Every salesperson in every business encounters resistance in some part of the selling process. Most salespeople encounter resistance when cold calling while others encounter it at closing time. Those two obvious areas of resistance are well documented and written about extensively. But what about industry specific resistance? If you sell insurance or long distance phone service your prospects think, “need it but don’t want it” or “have it and don’t need it”. If you sell products to companies that have an established vendor, your prospects think, “need it but not from you”. If you are pioneering a new product or service your prospects think, “don’t need it and don’t want it”. If your product or service is priced higher than your competition, your prospects think, “want it but don’t want to pay for it”. If success requires that you reach someone with a “C” in their title, you get resistance when you attempt to get through.

Resistance is part of selling. Success in overcoming the resistance comes from developing a sound strategy to overcome the resistance.

You already know what your prospects will resist. Make a list of those topics. More importantly, what will your prospects agree with? For instance, if you sell long distance, when you tell prospects what you sell they’ll get you off the phone ASAP unless your timing is perfect. But what if you said something like, “I help companies that can’t stand getting calls from long distance phone companies but still need to find ways to reduce their costs”? In this example you would have made two statements that your prospects could agree with. Much less resistance, much better chance to keep them on the phone and learn whether they have a problem you can solve.

What kind of statements can you create that would turn the resistance you get into a statement your prospect will agree with? Baseline Selling has two sections that can help you do this. The first is the section on creating Positioning Statements and the second is the section on executing The Cycle.

Start your strategy now!