Transcripts
1. Introduction to Handling Customer Reactions and Attitudes: Welcome everybody, the
five-minute sales coach. And this is the next
course in our series. It's called How to deal
with customer reactions. And if you haven't taken the first course, the
fundamentals course, please go back and take it because it really is
a prerequisite for this. I'm going to be
referencing a lot of things that you'll learn
in that in this course. So take an hour, go back and do that course, and then come on
back to this one. It's the next in the series. In case you're not entirely sure the five-minute thing is actually based on
two of two things. One is a study that was
done to show that currently most employees only have about
5 min a week that they can dedicate to skills upgrades,
five-minute sales coach. The other thing is a concept
called micro learning. Note, if some of you who've
ever attended any kind of training where you're sitting in a classroom for three days, getting a lot of stuff
jammed into your head, you'll be shocked to learn
that within a month, but 80% of everything
you've learned is gone. You've lost it. In fact, your retention rate
is even less than that. What you can actually
integrate near day-to-day activities. So micro learning is a concept where we take that
big three-day course when we squish it down into tiny five-minute chunks that you can digest over the
course of a few days. Now, you can watch
this whole course all at once if you like, or you can do it. And as I would suggest, you do just one lesson a day. Integrate what I talked about, and then move on
to the next one. It's totally up to you, but I can tell you right now you're going to
remember a whole lot more if you just do the
one less than a day. This particular course we're
working on is based on the fact that sales calls never really go
smoothly as planned. We can sit and talk about all these as we did in the
fundamentals course, but all the skills you can
use to talk to your customer. Ask a lot of really
good quality question to focus on their needs and then give them your product to solve their needs are their problems, that's great, but there's always roadblocks
that get thrown up. And it's usually based on customer needs or as I call
it this course reactions. What I'm hoping to show
you in this course is that these miscommunications
are misunderstandings or whatever you wanna call it, between you and
your customer are normal and they're
easily solved. What's really
important, as you're going to learn is that letting a misunderstanding
or misconception or whatever you wanna
call it, go by, unsolved is going to throw
all your sales efforts off track and make
it more difficult to actually close the sale
at the end of the day, we're gonna be covering off a number of different reactions. There's five basic ones and just give me a sec
here, Let's look them up. There are five basic
challenging ones and of course, one positive one. The challenging ones are
doubt, misunderstanding, objection, complaint, and
my favorite indifference. These are five attitudes or reactions that your
customer will show on a regular basis in a sales
call and they're all perfectly normal when there's a discussion going on between two people. The positive one is,
of course, acceptance. The customer actually
accepts what you've said without question. And that's their reaction. That's, that's the,
that's the good one. We're gonna be looking at each one of these independently. And we'll get into more
detail on what they all mean. And more importantly, I'm
going to give you the tools that's going to show you
how to take a customer, say misunderstanding
or misconception and turn it around
into a positive, okay? And it's really not
that difficult. And I think once you get this, you will get out
of that panic mode whenever a customer comes up and says, I
don't believe you. Well, once you understand
that it's normal, there's no read to
get defensive and start blasting
word, sell it out. And we'll talk more about
that in the coming lessons. Also to, is we'll be doing a project at some point in this, in this, in this course. And it'll give you a
chance to basically see customer attitudes
and real-time. So I'll throw up some videos
of either myself or some cartoon showing an attitude. And there'll be up to you to try and match what you think the attitude is and how you
would go about doing it. So we'll tackle that at
the end of the course. So that's it. I thank you for stopping by and clicking the
enrollment on this, and we'll see you in lesson one. Take care.
2. Lesson 1- Recognizing Doubt and Misunderstanding: Welcome to lesson one. What we're gonna be doing
is I'm gonna go through all the different reactions, or some people call
them attitudes. And we'll get into the
detail of what these are, what the roots of them are. I'll give you a
couple of examples. And then as we go through, I believe it's gonna be in
less than four or five. We will get into how you
can resolve this stuff. And I think as you go through
and you start recognizing the different attitudes or reactions that
your customer has, you're already going
to have some ideas in your head as to how
you can solve them. So here in Lesson one, let's start off
in the first two, which I think happened
to be the most common and certainly the easiest if that's the right word to solve or to deal with, and that is doubt and
misunderstanding. Or perhaps you could name that skeptics doubt or skepticism or misunderstanding could
be a misconception. Get your thesaurus and
call it what you like. But these are usually
the most common. Doubt is very common. It also comes out of a customer encounter that doesn't quite get
what you're saying. And will often will throw a
negative stuff that basically doubts whatever
product statement or value statement that
you put out there. Here's some examples. I don t think that's possible. I doubt that's true. They'll actually use the word. There's no way you can match
your competitors price. Your product can't do that. You're basically the customer at this point is doubting
what you told them. And that's fine. That's perfectly normal. But if you've heard this, I'm sure we've all heard
it dozens of times. How did you react? Did you commonly ask
the customer question, why do you feel that
way, Mr. customer, is there a problem with
something I said new most of us and I was guilty of this in
the beginning as well, is we get into words, what I called word salad. We're basically we panic. We get defensive, and then we start blurting
something like that. No, My cousin, my company is
not going out of business. What are you talking about? Of course, my product
can do that and look, look at all these
specs that prove it. You've lost your
customer at that point. You've basically taken a
slight misunderstanding, or in this case, doubt that he said. And you've basically
stomped all over it with your with
your defensiveness. So the number one thing
I want you to try and get into your head
is do not get defensive. This is perfectly normal. And as we go through the course, you're going to learn how
to deal with this as well. The next one up is
misunderstanding or misconception. And that's very common because
you just basically said something to your
customer and they didn't quite understand
what you're saying. And then what they do
is they kinda jump to conclusions at that point. Here's an example, your
widgets are made from gold. I heard your company is in
a chapter 13 bankruptcy. Why are you bothering
to talk to me? I heard you guys only
deal with big companies. They've heard a
rumor on the street. And usually misunderstanding or misconception is that
the root of all rumors. And they've basically come up with their own thought process on that misconception
or misunderstanding. And they'll ever, they're
making statements towards you. Now, once again, it's very
easy to get defensive and go, Oh, jeez, no, we're not
we're not in bankruptcy. Will get into how
you deal with this. But again, think of this as
remaining calm, collected. Don't panic. Customers
do this all the time. And we'll talk about
how you can deal with that in later lessons. So that's it for less than one. How do we do? Hopefully that's close
to five-minutes. And think about this stuff and we'll see you in lesson two. Take care.
