No one asks questions about something they are not considering purchasing. Questions and objections lead to dialogue and conversation.
Remember when I was on the phone call with Anthem Insurance and they were deciding between another speaker and me? One of the objections they put into a question was, “Have you given a keynote speech in the medical or health field before?”
My answer was “no,” but instead of telling them that, I kept the dialogue going by asking a series of questions: “What did their audience need to know? What did the audience need to be doing that they were not currently?”
By focusing on what Anthem needed, I learned that they wanted their team to handle objections better and embrace selling as part of their job. I was able to move away from their “objection” and gain greater knowledge about what they really needed. I then told them how I approach my work. I conduct a deep dive into their industry to learn their medical terms and customize my talk to include what is meaningful to Anthem.
As you now know, I won the business to give the keynote. Additionally, several audience members came up to me after the talk and asked how long I had worked in healthcare. My preparation gave me the confidence to ask for the business and answer their objections but is also integral to each talk I give.
The most common objections you might hear include, “Your price is too high.” or “I need to think about it.” If you are selling hardware, automobiles or something similar, you might hear, “You don’t have the features we want.” or “This isn’t the way we want to do it.” Here is one way to handle those kinds of objections; it’s called feel, felt, found, and it sounds like this:
“Well, I understand how you could feel that way. Other clients of ours felt that way at first, too, and what they found was…” You can then tell the story of why the product worked for another client. What’s happening here is that you do not agree with their objection but you do let them know that you heard it. This dialogue then allows them to see that others have felt the same way they do but became your client anyway.
I was giving a keynote speech and when I got to this point, a woman asked, “Does that feel, felt, found work with dating?” To which I asked, “Can you give me an example?” She replied, “Well, I met this guy and we have gone out a couple of times. However, he wants to go a little faster than I’m willing to go. What can I tell him?” Using the same structure, I provided her response to him, “You can say, ‘Look, I understand how you can feel that way because other guys have felt the same way. However, what they found is that I’m worth the wait.’” So, there’s the feel, felt, found used in a dating situation.
When overcoming objections in any situation, your mindset is critical. One of the ways I keep my mindset strong is to handle any criticism (both internal and external), competitive fears or self-doubt is to subscribe to Daily Stoic emails. Here is an example of one that really helps me:
Obstacles take many forms, but inevitably they always appear. Sometimes in isolation, sometimes in a landslide.
Our only option is to take energy from this, to be made better by it. We must learn from the obstacles. We must take consolation in them (if it were easy then anyone could do it, and the goal or good wouldn’t be worth pursuing). We must gather strength and muscle from each experience.
We have to remember: The obstacle is the way. Or rather, obstacles are the way.
One of the best ways to get obstacles to become fuel for your fire is to recap what went right and what went wrong when you lose a sale. You can then learn from it. It is vital not to let this become a blame game. Doctors conduct reviews when there are complications in a case or a patient dies. They have a Morbidity & Mortality (M&M) counsel with their peers to LEARN, not to blame.
Medical services at academic centers, most large private medical and surgical practices, and other similar centers hold M&M’s. While death, deterioration, and complications may be unavoidable in some patients due to underlying disease processes, they may also be associated with errors or omissions in patient care. M&M conferences involve the analysis of adverse outcomes in patient care through peer review. The objectives are to identify adverse consequences associated with a medical error, to modify behavior and judgment based on previous experiences, and prevent the repetition of mistakes leading to complications.
I recommend sales teams host their version of this monthly so they don’t repeat previous mistakes. This type of forum may also bring about new solutions or answers to new objections.
When objections do come up, you must remain calm. Remember my lifeguard story? I had to take in every element of the situation to see the best way to save little Sophia; there was no time to panic. It is not dissimilar to being in a pitch or negotiation when the hard questions start to fly. Your heart rate goes up anticipating the next question or the objection.
When you have confidence and are prepared instead of stumbling, you’re going to soar. You know you have the best product and the best team, and ultimately, you’re selling yourself and your big reason for being in this pitch.
