6
don’t argue—augment
(STEP FIVE: DEALING WITH OBJECTIONS)
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
Thomas worked for the Austin branch of Colliers International, a global real estate firm. His bosses were about to let him go because his introverted nature simply didn’t produce sales results. Desperate for help, he got his boss to agree to hire me for an initial consultation to help him figure out how to be a successful salesperson despite—and I write that sarcastically—his introverted nature.
As it turned out, they hired me to train not only Thomas but the other two salespeople on his team as well. These coworkers were “naturals”—gift-of-the-gab, extroverted, hard-core salesmen. They saw every call, every sales appointment, and every interaction as a battle to be won, and the customer’s objections, a foe to be vanquished.
One salesman was especially aggressive. He even went so far as to nickname himself “the bulldog.” He knew the tactics, knew the terrain, and knew he had to get across the minefield of objections.
Every morning, he would hype himself up on coffee, then pick up the phone and plow though call after call, bulldozing his way over people in his relentless march to victory. He told me stories of how he’d be standing, fists planted on the table, yelling at the phone’s speaker to the customer on the other end of the line.
Wow. What a way to live.
I brought all three salesmen together and said, “Guys, try this: When you hear an objection, instead of hammering at them until they either give in or hang up, just tell them a story.”
Now, if you’re like me or any of the introverts I know, when you hear an objection, you need a moment. You need to think of how to respond. I quoted Lesley Sword earlier: “Introverts need time ‘to digest’ information before responding to it.” We like to thoughtfully consider our answers; we’re not usually known for our instant, stinging retorts. When someone objects, our natural instinct is to withdraw into ourselves. That’s why we’re at a loss for words.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just press pause for a second and ask yourself, “Now which one of my stories would speak to their concern here?”
I have good news: There is a way. I call it the “objectionhandling cushion.” This is just a phrase that you’ll deliver as knee-jerk reaction anytime your customer objects. It’s a space filler that’s so well practiced, it rolls off the tongue automatically while we mentally catalog the stories in our arsenal and choose the best one.
I always coach my clients to say, “I perfectly understand, and the last thing I want to do is waste any of your time, however . . .” Then, if the prospect objects with something else, they should use a shortened version of the same thing: “I perfectly understand, however . . .”
The reason I suggest they use this exact phrase is because I know it works. It’s been tested and tried from Tasmania to Texas. That said, you need to be authentic. If this phrase isn’t really you, experiment to find something that is. Then practice, practice, practice. You want your response to be instantaneous. That way, your mouth is moving while your brain is working, choosing the right objection-handling story.
(On a side note: Don’t ever use the word but. It negates everything that precedes it. Imagine someone giving you the compliment, “You know, that looks great on you, but . . .” They might as well drop the nice part because all you’re going to hear is whatever comes next. When dealing with an objection, you want to ensure that the prospect knows you listened; you want to validate their point of view, not negate it.)
For the two extroverts at Colliers, this objection cushion provided an additional benefit: It forced them to stay levelheaded even when they wanted to shout into the phone. For Thomas the introvert, it bought him a moment to ready his response.
Just as we discussed in Chapter 5, you don’t want to confront the objection head-on.
Instead, tell them a story. Have an objection story of someone “just like” them who had a similar concern but decided to go through with a decision anyway, and why today they’re so glad they pulled the trigger because of the result—which you think is probably what the customer in front of you wants, too.
In explaining this to the three salesmen, I said, “It could be a story about a similar client and how their concerns were laid to rest once they went with Colliers. It could be about a recent success you or your team had. It could be about someone who had the exact same objection and why they finally decided to go forward, despite it. Just tell them a story.”
The coffee-hyped sales warrior said, “Matthew, they hang up on me now, and I’m short and to the point—on average, about eight seconds. You want me to tell them a long-winded story and expect them to stay on the line? They’ll just hang up even faster.”