3. Lesson 2 - Recognizing Objections and Complaints: Hi, welcome back. Five-minute cells, co-chair,
and welcome to lesson two. We're continuing
on the listing off the different types of customer
reactions or attitudes. If you want to call it that. We talked to in less
than one previously about the attitude of doubt, which is very common, and the attitude or reaction of misunderstanding
or misconception. They're very closely
related to each other. And as they talked about, it's usually comes as a result of maybe you're not understanding
what the customer said or the customer not fully understanding what you said. And something pops up
and gets in the way, it's not a huge deal. The next two are very
similar in that respect. However, there are, there is a very specific distinction
between the two of them and there's these two
are objection and complaint. Now, objection is something that a customer is going to throw
up at you in real time. It's something that's
happening at the moment or it could be happening
in the future. Something like maybe a
customer will object to. You can't give you that price. He's objecting to
your your discounter or whatever or on the
other side of that, he's going to he's going
to object to say, Well, your prices are too high, but you can't match
what I'm looking for. They'll say something.
Again. This goes along the same lines
of what I just said. Your product, your
widget is too expensive. That's a very common
objection, right? They'll also say something like, You know what, I don't yeah, it's not going to believe
it's not going to perform the way you said
it's going to perform. Now. You're going to notice a
tremendous amount of similarity to what I just talked about and doubt and misunderstanding. It's very similar, but they are individual attitudes that
you need to be aware of. The next one is complaint. And they are almost identical or very
similar to objections. But there's one very
important distinction that you have to be aware of because you
are going to treat this much differently
than the other attitudes. Or that is a complaint that is something that's
happened in the past. It's not in present tense. You can't argue a
complaint on the spot. When a customer says
to you that shipment, you sent me arrived
three days late. Now, it makes absolutely
no sense to go well, gosh, what do you mean by that? No, they are actually talking
about something that is real and it should be
kicking you into pinMode. You should be looking
at a way to solve this problem and put them at ease to make sure that
it never happens again. As I, as I had mentioned
before in the previous lesson, most of us tend to get defensive and customers throw
this stuff up. But I can tell you right now, if there's ever a time where you never ever ever get defensive, It's now never get
defensive at a complaint. This is a real issue and it's your job to go in there and
actually solve it for them. Now, don't get scared. You can also use complaints
as a door opener. You can use it as a way into solving one
problem and giving, getting an opportunity to sell
something new for another. But you've got to come across as the helper will never
let this happen again. Here, here's how we do it and we'll discuss more
about how you can handle further on in the course. A couple more examples
of this would be my accounting department
had to fight with your accounting department to clear up that pricing problem we had or the widgets you
sold me just don't work. As I mentioned earlier, your shipment arrives
three days late. This is all past tense
stuff that the customer is complaining about
that you have to say, Okay, at this point we'll
look at a solution. But don't try and gain
clarity on a complaint. It's not necessary there. You can you can ask for clarity as you're
trying to solve it. But your number one goal with a complaint is you need to find a solution for that
customer to make sure that their
complaint is addressed, then they can take
the complaint, just forget about it
and move on with life. So that's complaints
and objections. And we'll move on to the next level and
talk about the next. The last two,
customer attitudes, which I feel are probably
the most challenging. But hopefully by the time we get to the end
of this course, you'll understand that it's
fairly easy to deal with. Thanks for dropping by. See you soon.
4. Lesson 3 - Recognizing Indifference and Acceptance: Welcome back to the
five-minute cells, coach and gosh, Here we are
at less than three already. Have you taken any time over the last couple of lessons
to apply to your work day, if you noticed that your
customers attitudes, you're noticing the doubt, their misconceptions
or misunderstandings. Have you noticed when they
object to something you say? And of course, I think it's easy to notice when
they're complaining because they just come
right out and say it takes some time before we
figure out how to deal with it. It's really useful to
recognize what you're seeing. And it's one of those situations that once you see it,
it can't be unseen. So when a customer objects your misunderstands what you
said, Man, you're gonna, it's gonna go off
in your head like a light bulb and you'll
know how to deal with it. So let's just start off slow. Start paying attention
to what you're seeing. May even make a note 0 customers objecting to my statement about my widgets being
the best widgets on the market or whatever,
it doesn't matter. Here in lesson three, we're
gonna be talking about opposite ends of the spectrum.