Now, many times you are going to get butterflies in your stomach, especially when there’s a big deal on the table. I mentioned before that I tell people the goal is not to get rid of those butterflies but to get them to fly in formation. So, how do you do this in the room or at the moment? You must get the nervous energy out of your stomach and into the room. You can by making a gesture or moving. Move with purpose and you will get your mind away from “Do they like me? Will they buy?” to “I’m here to help these people. My company and product are going to make a difference. They’re going to help this prospect be more efficient or save them money.” Whatever your angle is, all of the things that make you or your company great and unique in the marketplace will get all that nervous energy to go away.
Did you know that it is rumored that when the people of ancient Rome built the aqueducts, the government made the workers stand under the arches they created when they removed the scaffolding? Talk about having to be confident in your work. “You’re sure that structure’s good? Okay, then go stand under it while we remove the support scaffolding, because if the arch falls, that’s your punishment.”
Luckily for us, life isn’t quite that dramatic, but you still want to be that confident. Those aqueducts have stood the test of time, so the builder’s confidence was well tested over hundreds of years. Now, when we start new things, have new experiences, pitch a new client or pitch ourselves, it’s normal to experience the “Oh, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I want to do this” nerves.
When you shift your mindset from resenting those nerves to welcoming them, the energy in the room changes. As with any good dance partner, there is a connection when you are in sync.
The team at the conversation intelligence software development company, Gong.io, studied 67,149 sales conversations from their database of over 1 million recorded sales calls. Using artificial intelligence (AI), they analyzed the calls and used natural language processing (NLP) to identify behaviors that correlate with sales success.
A few behaviors stood out to them including the “talk-to-listen” ratio, the number of questions asked, topics discussed, and yes, how the sales representative responded to customer objections. Gong.io found that the way successful salespeople handled sales objections was a factor.
The most successful salespeople pause immediately after a customer’s objection for five times longer than their less successful peers. These top performers are almost calmer in the face of adversity than in the “normal” parts of the previous sales conversations. “Keep calm and carry on” is the right way to go.
Handling objections is similar to my lifeguard training and, like any new skill, you have to practice it so that it becomes something you do from a place of certainty versus reacting from a place of panic and fear. Imagine that objections trigger you into slow motion. I find a great way to pause after hearing a concern is to rephrase it. “Sounds like the price is really a problem for you.”
The research goes on to show that by contrast, less successful representatives hardly paused at all and, in many cases, interrupted the customer upon receiving an objection. Unsuccessful salespeople pounce on objections and get all riled up, which doesn’t help their cause.
Can you hear Simon & Garfunkel’s lyrics “slow down, you move too fast” playing in your head? I hum that to myself right before I give a big keynote speech. When you are not in a neutral, calm state, your heart is racing and the rate of your speech picks up. You may subconsciously think if you talk fast enough, you can get them to change their mind.
The reality is your client picks up on your anxiety and wants to get out of the conversation as fast as possible. However, if you relax and slow down, then the other person will match your state and be willing to continue the “dance.” In moments of pressure and intensity, one colleague’s voice even goes down a level to a more soothing and calming tone; it’s as if she completely moves into a lower gear and the energy in the room follows.
What happens in this situation is something called mirror neurons. Jason Marsh, Editor-in-Chief of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good magazine asked in an article, “Did you ever have that sensation where you’re watching someone do something, serve a tennis ball or get pricked by a needle, and you can feel exactly what they must be feeling, as if you were in their shoes?”
Scientists have long wondered why we get that feeling, and more than two decades ago, a team of Italian researchers thought they stumbled on an answer. While observing monkeys’ brains, they noticed that certain cells activated both when a monkey performed an action and when that monkey watched another monkey perform the same action. Mirror neurons were discovered.
Since that time, mirror neurons have been hailed as a cornerstone of human empathy, language, and other vital processes.
Empathy is another excellent way to handle objections. I talked about showing compassion previously around interactions and dialogue in general. However, imagine using it here, where you can feel what the person objecting feels and answer accordingly. If the objection is that something is too expensive, the answer they naturally want to hear is less money. Knowing you cannot always lower your prices, empathy is a great way to convey the other benefits to your product.
In Tim Sanders’ book The L Factor, he talks about research showing the more empathy you have, the more you are liked. Doctors spend more time with patients they like, teachers spend more time with students they like, and people are less likely to get laid off if they are well liked.
