How do you (or your sales team) handle difficult prospects and buyers who do not want to share information? Because that never happens... right?
Do you just try to plow through it, or just ignore it?
The elephant in the room strategy.
You can say, "Normally at this point in the conversation, Mr. Buyer, things start to click and people start to share information with me. I didn't feel like that's happening here. Is it something that I said or did that's made you uncomfortable?"
Or you could even try the alternative. When someone says, "That's not information that I can share with you." My response is usually, "Can't or won't?" And I leave it at that and I let them explain.
If it comes down to the point where the person starts to become combative, because maybe once in a while that'll happen, that's when I typically will say, "Would you prefer to talk to someone else or should we end the call here and maybe schedule it later or not at all?"
Get a feel for their mood from the start
I like to try and actually get a jump on these kinds of things. That's why typically, if I start a call, I don't start with the, "How are you today?"
I start with something a little bit different:
- How are you feeling today?
- How is your Monday going?
- How was the commute into work?
I want to try to get a sense of where is their head at. What is their mindset currently? Are they in a good mood, or are they in negative mood and that's going to make this all that much more difficult?
Have empathy and be sensitive to way that people are responding to you, and call it out, in a tactful way.