The worst and the best. Now the worst, the worst
one, in my opinion, not the worst, but the most
challenging is indifference. That is the customer that
really isn't complaining. He's not mad, he's not happy. He's just whatever,
leave your card and your brochure and I've really not interested
in talking to you. There are real challenge. Even if you do manage to get a sales call or a meeting
with somebody like this, they often sit in a meeting like this with a closed posture. They're looking at this cheese, they're looking at their phone. Is that is that the worst? Usually the indifference
is it's one of two things. Either they're like that
to every sales rep and it's some sort of power
play that they enjoy doing. And i'm, I'm sorry to say that that does happen
more than enough. Some guys get off and
making your life miserable. But you've also got to
accept responsibility for this as well because perhaps
you've missed a step. Maybe they are actually
too busy and you've just ignored it near your excitement to actually finally
get to talk to them. Maybe you haven't qualified these guys properly and
they don't have a need. That could be very possible. And that's why they're acting
in different because you're trying to sell them
something they don't need. It could also be
very early on in establishing the relationship
with the customer. And you've still got
to establish what their needs are and the
value of your product. Right now you're just somebody who's taking up their time, particularly if you
walked in there off the street and
did a cold call, which by the way,
congratulations for that. But you've really got to have an understanding of
what the customer is about before you
start talking to them. Because sometimes you're
rushing to get to that point where you're
having a discussion with them could create
the indifference. So keep that in mind as well. And we'll discuss more
about how you can deal with solving indifference as we get further on in the court. So as I mentioned earlier, if you've got a customer
that's indifferent, you really gotta put it
on yourself to determine, was it something I did? Did I rush the sales cycle
that I do a poor job explaining to them the
value of my product. If I not really taken the time to fully understand their needs, you can say that indifference is valuable
because if you see a customer just sort
of doing this or that, maybe you've got
to take a look at what you've done to cause that. Now, again, I mentioned
there's always going to be those jerks that just love
to make your life miserable. I'll call you when I need
something, stop talking, get out of my office,
whatever it happens. Use it as fuel to maybe
up your game a little. Be patient and we'll talk again. I'll talk more detail about
how you can deal with this. Examples of when a
customer statements. Examples statements of when a customers is
being indifferent. I'm too busy. I don't need your products. Just leave your card
and your catalog. I got a meeting. Oh gosh, Look, there's a
new cat video on my phone. You know, that kind
of stuff. Alright. That's indifference.
I think you'll, you'll recognize it immediately. Unlike everything else, don't
get defensive, don't panic. We'll talk more about
how you can actually solve the indifference problem. And of course, the last one is the one that we all love to
hear and that's acceptance. And that's basically means that you've knocked
it out of the park. You've addressed the
customer's needs. You've addressed
all those questions and now they're accepting
what you've said. They're asking for
a purchase order. They're asking for
double the order. They want your widgets and in different colors or
whatever that is all accepting what you've said. Certainly an example of statements is if a
customer goes with that sounds promising,
that's acceptance. I liked that idea and
that's exactly what I need. They're all accepting
what you're saying. It's important to know that you're gaining acceptance
from a customer because that way you
know that you've gotten to a point where you can
move on to the next issue. You don't have to keep talking about the same thing
over and over again. Customer accepts it. Good check. Next one. That's the most challenging. That's the most fun. Both of them wrapped
up into this lesson. And as we go further along
in the next lessons, we'll look into more detail
how to deal with these. A few minutes and
you're next few days and your sales calls
and see if you can recognize particular the
indifference from customers. I know it's I know
it's frustrating. There's nothing worse
than talking to a guy who's staring at his
phone and his computer. But you just got to
have the patience to get past that and find out, does this guy really
need when I'm selling or is he
just being a jerk? Or was it something I said
or did I miss a step? That kinda stuff. Ask more questions that
you can ask yourself. Okay, that's it. We'll see you in Lesson Four. Take care.