After more consulting and coaching—in which I told objection-handling stories to overcome their objections—the two sales dogs were finally ready to give it a try. When they heard “It’s too early for us to look at that,” “We have an agent already,” or, “I’m not interested,” they learned to squelch their ingrained habit of brandishing their sword and hacking away.
Instead, in response to someone saying they had too long on their current lease to worry about another one, the bulldog said, “I perfectly understand, and the last thing I want to do is waste any of your time. However, we actually had a client, John, who told us the same thing about six months ago. I told him that with Austin’s growth, commercial real estate properties are renting out fast, and if you wait too long, you miss the opportunity to take advantage of some great new construction discounts. He decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, and he was so glad that he did. If he had put it off any later, he’d have left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table. So, as I said, I wouldn’t want to waste any of your time, but it might be worth a discussion to make sure that you don’t miss out on the same opportunity.”
People can argue with logic and facts; stories sidestep all of that. Instead of turning the discussion into an argument or trying to run people over—“Here’s why nothing you just said is valid,” which just makes you look pushy and forces them to believe you or not—a story addresses their concerns, validates that they have a legitimate fear, and gives them a measure of proof that you’ve helped others just like them deal with the same, all without directly refuting the customer’s claims or assertions.
It’s easy for them to argue with numbers or alleged benefits, but it’s harder for them to say that stories about your other clients are invalid. Really, what are they going to do? Call you a liar?
It diffuses the conversation and disarms the customer because you didn’t attack them or their concerns. You’re simply relating something that occurred to someone else and pointing out the similarities.
So how did this work for Colliers? By becoming storytellers, they didn’t just hit their stretch goal. Within the first two months, this office—already one of the largest commercial real estate firms in Austin—added a million dollars in their sales pipeline. Inside twelve months they had more than doubled their business revenue.
Why? Hard sells didn’t work well on C-level execs making commercial real estate decisions. Experienced businesspeople—the “whales”—know how to fend off pushy salespeople (especially if they’re young). By telling stories, the Colliers team shifted the conversation from yes/no to “story and takeaway.” Executives were more apt to listen to a story about someone like them than to let a salesman stay on the line using high-pressure tactics. The team started closing larger sales because of more buy-in from higher-ups.
Thomas the introvert became the number one salesperson, outselling not just the extroverts but the company principals—the first-ever junior associate to do so! Switching to story-based selling worked so well that today, the entire team has a weekly thirty-minute meeting to share client stories with one another.
That’s right; every week, the bulldog goes to “story time.”
SIDESTEP OBJECTIONS
I discovered objection stories by accident. When I first started selling door-to-door, one of the objections I’d hear over and over again was, “Look, there’s no way I’m going with Ozcom. I tried it and the coverage was terrible, so I switched back to Telstra.”
It was true. When Ozcom first launched, it had nowhere near the coverage of the other major Australian telecom. I’d experienced it myself as a kid. How could I argue with a valid point that I knew to be true? I couldn’t simply tell them, “You’re wrong, we’re great, sign here.” I needed to find a way to handle their objection without invalidating their experience.
One day, the workaround fell in my lap: From out of nowhere, I got a call from a customer thanking me for convincing him to give Ozcom another try. The coverage had been fine, and he loved how much money he was saving—all the pieces of an objection story fell into place. The next time someone gave me the Ozcom versus Telstra coverage excuse, this is the story I gave them:
I perfectly understand and the last thing I want to do is waste any of your time. However, I just had a customer call me who had experienced the same bad coverage service, just like you.
When I was talking to him, he told me he wasn’t interested in switching back from Telstra to Ozcom again. I was just about to walk out when I turned around and said to him, “When you first signed up with Ozcom, what did you do it for?”
He said, “To save money.” Of course, I understand that. In a retail business with only a 20 percent margin, saving $1 is the same thing as selling $5.
I said to him, “So, originally you moved to save money but then had to move back because of the coverage, which makes sense. However, today, they’ve spent millions on new towers, and Ozcom now has 95 percent coverage while Telstra is 99 percent, so almost the same.