Communications experts at Comm100 provided sample empathetic statements and phrases to help show customers you care. A few examples are:
When they feel stress, people tend to react from their gut instead of their brain. In a normal conversation without objections, a representative’s average talking speed is 173 words per minute. When they feel pressure, a poor-performing representative goes up to 188 words per minute, hoping to counter the objection in a blur of opposition. In this acceleration, representatives confuse their ability to answer quickly with their capacity to respond well.
Always remember, speed and quality aren’t the same things. Top performing representatives know that instinctively, which is why their rate of speech barely goes up when they respond to an objection. They maintain their pace, which is an unconscious cue to the customer that solid, well-founded answers are coming.
When answering questions, give just enough information to intrigue them to say, “That’s interesting, tell me more.” You want to get back on the ladder. If you are talking too much, you are not Interesting, let alone Intriguing.
If you want to meet an objection with confidence and calm, suppress your urge to talk more. Tell yourself to talk less. This shows the customer that questions do not throw you; you’re confident that you have the right answers.
If you start talking more, you will shut down your customer’s ability to engage in the conversation at one of its most crucial points—when they have a doubt or concern. Think of this as your chance to bring clarity to the discussion and engage even more deeply with the customer. You can’t do that if you’re the only one speaking. Talking less will help you connect meaningfully with your customer at a critical juncture.
All of these actions are due to the deep internal insecurity that kicks in when you worry you could lose the sale. They stop creating a conversation and focus only on what’s coming out of their mouths. When this happens, the story gets lost as they try to talk their way out of the situation and long, one-way speech occurs.
These monologues negatively change the pace of the conversation, shifting it from a healthy back-and-forth to a block of ongoing, one-sided babble. It’s a defensive move which sends terrible signals to the customer. There is an easy solution in these situations; catch yourself in the act and stop the monologue.
When I work with people on their elevator pitch, I remind them that when someone asks, “So, what do you do?” It is NOT an invitation for a five-minute monologue.
The same holds true when answering objections.
Remember when we said to talk less? Here’s another good reason to take that advice. If you respond too quickly to objections, you’re more likely to address the wrong issue.
For example, when people pitch their start-up for funding, there is often a question and answer section. If the founder gets defensive or doesn’t have the right answers, they won’t get funded. To avoid this, I train my clients to use active listening to make sure they hear the question.
A technique I like to use is to rephrase the question, “What I heard you say is that you want to know what we are doing to stay ahead of the competition. Is that right?” Reiterating the question allows you to confirm you are answering the right one. If you don’t understand a question, you can come across as trying to avoid answering it, which can frustrate and turn off your potential client or investor. People get mad at politicians when they don’t answer questions and just go back to their script. Don’t make this same mistake when you are selling!
You can then use the question as part of your answer, “The way we are going to stay ahead of the competition is XYZ.” After you give your answer, ask the client, “Did that answer your question fully?” Clarifying makes the client or investor feel like you care about them and getting their question answered fully. Often a client might say, “Yes, thanks, but that generated another question.” Rinse and repeat the same cycle to keep the dialogue going.
Gong.io found that more than half (54.3%) of top performers respond to an objection with a question as opposed to 31% of average performers. It’s a small step that avoids painful misunderstandings.
Another tactic is to keep switching who is leading the dance.
Every sales call has a flow established early on. Great salespeople know that switching back and forth between speakers contributes to good flow and creates a healthy conversation. When objections come up, those representatives don’t change a thing. That’s their winning strategy, to stick with the same number of handoffs in the conversation.
After getting a question, don’t try to dominate the conversation suddenly. Keep it healthy. Switch back and forth between speakers like you always did.
To this end, when going into a big pitch, remember to maximize all resources available to you. For example, for a presentation, will a team be more effective in the room than an individual?
While at W magazine, my New York managers came to Los Angeles every quarter to go on calls with me to help grow or break new business. The philosophy of “two heads are better than one” was in play here. For bigger meetings and prospects, I knew when I had W’s publisher, I could get a meeting with a CEO much more easily. We successfully used this tactic to get right to the top decision-makers in meetings with companies like 7 For All Mankind.
When engaging in high-level conversations about the challenges facing the CEO, having the magazine publisher present allowed for quick decisions. The publisher had the power I did not to authorize budgets on the spot, solve problems, and quickly get out of the “your price is too high” objections. If I went into a company like that at my level, I would call on the advertising director whose goal was to get the lowest price for an ad buy. This collaborative team of ours allowed higher level conversations off the bat, the opportunity for more creativity, and more budget flexibility.
You’re either going to love or hate this bit of advice. After you reply to an objection, ask some version of “Does that make sense?” That phrase doesn’t sit well with everyone, but it works whether we like it or not.
Interestingly, Gong.io found star sales reps don’t use it more or less than anyone else. They do, however, use it in three specific situations to close a loop:
Confirm that you’re all on the same page and get everyone ready to move to next steps.
I use the question “Does that makes sense?” all the time and often follow it with “Where do you think we should go from here?” This question provides an invitation for a collaborative conversation. The client will either confirm setting up another meeting or next steps on buying.
The above helps you in the room and the moment, but objections don’t always occur in a pitch. What about trying to win back a client? Their move to another vendor is the ultimate objection, so how can you win them back?
Key reasons clients leave:
Before we go into how to win them back, let’s stop for a moment and go back to the initial emotional effect a client leaving has on you. Remember the self-esteem roller coaster? This situation can launch you onto the downward tracks very quickly. For times like these, I refer back to poet Maya Angelou’s great quote, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeat, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
When a client leaves, you feel confused, frustrated, and possibly even angry. That is because it’s a relationship and we go through the breakup whether it’s a personal or business relationship in very much the similar stages. If you don’t understand why they left, you will feel frustrated that they’re making a mountain out of a molehill or angry that they don’t appreciate all the great work you’ve done for them up to this point. You will think it is one mistake and you’re out. You have to process all those emotions before you can even start to fix that relationship. Sounds like dating, right? It is on multiple levels.
How do you process it all and navigate past your own emotions?
To start, you must let yourself experience the feelings we talked about above. It’s a little bit like therapy, but essential to process them. At the end of the day, you get to be right or you get to be happy. So that’s the first thing to determine. If you want to hold on to the feeling you’re right and walk away, never go back and fix it, then that’s your choice. However, if you want to win them back, here are some tools to help you do that.
First, take a look at what story you are telling yourself? Are you saying that you are perfect all the time and never make a mistake and therefore how dare someone leave? Alternatively, are you showing yourself a little compassion? “You know what? You blew it; you’re not perfect, no one is, take a deep breath, let’s see how to fix this.”
Let’s start with that self-talk story. When your client calls and says, “You know, I hate to say this, but, we’re done.” The self-talk story starts building in your head. “What the heck is happening here?” However, you don’t want to come across as desperate, so how can you handle the news in the moment?
Active listening. More than anything else, this where our emotional intelligence, EQ, comes in. You do not have to react in the moment but, instead, control how you respond to the situation. When someone’s leaving you, he or she may be mad. If they are, one of you has to stay level-headed in that conversation for it to ever get fixed. Yes, that person is you.
The best way I find to ground myself when someone is yelling, upset or leaving, is to take some deep breaths while I listen to them. I write down what they say as if I were a doctor taking notes. The “patient” is telling me what hurts and I’m trying to see what’s underneath that pain. People are rarely upset for the reason we think they are.
Let the person say everything he or she wants to and then you can quietly and calmly, if at all possible, say, “You know what, I heard you, it sounds like you’re really upset. I would also be upset if I were in your shoes because that is unacceptable. That’s not how I like to do business.” You’re showing empathy and actively listening. “It sounds like you’re upset because of A, B, and C. Did I get everything?” They may then tell you there was a “D,” too. It is essential to get everything out on the table at the time and the best way to do that is not to react and not to take it personally.
Your biggest challenge may be not to take the rejection personally. As a small business owner, your name is probably on the door and you put your lifeblood into this and your sweat and tears. Similarly, when you managed an account for your company for years, you worked as hard as if your name was on the door. Everyone who takes pride in his or her work can be susceptible to taking rejection personally. However, when you can overcome this fear, you are free!
