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: