I LOVE Mexican Food! (along with almost every other type of food). Last week my family and I went out to one of our favorite Mexican Restaurants for dinner. We ordered some of our usual appetizers and as at almost every Mexican Restaurant, the chips and salsa came to the table. I grabbed a chip and loaded it with what I expected to be the “usual” salsa and popped it into my mouth. As you have more than likely guessed, it wasn’t the “usual” salsa. This salsa was like putting a red hot branding iron in my mouth. It took me a glass of water and about 3 minutes before I could even talk.
While I was going through this feast of fire, my daughter casually took a chip, loaded it with as much if not a little more of the inferno mixture, and popped it into her mouth. I sat there watching her (unable to even scream out a warning) as she chewed the chip and with no sign of spontaneous combustion grabbed another chip and dipped it into the salsa again.
I thought to myself.. Well never mind what I thought to myself, I just watched in amazement. Here I was having a salsa meltdown and my daughter was enjoying the salsa as if it were nothing more than a veggie dip. How could this be?
Don’t you just love my lead in’s?
Out in the sales field, when I worked with rep calling on customers, I would see some reps hear an objection and totally melt down. Another rep would hear the exact same objection and in a snap get by it and onto another subject. How can this be?
It is simple, each of us has our own level of tolerance towards what is said to us. Some reps can take the heat and some can’t. How you work under pressure will many times make the difference between success and failure with a customer.
Unlike the salsa, which is a physical pain, a rep that gets flustered by an objection can help themselves by doing a few basic exercises.
One thing you can do is to write down every objection you have ever heard. This may take awhile for some more seasoned reps but it is a great exercise to eliminate the unexpected. The reason a rep gets flustered is because they are put in a situation they have never been in before. The surprise of hearing something that is new and unfriendly can cause you to freeze up and not have an answer. By writing down every objection you have heard and every objection you can think of, you should not hear anything new again and be able to better handle the situation next time.
Another good exercise is to record the objections so you can hear them. Record them as if you were the customer. Use the same voice inflection, tone, and emotion as you think a customer would use. By hearing them as a customer would say them you will not be sensitive to all the circumstances attached to the objection.
My last suggestion is to record your response to the objections. To do this properly I suggest that you dress as if you were in the field. If you wear a suit put it on, if you are in jeans and a tee shirt put it on. Stand in front of a full length mirror and tape all the objections to the mirror so you can read them. One by one say the objection out loud as you did in the last exercise so you sound like the customer, turn your voice recorder on and answer the objection like you would in front of the customer. When you are done play the recording back and listen to what you sound like. Be looking in the mirror as you listen to your reply and go through all the motions you did as you were saying it making sure that your body and face were telling the same story as your words. A step up from this is to video record yourself and watch yourself as you actually responded looking for all the same things, body language, facial expressions, and voice modulation.
After doing these 3 things a few times (the more the better) you will get a comfort zone established around objections and no longer freeze up, or melt down, when objections are thrown at you.
To finish the salsa story, I asked the waiter if this was the usual salsa we have there. He told us that they had hired a new cook and this was the salsa that he made. He told us they had gotten a lot of comments about it, some liking the heat and some not liking it. Gee, doesn’t that sound like reps? Some love the challenge of the sale and handling the objections and some don’t. The waiter said he uses Ghost Chili’s in the salsa along with the usual Jalapeno’s. I did a Google search for Scoville Units, I found that a Jalapeno Pepper has a rating of between 2,500 and 8,000 Scoville Units, a Ghost Chili has a rating of between 855,000 to 1,075,000 Scoville Units.
I now know my tolerances, what are yours?
Lorin
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