How to Help Your Salespeople Handle Disappointment
Dealing with Damage Control
Salespeople often feel at a loss when faced with disappointed, upset or angry clients. As an example, a relationship manager in banking dealing with a client whose investments have “soured” in the current economic climate.
What happens?
As a result of these situations, salespeople in general tend to stiffen and panic either on the phone or face to face. This state effectively shuts down the thinking processes and they find themselves lost for words. Just when the client is looking for calm understanding and reassurance, salespeople send signals of discomfort.
Suggestions
You want to enable your salespeople to feel confident about dealing with disappointed clients so that their demeanour is appropriate for the situation.
You want to equip your salespeople with the skills to respond to challenging situations so that clients feel confident about continuing to do business with your company.
Both of these aims work together: by knowing how to respond appropriately to clients, your salespeople will feel more confident and present a calmer, more professional demeanour; and by feeling more confident, they will automatically send the right signals to clients thus reassuring them about your company.
How to Implement the Suggestions
In order to build the confidence, the salespeople need to:
Build confidence in themselves by managing beliefs about:
Themselves (the salespeople) – how they see themselves is critical in achieving confidence.
Their clients – how the RM’s perceive their clients, especially during a downturn when clients are feeling negative towards their suppliers or advisors, also affects their level of confidence.
How salspeople’s clients perceive them – the salespeople’s beliefs about how their clients perceive themselves determines how confident the salespeople feel.
Deal effectively with disappointed clients by:
Responding to negative emotions in a client through pacing and leading. Pacing is done by showing your client that you accept and validate their emotion by mirroring them. Leading is the practice of gradually changing one’s energy level and behaviour such as slowing speech, speaking more softly and changing posture and body language.
Listening for understanding followed by listening to decide if you want to do anything about what you’ve heard. If action is required, a series of questions will be necessary.
Taking responsibility and moving ahead to solve the client’s problem(s). This includes the necessary empowerment and confidence to make the client feel comfortable.
Overall Results
The results below will occur if you take the above actions.
Clients will experience being handled professionally and appropriately during challenging times
Clients will feel sincerely listened to, understood and their emotions and disappointments acknowledged and taken seriously by your company and the salespeople
Salespeople will have a greater sense of empowerment and will therefore gain satisfaction from increasing their capabilities in challenging situations
Your company or financial institution will retain more clients and will receive positive word-of-mouth
Your company or financial institution will stand out in the marketplace for having salespeople who are highly professional
For more information see building and fostering client relationships.
For more blogs on a similar subject matter see relationship management.
James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore
Tags: Banking, Communication Skills, People Skills, Relationship Management, Sales
