In mid-October 2021, three colleagues and I were asked to carry out a special project to improve the sales skills of the newest group of sales agents at the organization I worked for at the time. These agents had been hired just prior to the industry’s large annual sales push, sent through a truncated, “just the basics” version of our new-hire sales training program, and thrown onto the phones to make sales during our busiest time of the year. Our mission was to listen to their sales calls and coach them on effective sales techniques in a sort of on-the-job surrogate for the outstanding new hire training curriculum most of our agents experienced.

Allow me to set the stage for what I observed:

In most industries, marketing for products and services is centered around best-case scenarios. Consider the “15 minutes could save you 15% or more” marketing ploy a well-known and adorable talking reptile is famous for. Those savings are certainly possible as long as you meet an array of different qualifying criteria, but for many, the savings will be considerably less to non-existent. The point is that the possibility of “15% or more” is attractive and possible enough to induce people to call. For a marketer, this is the goal — make the phones ring. The problem for sales agents is that this type of marketing causes customers to be laser-focused on that one issue with a singular solution, ignoring other factors that may be more important in the overall scheme of things, such as the quality of the company’s customer service, product performance, availability of features and other discounts, etc. Thus, customers call in and confront the sales agent with this single demand, and if the agent is unable to meet or otherwise quell that demand in a satisfactory way, the sale is easily lost.

One of the common trends I noticed as I listened to our agents’ sales calls was directly related to the type of marketing described above. Sales agents were being lured into an unfavorable sales dynamic by not knowing how to handle a customer’s laser-focus on a single, non-universal feature or aspect of their product or service. I call this “reactive selling.” Not only were they abandoning their established sales process in an effort to answer the customers demand or concern, but they were allowing the success or failure of the sales transaction to hinge upon their ability to meet a demand for one of the less-important (albeit flashy) aspects of their product.

I coached my sales agents to view themselves as tour guides and their established sales process is the journey they are taking the customer on. I trained them not to allow a customer who thinks they understand the route to hijack that journey with their own agenda. This is akin to a jungle boat captain who knows the safe route through the jungle, but allows one of the tourists to take control and steer the ship down a side channel of the river and over a waterfall. As a salesperson, you are the expert on your product or service and it is sales malpractice to abdicate control of that transaction.

The key to maintaining control and overcoming this type of situation is to reframe the customer’s concern into a broader, categorical one with multiple solutions. If they call about the 0% financing offer they heard advertised, don’t immediately jump to explain that it is only available to customers with top-tier credit. Instead, assure the customer you understand what they are looking for and say something like, “It sounds like you are looking to get the most value for your dollar, am I right?” (get them saying ‘yes’). Then explain that as an experienced sales agent with x number of years in the industry, you work tirelessly to get your customers the most value for their money, and ensure them you will do the same for them. After you do this, continue right where you left off with your established sales process and close the deal. The fact is, they may not qualify for interest-free financing, but you can doubtless give them more value for their money in multiple other ways that can save the sale.

Not only does this technique broaden your portfolio of available, acceptable solutions, but most importantly, it allows your sales process to continue moving forward. Instead of the customer hearing up front that they most likely won’t qualify for what they were looking for, causing them to hang up or walk away, you are reassuring them that you are on their side and building trust. Then, at the end of the transaction, when you find out for sure that they don’t qualify for the exact feature they were looking for, you can say, “but I was able to add value in these other ways” and potentially save the sale.

To summarize, the steps of this method are as follows:

1. Ensure the customer you understand what they are looking for and that you can help them
2. Reframe the concern into a broader, categorical one with multiple solutions.
3. Ensure the customer that you are on their side and that you will do everything in your power to meet that broader concern.
4. Continue where you left off in your normal, established sales process.

Done correctly, this technique breaks the customer’s fixation on that single feature, and broadens their view. I suggest making a list of the most common concerns you receive (usually the advertising inducements from your marketing) and coming up with one or two potential ways to reframe each into broader, categorical concerns with multiple solutions. Roleplay these with a colleague or friend. Roleplaying is vital here because it can help you identify potential weaknesses in your strategies.

Successfully reframing customer concerns, objections, and hesitations, can dramatically increase your sales results. It won’t save every sale, but it has been magical in my own sales career and in those of salespeople I have managed. Happy selling!

How has reframing been successful for you? Tell us in the comments below.