Overcoming objections and resistance

When you're talking to prospective business associates, what are the most common objections you get and how do you overcome them?

Does it sound as if I’ve suddenly turned into a 1950’s used car salesman? Relax: the question above is ironic!

“Objections” are something caused by the person eliciting them from the respondent, and I would never try to “overcome” any reservations or observations someone might have, when I’m showing them my business opportunity: I don't get “objections” at all, and my potential business associates don't say anything that I have to “overcome”. These terms don't begin to describe anything I do, would be willing to do, or would be willing to teach others to do. They are part of the techniques that rightly and understandably (albeit very unfortunately for the rest of us) contribute toward to our whole industry's shady reputation.

Objections are actually caused by the person talking/presenting to a prospective associate, if they proceed manipulatively, from a perspective of leading the conversation oppressively, by trying to “close a sale”. These old-fashioned, heavy-handed, disrespectful, manipulative sales tactics, brilliantly discussed and explained in Jacques Werth's High Probability Selling, of which the first chapters can be read online free of charge, have absolutely no place in modern network marketing at all. The way we talk to people, present our business opportunity to them and answer their questions does not give rise to any “objections” either; nor do we wish to “overcome” anything people say.

I would not be comfortable at all  looking at this process in those terms - and I don't think it's just being semantic or pedantic, either: I think that the terms in which you look at it (and the words you use to describe it and to think about it) are very significant indeed to the outcome and especially to the duplication of your work. People who see themselves as needing to overcome objections are going to have some real difficulties in our line of business.

If you show your business opportunity only to people who are already looking for a business opportunity (and people who don’t do that are often among the majority who drop out of our “industry”), you’ll normally find that they know what you’re talking about - at least to some extent - before you talk, and if they don't like it they would have declined or disqualified themselves already (if not, it’s an indication that your screening process, whether it’s online or offline, isn’t doing its job and you might want to re-think it).

This isn’t really about having lots of experience, or being good at it: even a new distributor can easily do this after only a modicum of tuition.

If you encounter “resistance”, you’re talking to the wrong people.

These points don’t really relate to our skill-level or experience-level at talking to prospective associates at all: it’s something even more fundamental than that.

Nor do people have resistance because they’re unfamiliar with network marketing. They may have misunderstandings about what it is (which ought to have been dealt with by your screening materials, before you even speak to them). Don’t forget that newcomers to network marketing are traditionally the ones who do best. They’re not full of sales-orientated perceptions and they don't know enough to give themselves these problems of “objections” and “resistance”.

Resistance is something you cause yourself when you try to impose something on someone, to manipulate someone, to dominate the conversation by steering them toward a certain conclusion. For successful network marketers, that isn't what network marketing is about at all. I don’t encounter resistance because I'm not imposing anything on anyone for them to resist. The newer people are to this process, and the less they know about it (apart from perhaps the occasional person from a professional sales background, and they don't do nearly so well in MLM anyway, in my experience), the less likely they are to be able to have problems with this.

I didn't ever try to “close sales” because I knew right from the start that that skill would never be duplicable anyway, even in the extremely unlikely event of my being both able and willing to do it myself. So I never acquired the behavioural patterns that produce resistance in people. These things, “objections” and “resistance”, are really encountered only by people trying to persuade others who were not already interested in a business opportunity to become interested in a business opportunity. And that’s inevitably the path to disappointment, frustration and disillusionment.

What’s needed is to develop the appropriate lead-generation skills so that you're talking only to people who've already decided that they need a home business. Once you do that, you'll rarely encounter objections or resistance again. Your opportunity may not be the right one for everyone, of course, but when that's so for someone, you don't want them anyway because they'll use up your time and effort and never produce income for you. You can only ever lose by trying to persuade people.

Talking with the right people turns the process from persuasion into informing. Informing doesn't cause objections or resistance. This is an almost overwhelming concept. Once you really get it, and drop the manipulative persuading thinking and the language that inevitably accompanies it, it changes your life and your business forever, and in a really good way. And it duplicates well, too, because there are far more people around who can learn to inform people than people who can learn to travel back in time to the 1950's and sell used cars!