What two crises does every sale have? Objections and “the close”. It’s at these two places that the success or the failure of your sale teeters on the edge. What if you actually used these two crisis moments to create deeper rapport with your prospect instead of the stress they normally create? When you learn to do this, you’ll see an immediate doubling of your income.
Am I making wild claims about income? Award-winning research scientist Dr. William R. Miller found that if a professional mishandled just one client-voiced resistance in a meeting, it would cause the whole meeting to fail. I’ve seen this happen. I’ve seen a meeting going beautifully… The client and the advisor getting along like two pigs in mud… then, the meeting unravels in a second when the advisor fumbles an objection. Handling resistance correctly will catapult your success and income.
Here’s how you get it right
First, don’t ever be surprised by an objection. Giving objections is part of a client’s decision-making process. Nobody is going to turn over their money to you without at least some question or objection. So the first rule is, don’t panic. Take the objection in stride. Take a deep breath and smile. Don’t let them see that you’re rattled. If the client detects any level of anxiety on your part, they’re going to wonder why you’re so worried about whether or not they take your advice. The conclusion they most often will come to is that you want to get your hands on their money. And, that’s not good. So stay calm.
And if you think about it, there’s no reason to panic. We’ve experienced objections at every single meeting we’ve had our entire careers. And it’s the same objections over and over and over. In fact, I put a list together of all the objections that advisors get and came up with only 45 objections. And it’s really just the same 10 or 15 that we see most often.
Clients are going to give you objections, get used to it.
Is every objection they give you valid? Yes, it is. If you climbed into your client’s mind you would see that their objection, regardless of how ridiculous it is to you, makes total sense to them. And the last thing we want is for them to feel like we think their objection is not valid. If you do, you’ve taken a big step backward. People don’t like people who point out that they’re wrong.
To get objections right, you must first understand the anatomy of an objection.
- An objection is the client’s declaration of free will – people don’t want to feel like they’ve been sold, they want to feel like they’ve purchased of their own free will. Objections help them feel that way.
- When a client gives us an objection they know that we will likely “fight” or disagree with them
- The Client’s fight-flight syndrome kicks in… The adrenaline starts flowing:
- Their blood pressure goes up
- Their pulse rate goes up
- They start rehearsing verbal comebacks to anything you may say, in their minds–they know you’re probably going to give them a rebuttal and begin immediately thinking of their rebuttal, your rebuttal… and so on and so on.
And this fight-flight syndrome does not just apply to the client, you as the advisor are also likely to be experiencing the same fight-flight symptoms.
What do you think is happening to the communication process when you’re both stressing out? This obviously isn’t conducive to building rapport. Listening skills drop. Empathy drops. Willingness to be open to another’s point of view drops.
When two people have different agendas, the defenses are going to go up on both sides. If we do not immediately address this problem we’re going to sink the deal.
If you go back and read the last two sentences, you have discovered the magic to overcoming objections. You both can’t have different agendas.
So can we expect the client to drop their agenda and immediately adopt ours? Of course not.