When you call a prospect for the first time, keep in mind you are typically interrupting him or her from something they are doing that they consider to be more important than anything you are about to say.

Everyone is busy.

For this reason, you should almost always expect some sales resistance, if you have the best service or product in the world.

If a prospect is quick to shut you down and says something at the very beginning such as, “Thanks for calling, but I’m not interested,” or “We’re not really looking for something like that right now,” you shouldn’t take it seriously. Your prospect doesn’t know enough to truly judge how good your product or service can be for his or her company. It’s a knee-jerk response, a robotic response to any sales offer.

Confidently come back with these words, “That’s all right. Most people in your industry felt the same way when I first called them. But now they’ve become our best customers, and they recommend us to friends.”

When your prospect hears these words, they will immediately stop what they are doing and start paying attention.  He or she will almost invariably say, “Oh really? What is it then?”

*Adapted from Sales Trainer Brian Tracy, The Psychology of Selling

These are 8 reasons that I’ve found to be true when observing why people put salespeople off during the sales process. It’s of course, not an absolute list.

So here they are, the top 8 reasons why prospects put you off:

1. You didn’t sell on the value of moving forward quickly. What’s the benefit to them if they buy sooner than later? What are the consequences if they wait until later?

2. They are scared of making a bad decision.

3. They normally make decisions over a certain period of time.

4. They normally make decisions after hearing about it or seeing the offer a certain amount of times.

5. They need to feel they have some sort of proof.

6. Loss of options.

7. They are reactive people, rather than proactive.

8. They don’t believe you.

Creating urgency is tricky in sales. But there are ways to create urgency using various NLP language patterns tailored to how your buyer buys. Perhaps future or past posts will reveal these strategies.

NLP is full of fancy jargon, and you need a glossary of terms when attending a NLP Practitioner Training just to make sense of it all. “Presuppositions” are no exception, even though most think they know what it means.

Presuppositions are simply the linguistic equivalent of what most people call assumptions. But with a little more art and science to it when used on purpose.

Whenever we are communicating, we use presuppositions that assume something is already true; every sentence we speak in our everyday life has a presupposition in it. In most cases, we tend not to consciously recognize what we have presupposed, and instead concentrate on what is directly stated. Thus, presuppositions are unconsciously accepted as being true and the listener will act as if they were true.

Naturally, that’s the powerful part.

Think of it like this. Every sentence you speak contains a noun and a verb, so, with each sentence you speak you actually presuppose that something exists (noun) in the past, present or future.  You also presuppose that some action did or did not take place, is or is not taking place, or will or will not take place.

Great salespeople know how to use this to their advantage.

Some of my favorite “presuppositional” categories are:

Cognitive qualifiers: “Surprisingly, interestingly, amazingly, fortunately, luckily, happily, curiously, uniquely, naturally, obviously, etc.”  Everything that follows this word is assumed true as the focus is on the word (the cognitive qualifier) that starts the sentence assuming it so.  For more info on Cognitive Qualifiers – click here.

Presuppositions that shift space (in the mind of your prospects): “Along side of that, stacked on top of that, in addition to that, adding to that, instead of that, in front of that, inside of that, outside of that, behind that, underneath that, between that, above all that, etc.”

Presuppositions that shift time (in the mind of your customers): “look back on, in the future, right now, before, once, look ahead, finally, after, long awaited, everlasting, accelerate, presently, yet, carry through, then, when, now, etc.”

Presuppositional words that say something is factual, actual, or the truth: “actually, genuinely, unquestionably, surely, certainly, proven, obviously, self evident, valid, absolute, clearly, surely, naturally, etc.”

Presuppositional words of power: Realize, aware, notice, discover, uncover.

Future posts will have some examples of these, but this should get you thinking and more importantly, creating.

Metaphors. That’s the secret.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Using metaphors appeals the your prospects or customers right brain. It helps them visualize, instantly relate, and connect the dots to what you are saying or recommending. And it’s memorable.

The process behind a recommendation that’s rephrased framed with a metaphor is actually simple.

First, ask yourself: What am I actually recommending?

Second, determine the problem your recommendation will solve.

Third, run through various possible metaphors, selecting the one that communicates most clearly and vividly what you’re urging.

For example, let’s say you are recommending that your team goes through some team building training to improve collaboration on projects. The problem to be solved is lack of communication, morale, and productivity. Here is a sample metaphor you could use:

“It will move us from a company of stray shooters to a team of marksmen.”

Here is another example. You are recommending someone replace their current software system with the one you are selling. The problem is the old system is too slow. An example of a metaphor you could use is:

“When we’re done, it will be like replacing a horse and buggy with a Porsche.”

How can you work on this? Just follow these steps each time:

Step 1 – List out a recommendation you’ve recently made to a client.

Step 2 - What problem does it solve ?

Step 3 -What metaphor can make that recommendation more vivid in your customer’s mind?

Resource: You learned how to construct metaphors in your Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner training. David Gordon’s book on Therapeutic Metaphors is a great place to start, and while not overtly so in the book itself, it’s just as practical for business applications as it is therapy.

I’ve written about dealing with resistance on this blog a few times  (see part 1 and part 2 posts).  I have a class I teach on the subject so there is a lot more that we could discuss to clarify this important part of selling.

However, while it’s simple to think of inoculating objections as “overcoming them before they come up” and reframing the meaning, it’s not the only way to approach it.

Inoculating objections is more about installing an attitude into your customer’s mind as a pre-frame to your presentation. What attitude do you want your customer to have? What thoughts do you want them to think? What do you want them thinking about?

Do you want them open minded? Do you want them interested? The good news is you can control how someone is thinking. You have tremendous influence over what your prospects are thinking about.

For example – take a moment and think of your first car you owned. What color was it? Do you have many memories that help you remember that first car?  If you are thinking of your first car, or visualized what it looked like in your mind, or if you thought of other memories you have that were related to that first car – I directed and influenced your thinking.  So again, what do you want your customers to think about? Also, remember to use 3rd party referencing.

How do you plant the open-mindedness seeds?

“Mr. Smith, you may be unlike some of our other clients, who are facing budget constraints for 2010. A recent client of ours made it clear that their budget wouldn’t allow for reallocation of funds to purchase what we offer unless it made perfect sense. And it wouldn’t make sense for them, of course, unless what we could do for them could increase sales. Luckily, they were open minded, and it ended up working our for them in the end.”

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) arms us with the language tools to develop our skills at making our products and services (sound, feel or look) interesting. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get caught up in what do I say versus what do I ask so I can learn what they want most out of what I’m selling.

What matters to your customers? Answer: Not what you are selling.

What matters to them is what your product or service will do for them. That’s it. What’s in it for them.

Does it matter how long your company has been in business? No. Unless you can tie it to a reason that is compelling enough for them to benefit from the company longevity (or brevity).

Does it matter if you are bigger or smaller (or more or less experienced) than your competitor? No. Unless you you can wrap it around how it impacts them in a way that contributes to why they’d buy your product.

In sales we sometimes mistake our primary role for presenting, packaging, and telling our story. This is only because we forgot to remember it’s about asking questions, the right questions to figure out which benefit is most important to your prospect.

The next time you are in front of your customer, remember to say something similar to: “One of the things my customers have found is really helpful in prioritizing what’s most important is to ask you to complete the following sentence regarding this product/service.” “All I really care about is _______________________.”

Another way to say it: “Let me ask you one more questions to help prioritize your needs. In terms of why you are buying this product/service, how would you complete this sentence: “All I really care about is _________________________.”

Your customers will thank you for it. And  you’ll know what to focus your presentation on.

Following a customer presentation gone south, have you ever found yourself saying things like, “They took me the wrong way,” or “They just didn’t understand what I was trying to say,” or “They didn’t get it,” or “The misinterpreted what I was meaning to say,” or “They were looking at it from the wrong perspective,” or “They misunderstood the presentation,” etc.?

My guess is from time to time, we’ve caught ourselves saying this and thought nothing of our own reaction.

One of the more valuable presuppositions taught in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is that the meaning of your communication is the response that you get.

If I asked you, do you like to be in control? What would your answer be?

My guess is your answer would be “yes.”

Most salespeople like to feel somewhat in control of their situation. If that is the case for you, why would you forfeit control to your customer by allowing the blame to go to them for misunderstanding you?

While it can be fun to point the finger or blame someone for “their misunderstanding” of what we were “trying” to communicate, it’s not useful for improving our communication.

If instead you adopt this empowering self-responsibility mindset of “the meaning of my communication is the response that I get”, you will find that it puts you in control of changing the outcomes.

I encourage you to approach each sales presentation, each customer encounter with this mindset, always asking what you could say different, how you could position your product in the way they will understand it best, based on how they buy, how they make decisions, and based on how they interpret the value best.

]]> http://nlpdaily.com/nlp-for-selling/feed 1 http://nlpdaily.com/dealing-with-resistance-part-ii http://nlpdaily.com/dealing-with-resistance-part-ii#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:46:49 +0000 Joe Soto http://nlpdaily.com/?p=79

Part 2 of Dealing with Resistance has to do with what you can do to prevent them from occuring at all. Let’s break it down:

2) Inoculating Objections

Inoculation:

in·oc·u·la·tion n.

Informal. 1. A preemptive tactic in which one party attempts to foresee and neutralize potentially damaging criticism from another party by being the first to confront troublesome issues. 2. To introduce an idea or attitude into the mind of.

The ability to inoculate objections is one of the most important skills to develop as a professional sales person and as a recruiter. The top 1% of all salespeople have this skill; the ability to present in such a way that all possible concerns or possible objections are covered or over come inside of the presentation itself. It’s never a “battle at the end” for them. It’s a smooth transition to close. There may be some questions to answer, but rarely is there an objection brought up. The presentation covered anything that would have caused them to resist. Their concerns have been neutralized.

Answer this question: When recruiting a new person onto the team, do you know what the top 2 or 3 objections you typically get are?

I’m guessing you know EXACTLY what they are.

Now, Let me ask you yet another question: If you already know what your most common objections typically are, why have them in the first place? Think about it. 

Do something about it. Change what you are saying, what you are doing, how you are presenting, etc. Change it so it neutralizes their concerns, overcomes their objections before they every have to say something…cover it ahead of time by embedding it inside of your presentation on our company/product/service/opportunity.

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” - Ronald E. Osborn