It all stings, but you still cannot take rejection personally or you’ll never get past it. The best way to do this is to never reject yourself.
I experienced this when I sold advertising for Condé Nast and a client told me they were going to run with a different publication or a client left. My initial response was, “Ugh, maybe they’re right, maybe I’m a bad salesperson, maybe that other product is better than mine, maybe…” I would stop myself realizing that yes, I am hurt, angry, and frustrated, but I’m not going to take this personally and start beating myself up. If I do, then I’m never going to be any good to them again or anybody else.
Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” If 20% of your clients generate 80% of your revenue and you lose a client in that top 20%, your income suffers. Imagine there was a way to reopen a door that has been closed and win back a client, so they never leave again.
It is important to sidebar for a moment to consider if you want that client back. Even with the revenue they bring in, some clients may not be worth the amount of work they require. So when a client leaves, before you fight to bring them back, ask yourself and your team “Was this a good client? Did they pay their bills on time? Did we like working with them? Is it an important client for us? Was it representing a big chunk of revenue that makes it worthwhile?” Because sometimes people leave and you let out a sigh of relief thinking that now you don’t have to figure out how to fire them.
The alternative is to try to win them back. Recognize the screw up, own it, knowing that when you get back on your A game, things work well and the client appreciates you and you like them. It could also be that their revenue is so high, you have to tolerate the rest as you need that money back. Whatever the reason, let’s look at tactics to getting them back.
What will your approach be? What are you going to say when you go back into the first post-breakup meeting after not talking with them or working with them for a while, years even, maybe they worked with someone else and other variables?
Clients often want to start with cutting their pricing. The short answer to this most often is no. I’ve spent much time learning what many of the big reasons that people leave are and what we can do to prevent them from going. As stated above, they are dissatisfied with the customer service, your product has poor quality, in the case of accounting or other service field, maybe that’s sloppy work. Finally, it’s the competition. Your competitor comes in and says, “You know what? I could do the same thing for half the price.” The client says, “Wow, half the price? Maybe I should leave.”
However, think about the relationships that you have with people you trust; let’s say the person that cuts your hair. Usually, people are pretty loyal to their hairdresser, whether you are male or female. You don’t have to start from scratch; this person knows how you like your hair cut and you likely have a relationship with them. So when somebody offers to give you a cheaper haircut, you stay with your current hairdresser as you don’t want to risk walking around with a bad haircut. You have the existing relationship.
Instead of wooing them back with the price, you must figure out which of those three areas could be one of the big reasons they left.
The first step may need to be rebuilding and repairing the relationship. Airlines have been in the spotlight a lot recently for how they do this with passengers (or don’t). Some of this has to do with being able to admit fault for wrongdoing, what we talked about above to some extent.
Remember when United Airlines flight attendants beat up a passenger and dragged him, bleeding, off of the plane in front of other horrified passengers recording the incident on their phones? United’s initial response was, “We were following procedure.” As opposed to, “This should never have happened, we’re so sorry.”
American Airlines had an altercation with a woman on board with her child. It wasn’t as dramatic as the United incident, but a mom was crying with a child in her arms at the end of it all. American’s CEO responded very differently than his United Airlines counterpart. His response was, “This is unacceptable, that person is automatically on leave while we investigate and we’re going to give everybody on the plane a first-class ticket.” They fixed it. They took responsibility and fixed it, which is what you will have to do, too, especially if a client is leaving. Check your ego at the door and say, “I’m so sorry you are so upset that you need to stop working with us, we hope it’s not forever but, you know, even if it is, we still wish you all the best.”
Having to win back the Guess Jeans account taught me some proven methods on how to get a client back. The most important was what I just talked about: repair and rebuild. The feelings behind the reason they left are the core to figuring out what is really going on.
When someone tells a therapist he or she wants to lose weight or have more intimacy with his or her spouse, they are “presenting” a problem. It is the symptom of a bigger issue going on that has to be dealt with before the weight or intimacy issue can be addressed.
The same is true when you have lost a client. They may tell you it is because the competition offered a lower price when, in actuality, they felt you took them for granted and they wanted to be wined and dined by a new suitor.
