How to handle difficult buyers
Overcoming defensive and impatient prospects
As salespeople we’ve all run into difficult buyers at some point. They tend to come in one of two types:
Defensive buyers — who are tight-lipped about providing information.
Impatient buyers — who just want to see the product or even just get pricing.
The keys to handling these two types are to understand the root cause of their behavior and have a set of techniques to help them open up.
Getting a defensive buyer to open up
The root cause of defensiveness is fear. Fear of saying something that the salesperson will use against them, fear of disclosing information, fear of making a mistake. Buyers usually get defensive when they don’t understand the buying process or if they’ve had a prior bad experience with a salesperson, leading them to think all salespeople are sharks.
Some proven techniques to overcome this: