This is the magic line to think of constantly. Sometimes you’ll meet people who have strong opinions. They don’t seem to want to budge on them, and will often “fight” to keep their beliefs intact. Trying to change a person’s belief is nearly impossible. In fact, it’s probably the last thing you should attempt to do in my opinion. But what I’m talking about here is the fact that when you meet people, they are going to have objections about you or what you’re trying to do.
If you’re selling something, they will have objections. If you’re trying to seduce them, they will object with excuses. If you need your kid to clean their room, they will obviously object, or have “hidden objections” they don’t point out. So it only makes sense that you utilize this tool of getting the person to “switch” their focus on something better than their previous objections.
For example, when I sold vacuum cleaners door to door, they were loud. VERY LOUD. Not only that, they were clunky, and little bit heavy. Well, the first thing I would do is point out these objections before they did. I would tell them flat out “Now you may have noticed that this vacuum is a little heavy clunky and loud, but that’s because the motor we use is industrial sized so that there isn’t a spec of dust that can resist its sucking power.”
I’d continue….
“So as you think about all those things, let me show you the better side of this vacuum cleaner because its positive aspects you’ll soon clearly see far outweigh the negative. Here’s how…
How many salesman have “snake-oiled” you in the past? …You bought their product, take it home, and it falls apart or has several flaws you didn’t notice before but notice now. How did you feel about the salesman afterward? Like you want to do business with them again?
This is the mistake most salesmen make: They fail to point out the objections of their product BEFORE the customer does, and often times will painfully lose the sale as a result. If you’re trying to persuade someone into doing something, you need to get all the objections out of the way as soon as possible. That way, at or near the end of your presentation, the person cannot possibly object because you’ve already pointed them all out!
Now, if you don’t have a good product or service and there are too many objections, consider selling something else. And what happens when you point out the objections? Won’t the person dislike it faster? Won’t they get turned off right away? No… Because after the negatives are out of the way, you then begin to talk about all the positive aspects of the whatever it is that you’re talking about. Then, the negatives will be a thing of the past.
For example:
I know a man who doesn’t think very highly of his own looks. Other people will tell you that he isn’t a very attractive guy — rather “geeky” if you will. But this guy meets and seduces women all the time. And I’m not talking about “average looking” women, I’m talking but drop dead gorgeous ones. Upon discovering this, I asked him how he did it. And he said to me “When I meet a woman, I simply tell them things like I know I’m not the best looking guy in the world, but if you can allow yourself to get past that, there’s a who world of pleasure and satisfaction I can give you from the ugly person you see on the outside because inside, I’m drop dead gorgeous.” And he actually has fun doing it! He loves to criticize himself. Why?
Because it magically turns another person’s mind around to switch to argue the opposite view of the view they might have once had. You see, nobody wants to be recognized as a bad person.
If you said something like “I know, everyone says I drive an ugly car. I know you probably think you wouldn’t in a million years ever date a guy who drives a car like this because you think he’s a weird guy just because of this car etc..” more often than not, the woman/person will say “No way. I wouldn’t think that of you!” This is pretty straight forward skill, isn’t it?
The trick is to determine before or while you’re communicating with them what the other person might have an objection towards. Then, YOU be on the one to raise the objections first! Now just think of a time in the future and ask: how better would your conversations go as a result of applying this strategy?