at all stages of the Sales Process, most questioning should take place within the Customer Needs Analysis Phase which should occur near the beginning of the Sales Communication Process.  Despite the sales approaches of the past where sales people had a tendency to do most of the talking, the Customer Needs Analysis Phase is actually where you need to ask great questions and spend most of your time listening to the answers. As a  rule of thumb you should spend about 20% of you time speaking, in particular, asking questions and 80 % listening in this phase.  Test yourself or others next time, it may come as quite a shock how little time we spend listening to our customers.

Although it is the Phase where you do the least talking, it can also be considered the most important Phase of the sale.   It is at this stage that a number of critical things take place if you are handling the Customer Needs Analysis Phase effectively:

1. You gain an understanding of the customer’s needs, priorities, issues, perceptions, prejudices, fears, etc.
2. You come to have a deeper understanding of the customer’s buying motivators or intentions.
3. You build rapport and trust with the customer by listening effectively and demonstrating empathy towards their situation. Key is being able to see if from their point of view.
4. You are able to probe deeper into their situation using effective questioning techniques that help the customer to see a greater, tangible need for your product or service.
5. You establish what the consequences and opportunities are for the customer and how working with you will add value for them.

One of the fundamental aspects of the Sales Process is that customers value conclusions about their needs that they have come to themselves rather than conclusions that salespeople present to them.   It is through the effective use of questions that you are able to assist customers with self-discovery and understanding their needs for themselves.

Finally, incorporating a suite of different questions and pursuing them in such a way that you and the customer gain a clear understanding of what is a required legitimises you as a trusted partner.  This approach enables you and the customer to come to the realisation of whether they need to take up your solution or not.   Whilst it may sound absurd to not proceed with a sale, effective questioning enables you to determine who will be a suitable and viable client to work with and who will not. We need to press home to all sales people that not every sale is going to be a good sale and effective questioning helps you make that determination quickly so that you can get onto the customers you want in your portfolio.

As mentioned previously, everyone was born with the ability to ask questions and be curious. If this has waned in your sales team and business recently, may I suggest you have questioning skill sessions where you practice questioning as part of ongoing development. Come up with questions that work.  Look at how and why they work and share them around with everyone so we can all improve our questioning fitness.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

Style adaptability is where a person can read another person’s preferred communication style and adjusts their own communication style to that of the other person, thus making shared communication and understanding easier.  It is imperative to the principle of exchange and critical to any sales role, yet it is often one of the most poorly executed skills.

Time after time we come across teams of sales people who have no conscious idea about how to adapt their style to that of another.  Instead when they come across differences, communication usually breaks down and they will speak about the other using derogatory terms such as calling them an idiot, or moron, etc.  Sound familiar?

Those who are adaptable often do so unconsciously, it just seems to work for them.  For the rest of us, we are often left wondering if we have landed on another planet when we meet with people who are different.  These interactions often leave everyone confused and worse off.  People make judgments about difference claiming them to be difficult because they are seeing things from their own perspective and missing vital clues that could have been dealt with simply and easily.

A case study

We worked with a Customer Service team who supply scientific instrumentation equipment and consumables to scientific and medical laboratories.  Our role was to help improve their customer service and telephone selling skills.   When we started discussing dealing with customers, they told us that almost all their customers were difficult and rude.  When asked why this was, they advised:

“They are so abrupt and blunt.  They never say ‘hi’ or ‘how are you going’.  They are cold and seem to ignore us.  Some are really pushy and always seem to be in a hurry, while others always want too much information and take forever to make a decision. It drives us crazy.”

We acknowledged their feedback and then introduced them to a 4-quadrant Communication Style model. We use this as a starting point to help people understand and adapt to different communication styles.  The first place is to understand where you are, so we got the team to identify their own individual communication styles (both what their preferred style at work and at home or in their personal lives).  NB: It is true that some people like to communicate a certain way at work that differs in their personal lives.  We then asked them to identify what communication styles they thought their clients were.

The findings were as follows:

• With a few exceptions, the customer service team was very people friendly and quite fast paced in their preferred communication style.  They are bubbly and enthusiastic, warm and social and readily shared stories and feelings.
• Their customers on the whole, who were either lab mangers, scientists or lab technicians, were very task oriented, liked facts over social conversation, were direct, to the point, on the other hand others were slow paced, methodical, liked a lot information, and didn’t like to be rushed.

When asked to consider the differences, silence fell over the room.  It became clear to the team what had been happening.

