I always wanted to be a stockbroker and when I left the Marine Corps in 1982, I got the chance of a lifetime to just that.
Then came the biggest surprise of my life. The job wasn’t as glamorous as it appeared. It was a sales job and a difficult one at that. I made it even more difficult because I knew absolutely nothing about sales.
And that is when it started going downhill.
I had no sales training and no experience. Cold calling, walking into businesses unannounced and trying to get somebody to buy something was terrifying. And I sucked at it.
One of the things that made it a horrible experience was that I dreaded getting an objection like “the stock market is too high/too low/too risky, etc. I hoped and prayed that nobody would say that, but most did, and I didn’t have a good answer. I never had the same answer twice.
There are two valuable lessons to learn here. Tom Hopkins, the great sale trainer, taught me the following:
First, objections are part of the sales process. You are going to get them, so get over it. Your success or failure is determined by how you handle objections. Tom had me create a list of ALL the objections my prospects could ask and script out the answers to them. He told me that this was one of the fundamentals of selling, but the question is, have you done it?
Second, if you know that an objection is coming, answer the blasted thing before the prospect brings it up. This lesson isn’t as apparent to a lot of folks. Sales pros know when to bring it up and how to turn it into a benefit. You can actually use it to your advantage.
And – before you say that doesn’t work in my style of selling – baloney.
It doesn’t matter what form of selling you are in – over the phone, knee-to-knee (aka face-to-face), stage, webinar, Skype call, video, sales letter – you will get objections and those objections will have to be addressed before the sale is made.
So, take some time over the next few days and create a list of every possible objection you can come up with and script out the answers. Then, start weaving your answers to those objections into your presentation.
Do that and you may never have a zero sales day again.
You are worth more …
Bobby
