Objections Are Better Than Indifference

I am constantly amazed at how fearfully many sales professionals face objections to their propositions.

Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if everyone immediately understood the huge value that we bring to them and opened their cheque books and wallets to us without question? But seeing as they don't - we need to consider sales objections in a different light - as something positive rather than negative.

Look, I can work with an objection - I can probe it further, I can change the way I'm communicating. If they're objecting to what I'm presenting at least they are engaged in the sales process and trying to understand what it is we are presenting. They are looking for more information, or clarity or a reason to buy.

What I can't sell to is indifference, where someone has zero interest in what I'm selling. This can only occur where we got our prospecting criteria wrong in the first place and we are talking to the wrong person. Alternatively it may be happening because I have committed some major 'faux pas' that I'm not aware of, that has caused them some degree of annoyance and hence passive resistance to me or the proposal.

Either way, it's time to move on - selling is about service, not about trying to ram what we have to offer down their throats - that was the old days. The age of 'hard power' selling and not the modern market place where 'soft power' selling is required. The world is an abundant place and it is so much easier to sell to those who have a need and desire for our services and products.

Where objections can never be met by probing, engagement and uncovering the real need behind the objection - retreat, re-group and move on.

R&R

Rest and recreation and yes, I am re-visiting the topic.  Maybe it's because I'm heading out next week for two weeks in Malaysia and Borneo - with the family in tow and mightily looking forward to the opportunity to take time out and take stock of things. Expensive - yeah, there's always a little financial pain but I learned the importance of not putting money before memories some years ago.

Money can always be earned and renewed but the time in one's life in which it can be used to make memories that sustain you, your loved one and especially your children - to awaken young minds that experience a world that is global and diverse - is finite.

I spent four different coaching sessions with senior executives last week and the theme was exactly the same. Take time out - get away from the job. Give yourself some space - and for good business reasons too.

Most of our creative insights, our new ideas, our renewed motivation comes when we are not working. Typically they come when we take time to go on holiday - or usually when we are asleep and kept awake until the idea forms itself and thus we often lose good quality sleep.

By keeping ourselves at the coal face we fail to see the ideas and the insights that can help us transcend the challenges that we might be facing in the role. Our unconscious minds need time to integrate and synthesise,  to reflect and resolve,  to connect the pieces - it is from this that the insights which drive  our success and creativity come from.

Taking time out regularly is a critical business decision - it boosts our brain power, connects with the universe and shows us the way.