How to Overcome Buyer Resistance… Embrace It

Here it is with a twist for those in the sales profession:

We’ve been taught the wrong thing for decades now. Listen for buyer objections and be prepared to overcome those objections. Manuals have been written. Flow charts have been developed. Salespeople have been drilled with techniques to overcome buyer resistance. Do buyers really have a natural resistance to sellers of products and services?

As with any multiplication problem, if any value in the formula is zero, the product is zero; therefore, to overcome buyer resistance would be impossible. So, let’s break this down. There are some important points that the selling professional needs to understand.

First, let’s talk about the “shared” element of the first two factors, D and V. To accomplish meaningful, sustainable change, a broadly shared idea of the current state and a broadly shared idea of some future state that is better are needed.

This means the professional salesperson needs to identify the various buying influences, gather their collective feelings about their current state, and help them build a shared idea of the future that is better with her product or service installed. Without the “shared” elements understood and described, change in the buying system is impossible to accomplish.

Many inexperienced salespeople struggle with helping their prospects see a future that is better with their product or service installed. Many sales losses and delays happen here.

First, the salesperson must be competent. They need to not only know how her product or service functions, in addition they also need to be able to help the buying system see the future with their company serving them. The salesperson needs to communicate the dramatic difference their company will make on the buying system’s future and help them see the implications and payoff. Don’t forget, doing this with one person in the buying system is not sufficient. The salesperson must help the buyer develop a shared vision of the future with their product or service installed.

We now have our shared dissatisfaction and vision in place. We have a collective understanding of where we are and a better place we would like to go. Now, we must help the buying system understand the steps that are required to make the change.

Selling systems need a highly refined process map for how they propose, engage, and deliver their services, so the buying system never feels unsure about the next step, including the most important first steps. It is important for the selling organization to have this in place to avoid being completely controlled by the buying system. Lacking a deliberate selling system, sales professionals often find themselves frustrated by buying systems that aren’t designed to capture the value-add of the selling system’s delivery.

Overcoming resistance to buying isn’t the final goal in my mind. The end result should be professional salespeople who are business leaders who understand human behavior and how to apply their products and services in a way that positively disrupts the buying systems’ mindset about the possibilities of working together.