5. Lesson 4 - Identify the customer Attitudes: Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach, and we are now up
to lesson four. And what I'm gonna
do now that we've covered off all the
different reactions, et cetera, is I'm
going to read off a few statements here. Some, some thing that a
customer might say to you. And I'll give you a couple of seconds to
give it some thought. And then maybe think of what the possible latitude
that they're showing is, are the possible reaction. And maybe you'll
see if you've got a handle on what we're,
what we're doing here. It's not a test,
it's just sort of a mind jog to see see
how things are going. So without further ado, let's read off a couple. So your customer would say, you know, your widget
could be cheaper. What reaction is
he showing there? Yep. That is an objection. Your customer is objecting to
the price of your product. Pretty clear. Kept present tense based on
something you said. Next one. I think your idea to solve
my problem will fail. What attitude is that? That is a misunderstanding
or a misconception. Customer clearly doesn't
quite understand what you presented to them or you've
missed what his needs are. And so he's saying,
You know what? I don't want exactly
believe you. It's something doesn't
quite line up here. That's a misconception. Next one, that sounds promising. Well, if you didn't get that one as an acceptance than Gs, no news, good news
coming your way. That's a Clare acceptance there. Basically accepting
what you've told them. The next one, leave your
brochure with the receptionist. Yep, that is indifference, 100%. That is somebody who just
doesn't really care to see you, is too busy, doesn't think that your product is
going to help them, doesn't think you're
going to help them. May not know you. There's
1 million reasons why, but that's a definite
definite indifference. I heard your company
only accepts cash. Once again, we have a
misunderstanding or misconception. That's part of the rumor thing I was talking about and one
of the previous lessons, it's sometimes rumors
circulate around, particularly if you work for a larger company or say you're the top tier companies
in your field tend to get picked on and a rumor starts up that maybe
you only accept cash or maybe you put a customer on a cash account because they
are correct, it was so bad. And then that sort of grew
and a wildfire ensued. And next thing you
know, they got everybody thinking that
you only accept cash. So it happens and it's simple just to say
at nano, we're okay. The last order you sent
me was two days late. That is in the past. And that is clearly a complaint. Right. Now. You don't need to
dig any further. You've gotten the
goods on this one. Your job from this point is
just to simply deal with that complaint to the
customer satisfaction. There's no way you can meet
my price requirements. Doubt pretty much says
it in the sentence. I doubt you can meet
my requirements. Customer is doubting
what you've told them. You've said, yeah, I can get your price you want
he's going in. No, you can't. Right. So it's basically just
clarifying things there. Again, just something that was
not completely understood. And the last one is
yeah, No thanks. I don't need anything for
this project right now. It's an objection. He's not a
misunderstanding anything. He's just basically
telling you the way it is. I don't have a need for
your product right now. He's objecting to you try to sell them
something, that's all. Nothing serious. So there's a few examples. I hope you caught them. You've got a few of them, right? I'll, I'll see if I
can post some more of these examples in
the project section. So you can have a
look at these in real time with real
video or animations. And as you practice, as you get to know them, as you start seeing them
more and more often, they're just gonna
become immediate to you. You're going to recognize when your customers
throwing you any of those those five
negative interactions, reactions or attitudes. So that's it for less than four. Look forward to seeing
you in lesson five, where we're going to
talk about how you deal, generally deal with
customer attitudes and reactions and a very
simple methodical manner. So we'll see you then. Take care.
6. Lesson 5 - The formula for handling customer reactions and attitudes : Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach Rhonda lesson five. And now we're going to get into the nuts and bolts
of all of this. I'm gonna give you some
tips on how to deal with these customer reactions
and an attitudes. Now, the goal of this entire program is to
give you the skill so that everything that you say to a customer is calculated,
measured, and understood. In fact, I don't, I think by the time you get through
this whole series, you're never going to make a statement unless your customer knows or use or you know, that your customer is
going to appreciate the statement or see
some value in it. When you don't know what to
say, don't say anything. That's the best advice
I can offer you. We have this overwhelming
desire to fill silence spaces. The uncomfortable
silences, stop it. Don't just Babylon. If you don't know what to say, then that is your cue to
ask another question. Asked another question until you're basically sure that the customer is telling you
exactly what they want. You don't want to create
this environment of, of us versus them. And sometimes that's what
sales calls can descend into. It sort of becomes a
bit of a struggle. Now, let's say you've got a customer who comes
out and says to you, I've got an example here. I doubt your widgets performance will meet our requirements. Now, before anything happens, I want you to take that
twinge that you've got, sort of getting you in
the gut there where you're suddenly
feeling defensive. And I want you to toss
it out the window, throw it out on the sidewalk. Arguing or being
defensive is kids stuff. It's things for the sandbox
when you're little. It's enough for sales
professionals like yourself. That's the very first
thing you have to do. So really solving this
breaks is broken down into two simple steps which are not complicated in one
very important skill. And that skill is for you to remain calm and resist
the urge to be defensive. We just talked
about that, right? Take your twinge of
defensiveness and chuck it. That is a skill that you have to developed and
you have to hang onto. That's what going to separate you from the average sales guy. So the two steps, step number one is
acknowledged what they say and basically
say it back to them. Don't agree. In fact, this is where I want
you to be about as boring as you possibly can. Step number two is
then asked questions, why the customer
has this attitude. So here's the example of the
doubt your widget will work. So the customer
says, I don't use widget will work and
you just basically, oh, really, yeah, I understand. So what you're
really saying is you need very specific
specifications for your widgets. And the customer is
going to go, well, of course I do that. Just open the door for
you to start asking more questions to find out exactly what its spec
or specification or, or need or whatever
the customer needs. And then you match
your product to it. Alright, so let's, let's
try an example here. Let me make this flow
a little bit easier. Customer says I don't, your widget will perform
exactly as I need. I understand. So widget performance is
very important for you. Customer says, yes, we have a very specific and detailed quality-oriented
process here. We can't afford to have things break down or
not perform as they do. Bingo. You now have the door
open to start asking more questions and finding out exactly what it is he needs. We'll get into this in more
detail in future lessons, but it's basically
just two steps, stay or number two steps
and a skill, skill. Skill is stay calm. Don't get defensive. Step number one, basically acknowledged what they said with a simple rephrase back to them. Oh, I understand that. Widget performance
is important to. Then step number two is asked the question that gets them to tell you why they're being doubtful or they're
misunderstanding you or whatever. That's it. This works across
the board for everything. When we get into
the future lessons we'll dealt will look into the individual attitudes and reactions and apply this to it. And I think you'll find that once you practice
this a few times, that you will start
to look forward to getting reactions because you basically know that the
door is now opening for you to offer up your
products as a solution. So that's it. I hope it makes sense. And I look forward to getting to you guys
in the next lesson, we will cover off
misunderstandings and doubt. So stay tuned and
we'll see you in lesson six and take a chance to maybe think about
what we talked about in, in even just practice
it if you can, if you're feeling that that brief will see you in
Lesson Six, Take care.
