- Have you ever come across a customer or a prospect
who's just really cranky and really difficult?
Most salespeople are absolutely terrified by these people
but, the reality is, is oftentimes difficult customers
can actually make the best clients
and because there's no BS
and there's no fake positivity,
they're going to give it to you straight.
It's a huge opportunity but you have to deal
with difficult customers in the right way.
In this video, I'm going to show you exactly
how to deal with difficult customers in sales.
Check it out.
(clapping hands)
(drum rolling)
Number one, slow things down.
Most salespeople, and the data shows this unequivocally,
when most salespeople are coming across
a difficult customer or prospect,
they tend to speed things up.
They tend to, because they're nervous,
they tend to speak more quickly,
or they tend to try to rush through things.
Instead, slow things down.
Think of it as a hostage situation
and you are the hostage negotiator
and you are dealing with the hostage taker.
Hostage negotiators are always trying
to slow down the situation, not speed things up.
You want to do the exact same thing in sales.
Show that you are completely unfazed
by their difficult tone or by their aggressive nature.
Instead, slow things down
and let the pace start to slowly come down.
Now, this doesn't mean that you're gonna take your time
to get through everything, of course not,
but you want to generally just slow down
the situation and most importantly, don't speed things up.
Number two, stay unemotional.
There is nothing that a difficult customer will sense more
than when they get a salesperson to become emotional.
And our natural reaction when dealing
with a difficult person is to also get emotional.
But you want to stay completely unemotional.
Now, again, this doesn't mean you're completely deadpan
but instead, when you're talking to them,
imagine that they're just a normal person
and that you're talking to them completely unemotionally.
What this is going to do is it's going to start
to break that pattern to them because they're expecting you
to get more emotional and talk more quickly
and get kind of completely flustered
but when you show that you are completely unfazed by it,
they're going to naturally start to match you.
Imagine dealing with a difficult child.
If the parent starts screaming and gets really emotional,
the kid starts screaming and getting really emotional
but a really effective parent is going to stay calm
and let the kid start to just mellow out.
This is exactly what we want to do in sales,
stay unemotional.
Number three, use a calm but firm voice.
You want to use a voice that demonstrates to the prospect
that you are not fazed, that they are not throwing you off,
and you accomplish this by using that calm, firm voice.
So, it might sound something like this,
"George, I really appreciate what you're saying.
"Would it be okay if I took 30 seconds
"and told you why I called in the first place
"and if after, it doesn't make sense, we can hang up.
"Does that sound fair?"
The prospect is going to immediately sense
that you are confident
and because you're using that calm, firm voice,
you're showing you're just totally unfazed
and what's going to happen
is you're going to notice their temperature
come down and down and down, and they're going to start
to lose that edge and they're gonna say,
"Sure, fair enough."
That's where you want to be.
Number four, mirror their language.
Now, mirroring has taken on
a pretty new meaning in the past few years,
where again we get the strategy
from actual hostage negotiators,
where we want to mirror the last few words
that they say when they're talking to us.
So, if they say, "Yeah, things have been pretty bad lately,"
you would mirror that by saying, "Pretty bad lately?",
and now you're encouraging them to continue on.
Mirroring is basically taking the last few words
of what they last said and turning it into a question.
And now, what you're going to do
is you're going to encourage them to continue going,
you're showing that you've listened to them,
you're really closely listening,
and you're prompting them to keep going.
What this will do is it'll slowly disarm them
and it will get them talking.
Number five, don't argue, ever.
It is never a good move to get into
an argument with a customer or a prospect.
You will never win because they don't need you
and you really want to get into an effective conversation,
so arguing is simply going to cause them
to react and actually hold their ground even more.
Instead, take a deep breath and use more
of a tai chi approach where you want to use their energy
and take it in the direction you want.
So, don't get into an argument.
Instead, acknowledge what they're saying and dig deeper.
Get them talking, ask questions, mirror their language,
get them going, and what naturally happens
is they eventually start to run out
of that steam where they're really pushing back hard
and they start talking to you like a normal human being.
If you ever find yourself in an argument,
you're in a bad place.
Instead, slow it down, get them talking,
and acknowledge that what they're saying is valuable
and you want to understand more.
Number six, get them talking.
I know I've already said this a few times
but it cannot be emphasized enough.
When you're dealing with a difficult customer,
most of the time they just want to express themselves.
They just want to get it out there.
Just think about the last time you called an airline
or some kind of a customer service number
and you were furious, you were just absolutely heated.
If the person on the other end of the phone
just listens to you and allows you to talk
and basically vent, after about 30 seconds of venting
usually what happens is you're like,
(breathing in and out)
"Oh, okay, all right, I feel better,
like I got that off my chest."
We want to use active listening to get them talking.
The more a difficult customer is talking,
the better off your are.
If you find that you're doing a lot of the talking,
you're in trouble, because they're a difficult customer.
They don't care what you have to say.
They don't want to hear from you.
They want to talk and that's fine.
Slow it down, get them talking, mirror their language,
ask them questions, understand what's going on,
and the more you can get them going,
the more likely they are to lower
that angry tone or that difficult tone
and start talking to you like a person,
and then you can start to engage them back and forth
in a real conversation.
So, there is how to deal with difficult customers in sales.
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