We can clearly see that difference does not necessarily equate to difficult. We ran a series of follow-up sessions with this team and to their credit two weeks later during the first follow-up session we asked them how they were going with their ‘difficult’ customers:

“We don’t have rude customers anymore.  We adjusted our communication style to how they like be approached and they are really easy to deal with now.  And what is even more amazing is when we did that some of them then started to warm up and become friendlier which we never expected.”

So, as illustrated, it is possible to learn how to adapt your own style of communication to other people.

We taught the team some simple tips and techniques they could remember and apply easily. But they needed to listen and tune in very quickly to clues the other person was giving them and adjust their style to meet that of another without changing who they are as a person. It was all was about speed, tone, and topic.

Another term that is used to describe style adaptability is Mirroring.  As described in Wikipedia, Mirroring is a human behaviour in which one copies a person while communicating with them. It is often observed among couples or close friends. It may include miming gestures, movements, body language, muscle tensions, expressions, tones, eye movements, breathing, tempo, accent, attitude, choice of words, metaphors, or other features discernible in communication.

Mirroring is common in social interactions and awareness of the process is a powerful way to influence other people’s behaviour while maintaining your own position and intent.  The best rapport may be gained by mirroring not too exactly, but close enough so they get that comfortable feeling without feeling mocked.

By simply tuning into your customer or colleague you can quickly work out how they like to be communicated with and adjust your style accordingly, whilst remaining sincere to your own authentic self.

Rather than venture any further into the topic of style adaptability at this point, I would like to acknowledge that much has been written about how to relate to and read people.  Some of it is valid, practical, and useful.  Some is valid but very complex and for experts only and some of it is downright dubious and boarders on deceitful and manipulative.  I would suggest that whatever method you use you should ensure that it does no harm to you or others and is backed up by sound research.

My intention here was to highlight the importance of style adaptability in sales and its power to enhance honest and open communications with others and to help improve our chances of working effectively with our customers and colleagues.  Understanding how we and others like to communicate and acknowledging that there are differences, rather than difficulties, can make the life cycle of sales and customer attraction and retention easier. Remember, if one can understand and respect oneself, one is more likely to understand and respect others.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT

Sales numbers and sales processes should be understood and owned by everybody in your organisation.   In today’s world if you are not directly in sales you are supporting someone who is.  This is why sales really is a team effort.

Rather than being just about a feel good factor and great staff alignment, this has practical applications as well.   For instance with the ability for customers (or anyone)  to find and connect with anyone in your organisation through many difference channels (i.e. social networks, Google, etc.) the whole business needs to be sales fit.

With anyone being able to contact anyone anywhere anytime it is critical that all your staff understand:

• What your company stands for (in language they and the customers understand)
• What  your company sells and how it supports your customers
• How they need to sell and service customers
• That everyone in the business either sells directly or supports someone who sells

If not problems may arise that cause more issues than they are worth.  For example imagine a customer, unhappy with a software product they have purchased, finds the name and number of the lead person who developed or designed the software and calls them directly to complain.

What happens here?  One of several things could happen.  Here are some examples:

1)    The Software designer/ developer actively listens to the issues of the customer, empathises with and understands their issues completely, helps the customer resolve their issues in the most effective manner possible, the customer feels heard, understood and able to work in collaboration with the person and the business. In addition the software engineer may take on board the new suggestions and consider them for future upgrades.
or
2)    The Software designer/ developer is stunned by the out-of-the-blue call and doesn’t know how to deal with the customer so after some mutterings hangs up on the customer.
or
3)    The Software designer/ developer tells the customer they don’t know what they are talking about and gets into an argument with the customer resulting in either the customer or software engineer hanging up.
or
4)    The Software designer/ developer tries to help the customer but gets too technical using jargon the customer doesn’t understand leaving the customer feeling more confused and perhaps frustrated or even angry.

This issue and others like it are becoming more common place leading to more customers voicing their disquiet in all sorts of public ways – just think Twitter for example.  Customer complaints are no longer residing in the domain of the customer service department anyone can read about them these days – thus leaving businesses brand and reputation exposed to ridicule rightly or wrongly.

How we handle difficult customer situations says a lot about us and our companies.

So how many of the key people in your organisation (read CFO, CEO, Operations Manager, Product Mangers, Distribution Manager, Sales Manager etc.) are skillful at communicating and handling customer enquiries, complaints, and feedback?

How many of them have been specifically trained in communication, customer service and selling skills?

How many of them can model these skills for the rest of your team?