“Originally, you moved for savings and left for the coverage. So today, let’s forget all that happened, and start with a new proposition. If you could have all the coverage and all the savings—wouldn’t you jump at the chance?”
And he told me, “Well, what if it’s not?”
I said, “You’ll get a thirty-day, no-questions-asked, full money back guarantee.”
Well, long story short, he called me just the other day to thank me, as he’s now saving money and has all the coverage he needs.
So while I completely understand why it wasn’t worth it for you to switch to Ozcom then, now with the coverage fixed—and of course I’ll give you the same guarantee as him—isn’t that like getting everything you wanted? Would you like to give it a try with a thirty-day safeguard to start saving $X?
I didn’t tell him he was wrong. In fact, technically, I didn’t even try to counter his objection; I sidestepped it altogether. I simply gave him a story about someone like him who had a similar objection but wound up being glad he made the decision to buy. People could pick apart my logical arguments, but they can’t deny that this guy called and thanked me for getting him back to Ozcom.
I’m not asking them to accept or reject anything. I’m just sharing a story that appeals on an emotional level (the fear of loss, the thrill of savings). More important, they get to decide what the moral of the story is.
That’s the beauty of stories. There’s no right or wrong. There’s nothing that’s required from the listeners other than that they listen. It bypasses the automatic guards we put up, because a story doesn’t ask you to consider facts; it doesn’t need a response.
It just is.
DON’T SELL YOURSELF AS A SALESPERSON
Don’t get me wrong; you are in sales.
If your livelihood depends on being able to persuade and influence others, then you are, first and foremost, a person who sells, regardless of whatever else you are. You have to embrace the fact that you sell for a living.
Alex has nothing to do if he doesn’t generate projects to work on. Jim Comer can’t speak without first landing the speaking gig. Zack can’t coach clients without clients in the first place. You have to sell for everything else to happen. At the same time, however, you shouldn’t think of yourself as a salesperson.
I tried a subtle mindset shift along these lines with Tommy, one of the first salespeople I trained when I became team manager at Ozcom. He came in about a month or so after I started my own company, and his sales were low and inconsistent. I taught him everything I used, but the first time he encountered an objection, the script flew out the window. Tommy came from a tough part of town and was used to quickly moving into “confrontation mode.” Every time a sales call became the least bit argumentative, he immediately slipped into his old aggressive stance. Each talk became a fight that revolved around why the customer was wrong and why our product was better.
Finally, I pulled him aside and said, “Tommy, try this. Don’t think of yourself as a salesperson. A salesperson is there to shove something down someone’s throat. When you go in, before you talk to anybody, I want you to tell yourself, ‘I’m not a salesman; I’m a sales consultant.’ You’re there to help them figure out what’s best for them—not to sell them a telecom plan or die trying. Don’t argue. Ask questions, like you would if you were their lawyer or accountant. Pretend you’re a telecom expert, there to give your expert opinion.”
It worked. He turned his focus from “winning” to “advising.” If prospects objected, then it was either because Tommy didn’t understand their situation or because they didn’t understand how it would help them. Tommy went from telling them they were wrong to asking questions to find the gap between his “expert” opinion and their objections.
It also forced him to become a better listener. Instead of his previous strategy of tell, tell, tell, he started keying in on what they were actually saying. They didn’t want to fight. They just wanted to make the best decision for them and their business. When he listened attentively, Tommy had a better context for overcoming objections. Instead of seeing it as a rejection, he eventually came to see it as misunderstanding. Either he misunderstood what was important to them, or they misunderstood how our providers solved the prospect’s problem.
“Salesman” immediately brings to mind sleazy used car dealers and dodgy corporate types who care only about the size of their next commission check. That’s not who and what you are. (If it is, you’re reading the wrong book.)
If you’re like me, you simply want to promote your products and services in a way that’s authentic and congruent with who you are.