Shattering Sales Resistance

by Graham Denton

Shattering Sales Resistance Objections can be pointedly precise or they can be vague. One of the vaguest is that free-floating anxiety about being "sold" that comes under the rubric of "general sales resistance." General sales resistance doesn't usually appear as an objection at all-and in fact it may have nothing to do with your product, your company, or you personally-but it's there anyway, in many customer encounters, threatening to derail your presentation before you begin. In dealing with this amorphous objection, Tracy advises a strategy of instant redirection: Begin the sales call by shifting the customer's focus away from his concern that you're going to sell him something and onto himself, his problems, and his situation.

There are a number of ways to do this, ranging from the traditional ceremony of ice-breaking chit-chat to the blunt presentation of a problem that you know you can solve. ("If downtime is a problem in your department, Ms. Kirchel," you say to someone who you know has that problem, "I can show you how to reduce it by 25 percent.") One of the most direct ways is to involve the customer physically in a way that introduces the product but not the price.

Physical involvement is one of the oldest of selling techniques. It's the principle behind having someone try on a jacket, take an automobile test drive, or get thirty days' free Internet usage before signing up for an online service. The old-timers called it the Puppy Dog close. It's a good a way as any to pique a customer's interest-and to soothe his sales anxiety in the bargain.

In his book Advanced Selling Strategies, Brian Tracy relates a famous story about a Corning Glass salesman who had the highest volume in the country of safety glass sales. Naturally his fellow reps were eager to know his secret, and what he described was a clear case of physical involvement. The first thing he would say when he walked into a prospect's office was "Have you ever seen glass that doesn't break, even when you hit it with a hammer?" This was in the days before safety glass had become standard issue on automobiles, and the top producer's prospect would therefore say No. He would then take a sheet of Corning glass out of his briefcase, put it on the prospect's desk, and haul away at it with a hammer.

The glass wasn't shattered, but the prospect's general sales resistance usually was. After recoiling from the initial shock, and realizing that he wasn't going to be lacerated by glass shrapnel, the prospect usually responded with rapt curiosity, inviting the salesperson to proceed logically to a discussion of the product.

When this story got around the company, by the way, this "start off with a bang" technique became universal: Every Corning rep in the country started using it. But a year after this happened, the salesman who had invented the technique was still top producer. Why? Because he had modified the technique. Instead of wielding the hammer himself, he would hand it to the prospect and challenge him or her to break the glass. This considerably upped the ante on physical involvement, and it proved an even better deflector of general sales resistance.