The communications skills training most senior managers would receive is in how to handle the media but I think they would be better served if they were trained in contemporary customer service and selling skills first.

Not handling  customer issues, feedback or requests well leads to many of these media issues in the first place, so why not address it at the core?   Let’s train everyone in contemporary customer service and selling skills and processes and make sure we all understand how our actions can enhance or detract our company.

We all need to make sure that we have the sales and customer service processes in place that people can follow and apply effectively.  All our people need to be trained in the necessary sales and customer service skills so they are in the best position to handle and manage customers calls and ensure that our organisations are well placed to best serve our customers.   Even if the customer is wrong about something it’s all in how we handle it that means the difference between a positive and negative experience.

I was taught a valuable lesson early on in my career when I was working in recruitment.  The lesson was this: I was told you are going to tell more people they did not get the job than you will tell those who did so make sure that every contact you have with anyone is always done in a constructive and positive manner.  Try to be of help no matter what and ensure the person knows you did you best even if the best meant delivering bad news.  People will appreciate your honesty and the effort you took to be of service to them.

I would highly recommend that core sales and service competencies be defined and included in everyone’s job and person descriptions and be made a conscious part of all our roles through effective, relevant training and on-the-job coaching support so they become a way of life not just a fad.

So, next time you decide to train your sales staff in selling skills and processes, make sure they are the right selling processes and skills suitable for your business environment and do yourself, your team and your customers a favour by also including all your other staff in the same training.  The rewards are great in terms of teamwork, customer satisfaction, staff alignment, customer retention and, of course, better sales results and brand currency.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT

‘My sales people are not closing sales’ is the most common complaint we hear.

The biggest cause for people not being able to close sales it not the close itself.  It often starts at the beginning of the sales call.

Sales people need to be able to properly understand client’s needs and discuss possible solutions that meet those needs with the relevant products and services before any close can take place.  Once this has happened they can close the sale but not before. If a sales person cannot meet a client’s needs with their products and services then it is a ‘no sale’.

Some people also expect every sale to be closed in one meeting.

Closing a sale as a ‘done deal’ in one meeting can happen in a number of industries, particularly in simple sales, however with more complex sales it often takes more than one meeting to progress to a final close.

In some instances, however, even simpler sales are experiencing a lengthening to the sales cycle.  We are seeing a trend with clients not wanting to make hasty decisions and needing to take a more time to make informed decisions.  Does this mean if they do not say ‘yes’ in the first meeting you have lost a sale?  No, not necessarily.  If you need to go an extra stage or two, make sure you get an agreement on the action that moves the sale forward to the next logical stage.

Where sales people often fall down in the actual closing of a sale (that is assuming they have understood the client’s needs properly as stated above) is that they do not gain agreement from the client as to which solution is the best for them. They then fail to gain commitment from the client to move forward with the sale to a close.

In ‘pressure selling tactics’, sales people are conned into believing that if you don’t get the customer to sign there and then you won’t get them back or get the sale.  In most cases, this is simply not true.  Some people like to take their time to make a decision and forcing them to ‘sign’ will actually turn them away.  The desperation displayed by sales people in these situations can be very unappealing and can be a turn off to prospective clients.   At worst this behaviour  becomes bullying on the part of the sales person, often at the expense of less assertive, confident customers.

Another common misconception is that you need to ‘ask for the sale’. If you have done a good job asking questions to establish needs, properly matched your solution to these needs, and then asked questions to check that this is what the client wants then closing the sale is easy.  We should remember it’s the client who makes the buying decision and the sales person who facilitates the process.

Top performing sales people stop asking questions here and they start telling the client what they are going to do for them. They take charge and ownership of the process. They are confident but not arrogant. The client should, and usually does, feel supported and happy to proceed
If you are in more complex sales and have several steps in the sales process, you need to make sure that at each stage you to get a commitment to move to the next logical stage of the sales process. This is a close as well – a mini close that leads to the final close.

So, what’s stopping people from saying “Ok, this is what I will do for you. Let’s get started.”?

1. They are being told that they need to keep asking questions.
2. Many sales people do not know how to conduct an open transparent purposeful conversation. They do not take charge and they make too many assumptions leaving the client, and themselves in no man’s land.

If you are direct and upfront, and confirm what has been discussed and take charge of the situation, then real viable clients will move with you and get started. Those who are tyre kicking will show their true colours and bail out.

This assertive, positive approach makes no assumptions. Both parties are clear about what will happen.

Closing the sale should be the easiest part of the process if you do everything else right.

Happy Selling