If you avoid being defensive and ask a client to be transparent, you may get intel that holds enormous value to you and your organization.
Salespeople are primed to hear bad news. Ours, after all, is a profession full of rejection. Yet there's often good news mixed in with the bad—but only if we're willing to listen.
We are often given advice about what to do after a rejection comes. How to not let it affect the rest of our day, week, or month, and how to not let it affect the most important factor of all, our confidence, for the next time we need to try to persuade a prospect or customer.
What, though, can salespeople learn during that rejection? Is it possible there's a lesson in the moment?
I'd say yes—absolutely yes. Not only that, I'd say there's potentially a lesson that can all but reshape a career.
Here's how: Just for a moment, consider the life of the person who has to deliver the bad news. Instead of being on the receiving end of a comment like, "We decided to move in a different direction," imagine being the person who has to say it.
Being rejected doesn't feel good, of course. But neither does having to reject someone. Customers don't want to deliver bad news any more than salespeople want to hear it. So how can we turn a loss into something resembling a win? By reframing the entire experience.
Most customers hate delivering bad news because of the expected response. It's encoded in our brains: you push me, I push back. Customers expect the pushback. They expect a salesperson to get defensive, to try to save the sale by solving the problem. Instead, try not giving them what they're expecting.
If they say they're going in a different direction, refrain from trying to solve the problem. Instead, thank them. Thank them for being transparent. Tell them that quality means a lot to you. Tell them you imagine that if they decided to go with someone else, they likely had very good reasons to do so. Then ask them, as long as they're being transparent, to share those reasons—intel that likely holds enormous value to you and your organization.
You can then watch or listen in real time as their demeanor changes. They'll likely relax. They'll seem relieved. They'll probably even do what you asked them to do, namely sharing their honest rationale.
Instead of bracing for the worst, instead of being put on the defensive, you've allowed that decision maker to avoid the negative outcome they thought was coming—to not feel bad about delivering bad news. And to actually feel the opposite: that they're likely helping you by telling the truth. And honestly, they are.
For starters, you'll learn something new that could be applied to future opportunities. In addition, though you may not have made this customer a repeat customer, there's a likelihood you made them a referral customer. A decision maker who, for one reason or another, didn't buy from you, but enjoyed the experience you created and feel comfortable suggesting that others consider buying from you.
How you’re prepared to react to a decision determines what you do next. If you're primed to hear bad news and then receive something that sounds like it, you're not likely to respond in a positive way. You're likely to confirm the customer's likely instinct: that they should flinch when they convey a rejection.
But when you prime yourself to hear something good even when bad news is delivered, you reframe the dialogue. Not just your own response but, more importantly, your customer's, too. You reset their behavior by not behaving the way they've come to expect.
The best part of this shift in mindset? It can happen at any point in your career. It's simply a matter of what you want to hear.
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December 14, 2023 at 11:48PM
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Listen Closely — And Hear The Good In The Bad News - Forbes
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