Fighting The Scary Monster In Sales

When it comes to most objections you face in a sales environment, I have found that more often than not, they stem from people being afraid of change. Change is hard! Most people dread any change. This is probably why moving is considered one of the most stressful things that someone can do. Plus, we have a tendency to be risk-averse. We may dread the potential downside associated with change much more so than we might be excited about the potential benefits of change. This often leads people to a state of inertia where they wind up doing nothing.

As it pertains to change, it is really important to ask the dumb questions to force the other individual to come to terms with objective reality – and not just whatever their emotions are telling them to feel. Many of us grew up thinking there was a monster in our closet or hiding under our bed. It was a completely irrational thing to feel, but we felt it. And yet, the proverbial monster in the closet was never real. The same is often true with objections.

This is why I tell salespeople to figure out with your buyer whether or not the Scary Monster is real. By all means, if the Scary Monster is real, we should talk about it. Specifically, we should talk about how Scary the monster is and how likely it is to actually wreak the full potential of its havoc on our lives. We should weigh that against the benefits and the chance of achieving those benefits. Together, we can make a calculated decision. And that decision very well may be that the Scary Monster is just too scary.

But if the Scary Monster is not real, then we as salespeople owe it to our clients to help them see and feel that as well. As I said before, buyers are emotional. They fear change. Specifically, they fear this potentially “worst-case scenario” that they think could occur. We need to figure out whether that fear is grounded in reality or if the buyer just fears the unknowns associated with change.

In my current role, I sell what is called an ICHRA. It is a health benefits model that allows employers to set a defined budget for their employees to select whatever healthcare plan they would like. It is often a cost-saver for companies and it expands the flexibility of options for their employees. The number one most common hurdle we run up against is not the 50+ competitors we have in our space. It is actually just plain old inertia. And the reason we run up against inertia is because of everyone’s favorite corporate jargon, “Change Management.”

Change Management can mean a lot of things. A common refrain within the realm of Change Management is some sort of fear around employees not understanding how the new benefit paradigm would work. With that in mind, we should walk through how to handle that.

To set the stage for that, let’s talk about the old Ashton Kutcher movie “Dude, Where’s My Car?” You’re probably wondering where this is going, and I don’t blame you…but bear with me for a second. There is a famous scene in the movie where Ashton Kutcher’s character is ordering Chinese food through a drive-through and the restaurateur keeps saying “…and then?” to prompt him to keep ordering more food. He obliges initially, but eventually gets very frustrated and starts yelling, “No ‘and then’!”

Think of “ordering more food” as analogous to your customer “telling you more.” We want the customer to tell us more about their fear. This is the only way for them to figure out whether or not the fear is real. And it is a lot more impactful for the customer to realize on their own that their fear is irrational, much more so than you telling them not to be scared. After all, you’re the sales weasel. The idea is best-suited to be adopted if it is their idea, not your idea.

Back to my scenario around Change Management and the employees being confused. Determining if the Scary Monster is real might look something like this:

“I’m worried that my employees won’t understand how this works.”

“Ok. And then what?”

“Well, they might get frustrated in the first few days trying to figure it out.”

“Makes sense. So then what?”

“Well, I suppose that might become stressful for me, too, because they will have a lot of questions for me.”

“Got it. So then what?”

“I guess Open Enrollment is only a week or two, so it would be a stressful one or two weeks while we get everything sorted out.”

“Yeah, it probably would be. So then what would happen?”

“I guess we would get people squared away after that.”

“And then?”

“And then we would realize the benefits of making the change.”

Now, I recognize that not all conversations go this swimmingly. But you get the point. It’s not as if the employees are going to get so frustrated that they will riot and then quit the company. After all, have there never been any changes within the organization that were initially stressful for employees that ultimately ended up being just fine? Of course there have been. Companies change things all the time, and people adapt. Certainly no vendor worth their salt is going to just let the employees get so frustrated that they would riot and quit the company. That vendor would have no business being in business, and probably would not be able to demonstrate their ability to support the employees.

Now, of course the opposite can also be true during this whole Scary Monster/”And then” exercise. It can absolutely be the case that you will uncover a Scary Monster. And if you do uncover a Scary Monster, it is absolutely not your job to then obfuscate it from your customer and tell them that the Scary Monster isn’t real. Here’s a pretty easy example:

“We’re worried that employees would have a hard time with the change.”

“And then what?”

“Well, the reason we are thinking of moving off our current ICHRA vendor is because they missed getting half of the employees enrolled. Those employees told us in a survey that if they ever had a hiccup with their coverage again, they would leave and go elsewhere.”

That’s a Scary Monster. 

Now, let’s keep in mind that just because the Scary Monster exists does not necessarily mean that the Scary Monster is going to hurt you. In the hypothetical scenario I listed above, we know there are real stakes involved with making the change. However, it does not mean that the client should not move forward in making the switch. All it means is that they need to be shown that the transition will go smoothly. They need to have enough confidence in that transition working out that the potential downside risk of half their employee pool churning is worth it.

By finding the Scary Monster, we know how to defeat it. The conversation now shifts to the transition plan and working together to get one that makes sense for everybody involved. It may very well be the case that the client is destined to stay with their poor incumbent vendor by sheer force. In that scenario, we need to let it be the outcome. Sometimes the Scary Monster will win.