7. Lesson 6 - How to handle Misunderstanding and Doubt: Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach. We are moving on to
lesson number six, where it just chugging
along here and now we're getting into the details of these individual
customer attitudes. And today we're
gonna be covering off misunderstandings in doubt. Misunderstanding, misconception,
doubt, skepticism. It's there. Choose
your source version. We'll talk first about
the misunderstanding and how it can basically
affect your customers. Incorrect assumption of you, your company, your product. It basically puts
them off track. And these can arise either
past, present, or future. And I've got some examples here. Of each. In the past. You may have a customer and we talked about this
in the previous. Lesson number five is maybe you have a customer
that's heard a rumor or some lies a boat
about your company. And often those are spread
by your competitors, which is really low
ball, but it happens. So that's sort of past tense. Present tense would
be the messenger, something misunderstood, something that you said
during the sales meeting. We kind of talked
about that before. So they think you're making a
claim that has no validity. It's something you've
got to clear up. Future. Again, rumor mills
these days are actively churning and
misunderstandings will allow the rumor mill
to spin even faster. And if you ever get 11 of these future tense
understandings or misconception, man, the quicker you
stamp on that one, the better because
you do not want that to just flow out there. Particularly in the
age of social media, where bad news travels a whole
lot faster than good news. Doubts, is something that the customer feels based
on a preconceived idea or based on a claim or statement that you made
that they didn't fully understand and it's
usually present or future. There's no pass
component to doubt. It's really based on the
current situation there again, we'd, you're talking to them
and here's some examples. A customer is skeptical based on something that you said that doesn't match their beliefs or Miss or understanding
of your product. You could have said something
wrong. It's no big deal. I don't think your product to new blah-blah-blah,
future tense. So this would be a
misunderstanding of deb can be projected into the future as you fail
to be clear about it. I doubt you can
deliver that quickly. That's future tense. So handling both of these, the customer reactions
is very similar. In fact, it's, it's
identical to all of them. We're going to use that
two-step process I mentioned in the earlier lesson. And I'm gonna go
through this in detail. And I apologize
because I'm gonna be looking off
camera to read this, but I think you're gonna
get the idea here. So you're in the middle of
giving a product presentation. You've, you've provided
all your value statements, everything's looking good. You're getting close because
now you're basically into buying signal territory. We talked about that in
the previous course. You're into delivery
negotiations, which puts you're pretty
close to the sale, closing the sale,
but the customer then comes up and goes away. Hang on. It's like wait, wait. There's no way you can deliver those widgets
to me in two days. Now, remember skill, the
skill I said on this, stay calm, don't get
defensive, right? I know you're head is screaming, What is this guy an idiot, Of course I can deliver it
in one day if I wanted. I'm not gonna do that. You're not gonna do that. You're going to come
back with a very calm, boring statement
going, oh, I see. Can I ask why you feel I
can't deliver that quickly? There's no you're not trying
to be patient with that. You're just trying
to get clarity. Can I ask why you said that? Simple customer a year ago, I bought from your
company and they were three days
late with my order. So now you have it. He's kind of misunderstood. Did sort of a, you know, a complaint wrapped in there, but he's not really complaining, but he's using that
misconception or misunderstanding and past tense and projecting it
into the future. Well, you come back and again, stay calm. I understand. So getting on-time delivery
is crucial for you. Now is a customer, we're going to say no, right? They just complain
that you're not gonna be able to
deliver in two days. Now the customer is
going to come back with something like Absolutely. And a lot of places
are like this where you run a just-in-time
operation with very little inventory and
getting deliveries on time is a must capital MUS take. He's basically just
told you is need. So what do you do with
the need based on, on the fundamentals course, is you provide a solution
to that customer's problem. And at this point you can say, we have overhauled
our logistics center since that order
three years ago. I can show you how
we can guarantee the next delivery date
based on our new system. Can I show you that? Now? Unless the customer
completely hatred this point, who could say no to this? You've basically just
to address the problem. A number of years ago we had
an issue with your delivery. Yes, I understand we've
changed our system. Deliveries are now
more reliable. Can I show you how? One thing, one piece of advice I can offer is don't just stop at our deliveries
are much better because you sound like
you're just you're boasting. Our deliveries have gotten
much better since then. Add onto it, can I show you how you're getting buy-in
from the customer? You're keeping them engaged the whole, the whole
step of the way. That's important. Customer of course is
going to say yes to that. So that's the two-step process being used for misunderstanding and doubt is very similar
to this. Very similar. So I just want to close this lesson by
basically reminding you that you can defuse any challenging situation
as long as you stay calm. You state back to the customer
what it is they told you. Check for understanding on that. Don't you get into
misunderstanding or you're going to start spiraling
under control. Yes, Mr. Customer, here that
are delivered, you don't believe I
delivery Can I ask why? Then they explain. Then you just
basically go through the steps and get to
the bottom of it. I can't stress enough that this is not a time
for you to get upset. Take the ego, leave
it in the lobby. I say that an awful lot to my
sales reps leave the ego in the lobby and you'll be very surprised how things
turn out from there. So I hope that helps. We're gonna move on to the next two attitudes and look forward to seeing
you in lesson seven. Take care.
