Overcoming Objections – #3 Misunderstandings

All Sales Objections fall into one of four camps.

And because they stopped the flow of a wonderful running sales conversation – I’ve named those four problems DAMS.

The third one – the M in DAMS – stands for MISUNDERSTANDINGS.

A Misunderstanding is when your prospect gets the wrong end of the stick somehow regarding your product or service – and then uses that reason for not moving forward with the sale.

But actually what’s happened is, that they’ve misheard you or maybe reacted to a bit of “fake news” from your competitor – and so the objection is actually unfair or just plain wrong.

But Misunderstandings can never be the customers fault.

As an example, if your delivery time takes less than a week – but your customer says the reason she can’t buy off you is because;

“Your lead time’s too long. I need it in a week.”

You probably won’t win the day if you get all indignant and say something like;

“No – I’ve told you already – you can’t have heard me properly – we always deliver in less than a week.”

Because here’s the thing about misunderstandings….

Nobody likes to be told they’ve got an ugly baby.

Even people with ugly babies, don’t like to be told they’ve got an ugly baby.

Same thing in a sales training  environment – If I am trying to get my point across to you and the message didn’t get through – it can’t be your fault – your job was to receive the message given, not do my job for me.

I’m the communicator trying to deliver the message.

It is my professional duty to deliver that message so that you hear it and understand it.

You can’t be at fault if I haven’t done my job properly

And so to overcome Misunderstandings…

You Have to Take the Blame and You Re-explain

You say something like;

“I’m terribly sorry. I should have told you that. My fault!

We pride ourselves on getting deliveries out in under a week.”

****************************************************