You may have promised to have a project done by a specific day or an ad run on a particular page, and, for whatever reason, a deadline was missed or a mistake made. If you have not been under promising and over delivering to a client or managing their expectations, you will lose them. However, if you always go above and beyond what you promise and miss one deadline or make a mistake, you can save it because you have built up a tremendous amount of goodwill.
What can you do to make sure you are over delivering value for your clients so that no competitor or mistake will be fatal?
My client (who asked to remain anonymous) hired me to help them win back a law firm they had lost because of a missed deadline. The law firm had been a client for twenty years, so this was a significant loss. Leading up to the break, my client had experienced some employee turnover so there were not consistent contacts for the law firm. Consequently, when they missed the deadline, the law firm felt that no one listened to their concerns about the situation. The law firm canceled working with my client, saying they could revisit in a year, but for now, my client was in the penalty box.
When the year was up, my client asked me to help them win back this law firm. I asked what their plan was and they said to show research trends on what’s been going on in the industry over the past year. They were missing that critical first step, repair and rebuild (R&R). Instead of using the R&R strategy first, they were planning to try to win back the client by giving them research. I had to tell them that this client doesn’t care how smart you are right now, they want to know you understand why they are mad and how you’re going to prevent it from happening again. It should sound like, “Look, we own it, we take responsibility, and we now have systems in place so that your situation will never happen again.”
Repairing and rebuilding was an entirely new paradigm for my client and not one that could be solved by a standard PowerPoint presentation of facts and figures. Even though my client had all new people on the team, I told them they had to “own” the mistakes of the previous team and listen to what the law firm said. Only then could my client outline what they would do to ensure the law firm was always a priority with all levels of their management.
After a meeting where you pitch to win a client back, there is usually a cooling period. During this time, the client is considering whether they are going to come back. In this window, I encourage my clients to start acting like the client is already back with them. All businesses are different, but this could include reading about them in the press and reaching out to congratulate them on new business wins or posting in your social media to celebrate them, referring potential leads, clients or collaborative partners or sending birthday cards, treating them like they are already back in the “family.”
My client went in with this approach and won the client back six months later.
Once you are in the room for the pitch, winning back a client can feel like getting a new client. It includes asking them to come back or to hire you. It’s the closing question, “Would you consider hiring me back or would you like to hire me in the first place?” Then there are the moments of silence that follow. You have to get comfortable with that silence and not feel stress. The old way of “selling” was whoever speaks first loses, but today, it becomes a contest of silence.
After asking someone if they want to hire you, I tell my clients to say, “I am patient and calm.” three times in their head. That gives you an extra three to five seconds of silence to let the potential client say “yes” or “no” without feeling any pressure from you.
When I have my real estate clients use this technique after they ask a potential buyer if they want to buy a home, they have doubled their sales. The urge to speak immediately grew out of people being uncomfortable with the silence in a room. When real estate agents do this, they tend to start offering more incentives to the buyer, like adding in a refrigerator or other appliance to close the sale. When they do this, the whole negotiation begins again versus letting the buyer focus on saying “yes” or “no.”
To become comfortable with the silence in the room, you have to be comfortable with the silence in your head. Be patient and calm. Your mind is a muscle. Practice quieting the thoughts in your head through meditation the same way you practice your exercise routine at the gym.
Whether you are hearing an objection or trying to win back a client who fired you (the ultimate objection), you must slow down, put on your empathy hat, and listen to what they need.
The client is back…now what? You lost them; they come back, you’re doing business together again. You want that last situation to become water under the bridge and never to come up again. How do you bury the hatchet?
You literally say those words to yourself and then to the client. That’s part of the active listening again as well as being in the present. Being present in a moment when people rarely get someone’s full attention is a game changer and competitive advantage (that means no checking your phone!).
Just like in a personal relationship, you’re going to fight. In order to move forward, you both agree that you’re never going to dig up the past issue and add it to the list of everything you’ve done wrong. With a client, you can both agree that this is water under the bridge and move forward. When that happens, you have an even stronger bond after working out the issues, together.
You now have the tools to handle objections to help win a new client, and new tools to win back those clients you lost and want back!