8. Lesson 7 - How to handle an Objection and Complaint : Welcome back,
five-minute sales coach, all the way up to lesson seven. And in this lesson I'm
going to be covering off the objections, the complaints. They're both very similar. We've talked about this before. The biggest difference
being is that the objection is something
that the customer says that is in opposition to what
you have said in the course of an immediate sales meeting
or some sort of discussion. And I really want to impress that when a customer objects, it's really all on you. No big deal. You can solve it very simply
as we're going to look at. But it's usually something that you've said or
done that they're objecting to and they're just
they're calling it on it. A complaint. On the other hand, while it may sound similar is something that is in the past, It's something that
already happened in the customer's complaining
and we've all complained, we've all done it. Something has happened
that were not happy about. So just be aware of the two similarities and most certainly the
two differences. So I'm going to read
off this little example I've got here. Customer says,
sorry, but I can't afford to pay 20% more
for your product. I know what you're doing,
you're panicking, right? You're bringing out
your discount table at this point, at
least in your head. Nano, nano. If you're
interested in the subsequent, one of the subsequent courses, I'm going to talk about how you deal with
price negotiations. This tactic is particularly
professional buyers is just, it's like a, it's like a
knee-jerk reaction to them. They always say, Oh,
I'm paying too much. Anyways, let's see
how this plays out. Customer says, Sorry,
I can't afford to pay 20% more for your product. You will say something like, I understand, finances
are important too. Can we discuss this
in more detail? Okay. You're overstating
the obvious. The customer may indeed
go, Yeah, yeah, whatever. Sometimes just keeping it simple, keeping
the conversation, letting the customer know that
you're listening to them, even overstating the brutally obvious is a very
powerful thing. So the customer is just agreed to discuss this in more detail. And you can say, well, my product is indeed 20%
more than my competitor. It also outperforms them by 40%, which means you will
actually be saving 20%. Does that sound acceptable? Yes, the customer will say, but I do need proof. Great. Let me show you how. And then you basically
get back into the sales cycle that we talked about in the
fundamentals course. You've basically
taken their objection to your price being, your product being
too expensive, and you've turned it around. Now you have an
opportunity to sell the value of your product
rather than the price we get so wrapped up in the price that we just
don't even try to save it. And I spent 25 years
at an industry where I was the most
expensive product in my, in my competitive group. And it, it takes a
little more work, but it most certainly can be done because instead
of selling price, you're now selling value. You should be doing anyways means that you'd
make more sales, means that your
commission is higher, your margins are higher,
et cetera, et cetera. So that is an example of how you would deal
with an objection. They just didn't
quite understand you. You gave them the price, they objected to the price, and you immediately diffused it. And that's a very
powerful thing. The next thing up
is the complaint and just let me pull this up. Let's can kinda make
you feel defensive. We're all humans. It happens. A complaint is
something that's inevitable. Things never go according to plan and it gets a
little emotional. Customer will most
likely be annoyed or because you've caused
them some discomfort. And your immediate reaction
can be to be defensive. And unfortunately,
I've seen a lot of things go off the
tables over the years. You are the face of the company. So you have to own
up to it if it's your mistake, own up to it. If it's the shipping departments
mistake, own up to it. If it's a quality
error, own up to it. Do not do. And I can't stress this enough. Do not engage in
finger-pointing. Most certainly do not tell your customer about the inner
workings of your company. I've seen some horrible
things about my sales reps ******** to them about
those lazy idiots in the warehouse or
the absolute worse. And I'm not lying. I actually
heard this. Well, yeah. Your order was two days late, but I added another customer. It was four days late because of these morons and shipping. Never ever do that. If it goes down like this, the customer says and
let me pull this one up. Delivery was two days late. I understand your delivery
schedule must be exact. Is that true, customer because you're plenty,
right? It's true. And then you will say, Well, if you can give me a
couple of days to speak with my logistics department, I can find out what the
problem was and I can work on something to make sure that
this never happens again. Can we get together next
Tuesday to discuss my solution? Who's going to say no to that? And you've basically
just gone into superhero mode where you've taken a problem and
you're now saying, You know what, I'm
putting on my cape and I'm going to
solve it for you. This one is really
important that you take your emotion out of it. You take your ego out of it, and don't make excuses. Everything stops with you. You are the face of the company. I'm sorry, the
delivery was late. Yeah, we screwed up. I'm gonna go back and
see how I fix it. Customer doesn't care
about the moron in the shipping
department that's done this five times this month. They don't care about that. And I see it happen a lot. So keep your keep to the lip, zip shut, keep it positive, keep it moving forward. Take that negative
and turn it around. I can't stress this enough. Okay, so that's less than seven, less than eight is coming up. We recover off my
favorite indifference. And I hope you got
something out of this. Learn how to deal with
those complaints, turn it into something
that you can actually expand
your sales width. And we'll see you
in the next lesson. Take care guys.
