In my role in sales, just like anyone else, I love interacting and working with clients who are easy to convince about an idea, or our proposal, or the ones who trust us probably because of their past experience of working with us
While on a sales call yesterday, I came across a client who was completely the opposite of this – extremely hard to convince of any of the ideas we were pitching, constantly challenging us and even sometimes questioning our credibility.
However, when we got the go-ahead from this client, it was a lot more gratifying for some reason. If I reflect on this, a couple of things we did on the call that helped in managing and winning this “tough client”:
- Being Flexible: Not being rigid about the pitch or the plan we had in mind. Being open to concerns that were raised, ideas from the client and even we were ready with a plan B in case there was a big objection raised by them about our proposed plan.
- Having a point of view: “I would strongly recommend this”, ‘”In my opinion, this would work very well”, and “I can assure you from my experience that this is a great plan”. Using these reassuring, confident phases mostly helps us in winning their confidence.
Is there something you do to manage these clients better?
