Objection handling…
A sales team recently asked me how to reply when customers objected to something about their offering – ‘you’re too expensive’, ‘the time isn’t right’, ‘we already have a supplier’, etc.
I told them the only way to master this is script and practise.
In other words – in advance of the meeting – they have to:
- Create their script – the words they’ll say when these objections arise; and…
- … because objections are verbal things, they have to practise these scripts verbally (in other words: out loud) until they’re great at saying them
But when we came back to our second training a week later, they’d created their scripts – but nobody had invested time in the practising.
Not good.
So I gave them this analogy…
- Seeing me is like going to the dentist
- You don’t do it very often. But it’s useful when you do
- But if that’s the only thing you do to protect your teeth – in other words, you do NOT clean your teeth between visits to the dentist – your teeth will fall out
- Which means: the thing that makes you brilliant is regular, diligent practising of the basics
- One individual “teeth clean” won’t cut it. But do it regularly, every day, forever – and your teeth should be OK
So my question for you with your communications: do you use a dentist or a toothbrush?
In other words, do you sometimes attend training courses and/or do you regularly practise until you become brilliant?
Ideally, you’d do both.
But – without wishing to talk myself out of a career – if you were only going to do one of them, it should be the toothbrush.
Regular, relentless practise and mastery of the small things. Until you become brilliant.
We’re all in great habits with cleaning our teeth.
But we aren’t in good habits when it comes to practising our communication skills.
How good are you, compared to how good you could be?
What should you practise more, to become even better?
Action Point
Identify which communications are most important to your success.
And then practise them. More than you do now.
Seek feedback. Implement it.
Practise more.
Even if you improve just one thing per week, you’ll quickly become a LOT better!