Objections & Buying Signals...How to Empathetically Engage your Prospects
What is Business Development?
Top 25 ways to handle objections?
Bonus tip from FBI negotiator.
Sales = Always Be Closing = ABC
Business Development = Always Be Caring
Top FBI negotiators aren't what you may think.
They don't memorize 25 responses to extract info.
Top negotiators, like Chris Voss, are highly skilled Empaths.
Empaths have exceptional cognitive ability to comprehend emotions.
WARNING: Don't confuse Empathy with Sympathy, they're different.
Empaths identify physical and emotional Intent Signals.
Top Business Developers are extremely skilled empaths.
They observe and respond to prospect intent signals.
Intent signals are negative or positive.
Intent signals help Business Developers navigate the Nurture Intent Cycles of Engagement (NICE) process we use with our prospect's during the Activation Phase of their journey.
1. Negative Intent Signals = Objections
You can try to memorize 25 responses to objections...if you want to sound like a robot or an actor.
If you want to respond like an empathetic human, see the slides for how to identify objections and engage empathetically.
Objections may indicate a prospect is not “qualified” to become a customer. This means the prospect may lack a common purpose...your product won't get them to where they want to go or they lack the resources to achieve that purpose.
Prospects with the clear intent and resources to achieve that purpose are called Qualified.
Prospects that have not yet been qualified are often called “Suspects.”
Your ultimate goal is to nurture Qualified prosect's to Declare Intent.
Pursuit of Unqualified prospects is a waste of resources.
2. Positive Intent Signals = Buying Signals
Buying signals may be obvious, or subtle.
See slides for some ways to identify buying signals.
Failure to detect buying signals may expend unnecessary time and resources for both the prospector and the prospect.
Such engagement friction may also damage or diminish the prospect’s brand trust if the prospect interprets the prospector’s inability to detect buying signals as a lack of empathy.
The objective of prospecting is to serve as an empathetic advocate enabling the prospect to declare intent.
The sales cliché of “Always Be Closing (ABC) is pushy during Activation Phase. Once the prospect Declares Intent to buy, hand-off to the Sales pros to convert them into a customer.
Be human, be empathetic, be a Business Development Professional...
Empathetically build true trust toward a mutual purpose.
BD = Purpose + Empathy + Truth = Trust
Tony Gray, BDP
Author of the Business Development Body of Knowledge