16 Power Closes. Tom Hopkins

skilled qualifiers may occasionally be well into their selling sequence and then encounter what appears to be a condition. When this happens, treat it like an objection. That is, try to break it down. If it doesn’t break down, it’s a condition, and you’ll need to develop the ability to swallow hard and then quickly and courteously disconnect from the prospects who, you’ve just discovered, can’t own.

      Some of us have a severe challenge here. If we spend time with people and get into our selling sequence with them, we get emotionally involved to the point where we lose our ability to see the difference between an objection that can be overcome and a condition that can’t.

      In this, sales is like poker. Professional poker players are quick to throw in a losing hand, no matter how much they’ve already bet on it. Average poker players stay in the game and keep on calling bets with hands they know have little chance to win. Instead of accepting a small loss and getting out, they stay in and take a greater loss.

      As Reinhold Niebuhr said, “Give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed, courage to change what should be changed, and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” Have the wisdom—and sometimes it also takes courage—to pleasantly and quickly withdraw from losing situations.

      You’ll appear more professional for doing so and, hopefully, when conditions change in the future for these people, they can become clients of yours. If nothing else, by being extremely professional you will earn the right to ask them for qualified referrals to friends, associates, or relatives who might not have the same conditions. So, all is not lost. It’s just different.

      Now let me repeat what an objection is. An objection is a request for more information. Believe me, I won’t waste my time objecting to small things unless I’m really considering taking the product or service—I’m the same as most buyers on that point. But understand this: Potential buyers who object really can’t see how your offering will suit their needs. Your job is to use your superior knowledge of what you’re selling to show them how it can satisfy their needs.

      Take a bright highlighting pen and make this point stand out:

       If no conditions exist and they don’t buy, it’s my fault.

      It’s important to understand and agree with that concept. You represent a fine-quality product, or a service that’s conducted with skill and integrity. When people own it, they benefit. Let them. Do your job. Help those people enjoy the benefits that only you can bring them.

      Do you realize how many salespeople won’t let their prospects benefit from their offering? These salespeople won’t do what has to be done in the way of practice, planning, and performance to permit their prospects to benefit from owning what they sell.

      I love the profession of selling. It’s been my entire life. I know what a leading part it plays in maintaining our national prosperity and way of life. What I think is sad is the large number of salespeople who damage our profession because they buckle when they hear an objection. These klutzes don’t realize that by failing to overcome objections, they not only fail themselves and their families, but they also fail their companies, the public, and our nation’s future. Prospects came to you in need of the product or service—or you found them in need of it—and if they don’t get it, they lose. Everyone else loses, too.

      As I fly around the country, I talk to people who aren’t in the selling profession. When I say that I train salespeople, some of them look at me as if I’m doing something wrong. I don’t accept any shade of that idea. We have the most honorable profession there is. Selling means helping people benefit and grow. Yet average salespeople sit and wait. When they finally meet a prospect, the slightest breeze of objection blows them away— and that prospect walks off without the benefits.

      I hope you’ll decide right now that you’ll no longer buckle under and then blow away. Make today the day you take the material in this book (or in my audio and video programs) and start working with all your energy to learn and then shape it to serve your unique requirements. When you’ve made it yours, you’ll love objections like I do because you’ll know in your bones that finding and overcoming them is the only way you’ll ever get the yes you’re looking for. You’ll learn to go in hoping to hear the nos you’ve got to hear before you use your skills and get the yes.

       Two Don’ts and One Do That Every Champion Lives By

      Here are two things that no Champion ever does, and one thing that all Champions constantly do. Please highlight these three precepts so you can review them quickly and often.

      1. Don’t argue. Do you know how many salespeople argue with potential buyers? Prospects voice a concern—meaning that they show a need for more information—and what do they get? An argument. With anger or sarcasm, or other forms of sales-killing heat and pressure, the salesperson tries to beat the prospect down. Quite often, the salesperson succeeds in winning the argument—and thereby loses all chance of making the sale. Why? Because then the only way the prospects can get even for the way they’ve been treated is to buy from someone else.

      2. Don’t attack them when you overcome their objections. Put space between your prospects and their objections. By this I mean that you must be careful to separate your people from their objections. You need to be sure that, when you fire at the objection, you don’t hit the potential clients in a vital spot. Develop sensitivity to how your prospects feel when they voice their objections. You can’t reject their objections as being anything less than intelligent and reasonable without striking at their self-esteem. Show concern for saving their face, not determination to prove them wrong.

      Never allow a potential client to feel that he’s in danger of being proven wrong. If you start fighting their feelings, their negative emotions will always take over. You can’t make sales by winning logical battles at the cost of losing emotional ones. Objections tell you where their interests lie; this being the case, objections tell you what must be emphasized, eliminated, or changed before they’ll own.

      1. Do lead them to answer their own objections. A Champion always tries to help them to answer their own objections.

      Here’s another point to highlight: When I say it, they tend to doubt it. When they say it, it’s true.

      Anything and everything said by a salesperson is likely to be met with skepticism by potential owners. After all, what you say influences their decision and, unfortunately, due to the lack of professionalism of some in this industry, salespeople’s words aren’t often trusted. So they’ll tend to doubt what you say until and unless you back it up with facts or through hands-on demonstration. When they make a statement, they believe it to be true. People won’t normally tell themselves untruths when in purchasing situations. Your goal is to get them to state the answer to their objection.

      The average salesperson doesn’t suspect that this can be done and never tries to do it; the Champion knows that it usually can be done and develops great skill at doing it. Do you know that most prospects will answer their own objections if you’ll just work at it, give them time, and lead them to it? After all, deep down they want to go ahead—if you’ll just show them how, and guide their faltering footsteps. They wouldn’t keep on talking to you if they didn’t want what you sell.

      Most buyers have certain reflexes they aren’t even conscious of that come out as objections. When the secretary says, “We only see vendors on Thursday,” or someone coming into a store says, “We’re only looking,” you’re hearing reflex objections. Here’s how to overcome these and other types.

       The Objection-Handling System

      1. Hear them out. Far too many salespeople leap on an objection before the other person has a chance to finish saying it. The prospect barely gets five words out— and already the salesperson is yammering away as though the evil thing will multiply unless it’s stomped out immediately. I gotta make him wrong quick, or he won’t take the product, seems to be their panicky reaction to the first hint on any objection.

      Not only does the prospect feel irritated