9. Lesson 8 - how to handle Indifference: Hi folks, welcome back. Five-minute sales coach
Rhonda, lesson number eight, and my favorite customer reaction or attitude
in difference. This is the most challenging one you're going to run across, not just in business
life, but also personal. It is when people basically
show a lack of interests. They're apathetic. They're disinterested
in what you're saying. You know, it's it's
not easy to deal with. I'm not going to lie. But again, as I've
mentioned through everything in this entire course and the one previous,
remaining calm, gathering yourself, not
panicking and asking some good-quality questions
is going to get you out of the trap of indifference. Now, we've all had examples of this in our
professional lives. You're in the middle
of a fantastic, what you think is going to be
a fantastic sales meeting. You sit down with a
customer and they just don't show any
interest whatsoever. In fact, they become
extremely distracted. They're typing on their
phone while you're talking. One of the worst
ones is looking at their watch or looking
around the room. They're basically
telegraphing to you without saying a word, that they don't really have a perceived need for your product or
service at that point. Now, there are some
people that actually take pleasure out of this who treat everybody that they meet in
the course of a day as a, as getting in their
way is a problem and they're always
going to be there. You've also got customers
that are having a bad day. Particularly if you're dealing
with a customer that is taking on multiple projects and maybe something is
going wrong that day and he completely forgot that you had made an
appointment with you. It happens. And they're just trying to be kind and maybe
not blow you off. But really it an instance where you can't get
somebody's attention. Maybe it's better
to pull the plug. So these things happen
and it's just a way of another attitude that
you've got to deal with to figure out how to
get through to them. Now I've mentioned a few extreme cases and there are gonna be those cases where somebody
is just they're not there. You're better to pull
the plug and come back another time when
they can be there. But you are going to
see some indifference in the course of any
sales interaction. And the biggest
challenge with it is, is that you don't have an
obvious attitude to deal with, so you can't really tell
if they're objecting. You don't know if
they're complaining, it's really difficult to try and figure out what is going on. And so he's gonna take
a little more effort for you to dive back into the sales cycle and basically start asking some questions
to get them to open up. Because what I found about a difference over the
years is it could be a multitude of
different attitudes that you've just
got to basically find out what it's all about. Here's an example. Let's look at this here. So the customer may say
something along the lines of, I really don't have a need
for your widgets today. Now. There could be 1 million
reasons why that is, and it's up to you to
dig deeper to find out. So you could say, I understand, Is it because you
don't have a project for widgets at this time. The customer could then
say That's correct. Simply say, do you expect the next project to
be coming on soon? Customer will say next months at which point you can
say when can we meet? Customer would say something
like the end of April. So you've taken the
indifference and found out that you really don't have a need for your product at
that point and that's fine. That's an easy one
actually to get by. There is another
variation of this one, but perhaps the
customer would say, I don't need your
widget at this time. You could say because you don't have a project
for our widgets, at which point the
customer is going to make it a little more
complicated at this point, is going to say, I
do have a project, but we're not sure about
our widget requirement yet. Now, you're a little salesman, salesperson brain is going to be firing off rate at that 0.000. Let me show them
all the great stuff we have for this project. He isn't quite sure. And that's not your invitation to do that at that
point, basically, you're saying is you're just going to ask
them very simply, is there something I
can help you with? No, Leave it with me. Okay. That's Will it be similar
from the last project? Can I send you the same
specifications again? The customer says, no, we just have too many other
things on the go right now. Now you've got a
choice at this point, is you can ask another question
to try and dig a little deeper to find out when they're going to be
getting onto that project, what they need your help with. But you're flirting and dangerous territory
at this point. Because after a customer
has told, you know, twice, the third time
can get a little tricky. If you ask him another question. I could I could send you some brochures and
her latest widgets, at which point he could say, no, I'm really too busy
now you're kinda getting into the annoying
the customer phase. And I really want to
drive this point home. Things aren't always
going to work out. And every once in awhile, you're gonna get a customer
that's going to say no to the same line
of questioning twice. Now, you're going to have to
use your better judgement. Sometimes you're trying to
drill down into something very specific and you're
just trying to get to details or information
and that's fine. Yes or no to try and guide
you into a certain situation, That's great, That's perfect. But if you're on an
indifferent track like this one and you
keep getting knows, you get to that second note. And most certainly
after the third one, bale, get out of there, finding another
subject to talk about. Otherwise, you're
going to start to knowing your customer
and that's going to put you in a bad light with
them because all of a sudden now you're the
pushy, annoying sales rep. We don't want that. We want to be the, the consultative sales rep
that helps our customers. And part of that is reading the room and
understanding that your customers sometimes it's just
too busy to deal with it, even though he may have said
to you last month oh yeah. I'm gonna have to talk to you a month from now
about this project. Everyone has their own
challenges and things come up. Their problems don't necessarily match with your schedule. So just keep that in mind. No, twice means Gosh, should I keep going down here? And three means dead stop. We don't want to start
annoying people, so that's it. That's the best way to
handle the difference. If you get a customer
that is indifferent in a, in a cold call, expect it because
they don't know you, they don't understand
your product and you're taking up their time. So they're gonna, they're
gonna give you a bit of a hard time anyways, they're
gonna be indifferent. Just expect that in that
situation and kind of accept it. But when you're dealing
with indifference with your normal customers
and a sales call, it comes up and you're
not entirely sure why he's he's looking around the
room while you're talking. Again, like I always
say, read the room. Don't overdo it. Don't annoy him. Understand that there's probably something else going
on behind the scenes. It's causing them to
be indifferent to you. All of a sudden he could
just be having a bad day. It happens and treat
it with respect. And understand that maybe you've got to pull
the plug on that and move on to something
else. I hope that helps. That's less than eight and less than nine is
we're gonna be talking about the foods or reactions. As indifferent sometimes
can be a result of a few different attitudes that you don't quite understand. This one is we're
going to look at attitudes that you think
you understand he's got, but it's actually something
totally different. And we're going to give you some skills on how
to deal with that. So thanks for dropping by and we'll see you
in the next lesson. Take care.
10. Lesson 9 - How to uncover the hidden Reaction or Attitude.: Welcome back. We're in lesson nine,
five-minute sales coach. We're getting
through this course. This is the final one. And what I wanna do in this one is sort of make you
aware that now that we've learned all the challenging customer
attitudes and reactions, I want to throw this one
out on the table at you. They're not always
as they seem great. I know what she's thinking. I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is because I want you to make sure that you don't end off running off into a tangent. After 25 years of
coaching sales reps, I can tell you that I've seen people go off course like
you wouldn't believe it. It doesn't take much it takes
that one wrong question, that one assumption and
off it goes into the, into the Never, Never Land. And this is one of the number one ways it
happens that you finally got a handle on these customers attitudes and their reactions and I know
how to deal with that. And you assume,
here's an example. If customer says
your company stinks, I'll never do business with you. And immediately somebody
gets defensive. But you remember your car. So I know I'm not going
to get defensive. Now. That's a misunderstanding. I'm going to find out what
that misunderstanding is. And so you ask a question, you use the usual com thing. Oh, I see. Can I ask why you feel that way? I did not get a
return phone call from your customer support. Now, if you thought
doses misunderstanding, then you'd be asking
him questions like did you dial
the right number? Two, did you talk to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But hang on a second. Something's not right here. Something is different. And perhaps you could
say, oh, I understand. So timely tech support
is important to you. Now you see you've done, you've
dropped all assumptions, you've dropped everything, and you're just following that. What he's saying. Tech support is intra
is important to you and the customer
goes, absolutely. I suffered for three
days trying to get that computer up and running because your people
didn't call me back. We really suffered over that. What is that?
That's a complaint. That's not a misunderstanding. You see how something can be
disguised as something else. So I want you to be very careful moving forward not to get too wrapped up in what
the apparent one was. And it might take a
question or two more, Two. To understand what's
really going on. I'll read another
example of the same, of something very
similar and we actually talked about this the,
in another lesson. I'm not buying those
purple widgets. They're way too expensive. Okay. So you're thinking
price objection. This is an objection. So you could probably
say something like, why do you feel like
they're too expensive? Now that's a really
open ended question. But in an instance like this, I'd probably get a
little more detailed. Oh, I see. Well, it occurs to
me the last time we spoke, we talked about the
purple widgets. You liked the specifications, you are quite happy with the
price and their performance. Is there a problem? Customer says, yes, there is. I use 20 of them a week. Now, this is where it gets
really important that you understand your customer because at that point you can go. But when we talked about this, you've only purchased one
from me in the last year. At which point maybe the
customer is going to go. Oh, I meant the orange
widgets. Forget about it. Was a misunderstanding. It was a
misunderstanding sort of disguised as an objection. And I want you to be very
careful not to assume. I would've seen more
than one sales rep take this very situation or runoff in the purple
widget direction. There would have been all sorts of questions and discussions could completely based on a pricing objection
that didn't exist. It was a misunderstanding
on the customer's part. Even admitted it. Oh, never mind my bad. I've seen it happen. So you've gotta be
very careful not to. There's an old saying,
don't get stuck in the weeds. Take your time. Ask a question. If something doesn't feel right, if something doesn't seem right, and that's what
happened in this case, the sales rep wait a minute. What's he talking about? 20 a year. So he spotted a problem and he very
non-confrontational. They just went in and adjusted things until he
finally found it that the customer was
misunderstanding or had a misconception
about what was going on. So be very careful on that. So use the standard technique. Keep calm, acknowledged back to the customer what they said. Wait for a response. Get into some useful
open-ended questions that are going to help you
get to the bottom of things. So that is for your benefit. So you don't go
off into tangent. And I can say without a
doubt that I've seen this happen way too
much, way too much. So save yourself the trouble. Stay in control. So that's it for less than nine, That's it for the course. There is a project. I'd like everybody to take
a moment to go to it. For the project is going to be some style of video I
haven't decided yet whether it's going to be video of me or some animation characters that I can make it look a little bit different that are going to show you the different
customer attitudes. And I'm also going to throw
in maybe one or two that are not the real attitude. And I'm going to
leave it up to you to determine which one. But your goal in this project is to look at the videos and
write down your answer and what the attitude
is and give me the the acknowledged rephrase
the question steps of how you would approach, defusing that attitude
or that reaction. And I think the, I think you'll enjoy it and you certainly get a lot out of it. So thanks again. I really appreciate you
attending my course. And just to let you know, I have another course
coming up shortly. I hope to release it soon, and it will be focusing on different types of
customer personalities. We talked about your
personality style, you're selling style in
the very first course. This one is going to
enlighten you as to where your customers
are acting and allow you to adjust your approach to them
and be a little more, a little more engaging. One thing about being in sales is you have to be a
bit of a chameleon. You have to sort of adjust, know who you're talking to
and adjust your approach. So thanks again for attending, and I wish you all
the best of luck and take care and we'll
talk to you soon. Bye for now.
Kevin Ford, Master Trainer
