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Conflicts of opinion are like arm wrestling your prospect
I was listening to one of the Soft Sell Marketers Association downloads from June in which Judith & Jim mentioned how they gave a relationship teleseminar on “The Promise of Conflict” because conflict is a part of life. It dawned on me that conflict is a natural part of sales though it is something that most of us soft sell salespeople would rather avoid.
Admittedly, I too love sales calls where everything flows smoothly and harmoniously. However, I have enough life experience in sales to know that is being Pollyanna-like to think I can always avoid conflicts just because I use soft sell sales techniques. Life has conflict. If you interact with people eventually there will be conflict. If you do sales calls, I can promise that you will eventually experience conflict.
The question frankly is how will you handle the conflict? If you take it personally and react, you will find life in sales to be very frustrating and not very productive. If you view it as a battle of wits with the objective being to prove yourself more clever and smarter than your prospect, you may win the battle but lose forever the customer.
The way to successfully handle the conflict is to ask questions so as to discover what the real issue is and to grasp the other person’s viewpoint. Listen to understand.
I’ve had times when the conflict was due to a misunderstanding. Occasionally I’ll use a word or phrase that my prospect thinks means something different than what I think it means. It can be as simple as my wife seeing colors slightly differently than I do so she’ll call it red when I think it’s orange. The issue isn’t who’s right. The issue is, can we reach an agreement that works for us? The same thing exists with clients.
Charles H. Green in Trust-Based Selling quoted Thomas Friedman’s address to the graduating class of 2005 at Williams College, “You can get away with really disagreeing with people as long as you show them the respect of really listening to what they have to say and taking it into account when and if it makes sense.” Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, worked in the Arab/Muslim world for 20 years despite being an American Jew.
Soft Sell Sales and Marketing are about the connection with other people where they come to know like and trust you. You can’t always avoid conflict but you can manage it by managing the way you respond. By treating your prospects and customers with respect when you find a difference of opinion, you will strengthen their feelings of trust toward you. This will lead to sales that are fun, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding.
To learn more about soft sell sales and marketing, please sign up for my mailing list. In exchange, I will send you I will send you my eBook and 9 lesson eCourse, “9 Steps to Finding Prospects Who Want What You Provide.”
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