- March 2, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The salesperson who cold-called me gets kudos for, well, cold-calling me and getting through. Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there. She said she was calling from Charter Business and wanted to talk about phone and internet. I told her that we were all set and that’s when it got interesting. To her credit, she pushed back. Unfortunately, her skills were as bad as most salespeople and when she pushed back, she did it completely wrong. Here’s what happened:
I said, “We’re happy with what we have.” (which is completely true).
She said, “Is there another time we could review what we have to offer?”
Did I say I was too busy to talk right now? Was she reading the wrong objection handling tactic from her computer monitor? Was she learning disabled? Or was she simply not listening? I’m placing my bet on the likelihood that she was not listening. When salespeople fail to listen, not only do they fail to gain favor, traction and velocity, but they perpetuate their well-earned reputation as a group of people who do not listen, only care about making a sale, and who couldn’t care less about helping.
If she was listening instead of reading a script, she would have heard the word “happy.” Usually, when a prospect simply doesn’t want to engage, they’ll say, “We’re all set.”
She could have pushed back in so many ways…notice how each of these goes a bit further:
- “I don’t hear that very often, who are you using?”
- “That’s great to hear; you must be thrilled!”
- “Terrific – what are you most happy with?”
- “That’s interesting because most of my new customers began by saying the very same thing – that they were happy.”
- “Since you’re happy, you must never have to wait for a page to load…”
- “And every file transfers instantly…”
- “And videos never have to buffer…”
- “You can easily store all of your large files in the cloud…”
- And your voice calls are always perfect…”
She wouldn’t have been able to turn me around, but I am certain she would have been able to turn around any prospect who was able to recognize that their service wasn’t as good as it could be.
Most salespeople are afraid to push back. It’s a shame when someone is actually willing to push back, but hasn’t been properly trained on how to do it effectively.
