service

Over the years, Corporate Visions® has recorded salespeople going through various parts of the sales process. One thing that you would see on those videotapes is that when you get an objection, you start backing up as you try to handle it. Now, why do you backup? It all has to do with your mindset and preparation.

Many salespeople view selling as a win/lose proposition. When you see selling in that way, any threat to your ability to close a deal, for example, an objection, causes your flight or fight systems to engage. When these systems take over, you do things you wouldn’t do if you were in your normal state of mind, such as backing up.

In his beautifully written book “Blink” Malcolm Gladwell shows that when you reach that heightened state of stress, particularly combined with time pressure, your judgment becomes impaired. This is why objection handling is so challenging for some people. You hear an objection. You feel like you are being attacked. Your pulse accelerates as your survival instincts take control of your system. You physically backup to put space between you and your “attacker.”  You feel time pressure to answer the objection without hesitation. And what happens next? You either handle the objection weakly, because you are in a defensive mindset looking for a way out, or, you handle the objection too aggressively and the customer feels you are attacking them back.

The bad news is this is a natural reaction. The good news is you can change this dynamic. The way to do that is to approach selling not as a win/lose proposition, but instead in the way of the Samurai.

The word Samurai is Japanese for “one who serves.” It does not mean to be a servant. It does, however, mean to do everything in your power to help those you are serving make the right decisions, which should include buying your services (if that would be a bad decision, find a different customer). When your mindset is to be “one who serves,” you are no longer viewing objections as a direct attack on yourself. Instead, objections are simply signals that you need to do a better job of serving your customer by helping them understand how your product will help them.

Being Samurai also relieves the issue of time pressure. A Samurai prepares ahead of time for any imaginable event. A Samurai salesperson does this by anticipating possible objections and the exact way in which he/she will handle them when they arise. When you get an objection that you thoroughly prepared for, you won’t feel time pressure to make up an answer on the fly because you will already know what you need to say. Finally, being Samurai also requires a commitment to the “Beginner’s Mind,” the Samurai idea that whenever confronting a new situation, you should not bring your assumptions with you.  When you approach selling this way, objections won’t cause your fight/flight systems to spike, and you will be able to answer objections in the way that is most effective for your customer.

By Erik Peterson, Consultant, Corporate Visions Inc.