Take a few minutes and write down every stall and objection you’ve had in the last few years of selling. Think back to prospects and situations. Replay those tapes in your head. Is there a common thread to your list? Is it shorter than you thought? Longer? The reality is that most stalls and objections are the same ones that you heard last year and the year before, which means you’re doing nothing to resolve the issue in the first place. Otherwise, it wouldn’t keep coming up.
A stall, in general, stops momentum. If an airplane “stalls,” the wings actually stop flying. Stalling an airplane close to the ground will cause it to crash. To prevent airplane stalls and crashes, pilots are trained to deliberately create them, they then practice recovery as part of their flight training. In the instance of the student pilot, he or she will point the plane high in the sky and hold the stick back until there’s no longer enough speed to keep the wings flying. The plane starts “buffeting” as air is displaced, and eventually, the nose drops down towards the ground. The beauty of the airplane stall is that it is entirely predictable and preventable. When the plane “buffets,” the pilot merely lowers the nose or increases engine power and the stall is avoided. Simple!
So why don’t we apply this same concept to our sales situations?
We know from creating our list of stalls and objections that they’re predictable. And if they’re predictable, how can we prevent them? By simply incorporating steps into our sales process that address head-on the prospect’s issues/concerns related to the typical stall and objection. If we know that a prospect is going to say something like, “We’re going to explore doing this ourselves,” then we had better be discussing what’s involved with the do-it-yourself process. What kind of expertise is required? We need to help the prospect understand the kinds of pitfalls companies face when they elect to do it themselves well before they make that decision.
Spend some time thinking about how you can prevent/work around the typical stalls and objections you face in sales. If you can’t figure it out, get with someone who has and enlist their help.
