How Prospects Use EMCOM to Push Away Salespeople

EMCOM

My wife and I really enjoyed watching “Last Ship” on Netflix.

The series originally aired nearly 10 years ago, before COVID. That’s significant because the story is about a pandemic that destroys the world’s population, the search for a cure, and the ship’s role in the drama.

Although it was the USA’s last ship, it was being pursued by Russian ships and submarines because they wanted the cure for themselves. The ship used EMCOM – various levels of radio silence – to avoid being detected.

The Break-In

On a recent night at 3am, my wife and I heard a loud crash. Her first thought was that somebody had broken into the house. While I went to look, my wife checked the Blink camera feed and much to her dismay, none of the five were working. That couldn’t be good. The Blink controller was in our son’s former room and when I went to check on it I stumbled upon a rack of inscribed baseball bats that had pulled away from the wall and fallen to the floor. I uncovered the source of the problem.

You aren’t surprised I found a way to work baseball into my article but the military is a new analogy for me!

The Sales Version of EMCOM and Baseball Bats

Prospects with real urgency almost always have a version of that bat rack that has pulled loose from the wall and fallen. They just use EMCOM to keep you from finding it.

Prospects use EMCOM to avoid giving buying signals to salespeople.

More specifically, they go radio silent to prevent salespeople from learning about their version of the fallen baseball bat problem.

When a prospect has real buying motivation but deliberately goes radio silent to hide the problem, that combination is what most of us have always called resistance. And salespeople simply suck at managing it. Watch this 2-minute video rant from a recent LinkedIn post that explains the problem as if salespeople were cars.

When salespeople learn to manage resistance, they can raise it and lower it on demand, at which time selling becomes easier. Note that I didn’t say managing resistance is easy, I said that when salespeople can do it, THEN selling becomes easier.

You would likely agree that lowering resistance on demand is key, but it’s also useful to recognize when the prospect is too agreeable and there isn’t enough productive tension. In those moments you actually need to raise it—on purpose and carefully. For example, when a prospect is nodding along and saying ‘everything sounds great,’ you might slow down and say, ‘You’ve been nodding in agreement, but what is it that you don’t agree with?

I just used the word “recognized.”

This is very important. Before resistance can be managed, salespeople must have always-on awareness, or to stay with today’s analogy, sonar and radar, so they know whether what they are about to say, ask or do, will either raise, lower or not change resistance. Resistance is much more difficult to manage after a surprise escalation. Salespeople must know, in advance, when what they are about to say will raise resistance. Then they can be prepared, know how to recover from it, and know how to leverage the pending drop in resistance.

PRO TIP: While I don’t disclose how to leverage the drop in resistance in a complimentary article, it is often a closable moment!

Think of the real life scenarios when you become resistant. What causes it, what lowers it, and how do you feel when the resistance is lowered? Total Relief, right?

Your favorite baseball team has a one-run lead but their opponents for today’s game load the bases with nobody out in the 8th inning. You can imagine your one-run lead turning into a 3-run deficit with one swing of the bat. Your team brings in their “Relief” pitcher. You’re on pins and needles. He strikes out the first batter. He goes to 3-0 on the 2nd batter. You’re thinking, “Oh no, this is gonna be awful!” The next pitch is a called strike and the batter fouls off the pitch after that. Bases loaded. One out. 3-2 count. You’re literally having a panic attack. Next pitch. Groundball to shortstop, to second for one and on to first for the double-play. Inning over. Lead preserved. The Relief pitcher provided relief. Right there. How do you feel? That’s the exact shift we want with a prospect: take them from pins-and-needles anxiety over their own fallen bat-rack problem to the same pure relief that only you can deliver.

That’s the goal with your prospect. To go from pins and needles over their fallen baseball bat rack problem, to relief that only you can provide.

For decades, we’ve been helping sales teams learn to overcome radio silence, uncover the fallen bat rack issue, and move resistant prospects from pins and needles to relief. We would love to help your team up their game! You can reach us here.