Selling without Anxiety, Fear or Worry!

Zig Ziglar once said that logic makes people think, but emotions make people act. To get a customer to take positive actions, we need to master every single emotional challenge we encounter on the way to the close.

Negative emotions are the toughest obstacles to selling. While some customers get anxious when they aren’t in complete control of the sales call, other customers fear meeting high-pressure salespeople and others worry endlessly about making the right decision. While positive emotions lead people to act positively, negative emotions are more powerful than the most brilliant logic and will inevitably lead people to act against their own best interests.

Extensive psychological research shows that feelings of anxiety, fear or worry are the key reasons why prospects put off purchasing decisions and why salespeople don’t like making cold calls. Worried salespeople tend to be less productive, have lower incomes and they are never completely happy with their jobs. Very few salespeople receive professional training in how to master the emotional problems involved with selling. To prove this point, find out just how many of the following questions you can answer with an enthusiastic "yes."

1. When your customer begins to get anxious, are you able to calm him down quickly?
Yes No

2. When you sense that anxiety is affecting your presentation are you able to regain your composure in a matter of seconds?
Yes No

3. Are you always able to turn your customer’s fears into confidence?
Yes No

4. Do you easily master your own fears of making cold calls?
Yes No

5. When your customer begins to worry about a purchase, can you "push the right buttons" to lead the sale to the close?
Yes No

6. When you become aware that you worry about situations that you are powerless to change, can you turn off the mental discomfort in a matter of minutes?
Yes No

7. When you lose a sale because of an unexpected and unmanageable obstacle, can you easily prevent emotional spill-over to the next call?
Yes No

8. When your boss is anxious, fearful or worried, are you able to make your sales calls without anxiety, fear or worry?
Yes No

In this article, you will learn effective techniques for handling all of the above emotional challenges and more. During the past ten years a number of psychological studies suggested that most of us tend to be fearful when meeting new people. Just as prospects are apprehensive about meeting new salespeople, many salespeople are fearful about meeting new prospects. Other studies indicate that 80 percent of all people worry about money. While our customers worry about losing money, salespeople worry about not making money. One of the most widespread fears is the fear of the unknown. For example, some customers will get skittish when they are unable to get a guaranteed delivery date and other customers get panicky when a product line is discontinued. Some salespeople become fearful when a prospect says "I need to think this over," and many salespeople fear losing business when their regular contact person gets promoted.

Buying and selling are emotionally stressful activities. Fear, anxiety and worry are uncomfortable, yet manageable roadblocks to selling. Many times these roadblocks are created by the customer, and many more times than we care to admit, these roadblocks are self-generated. If these emotions are not recognized early or if they are left unmanaged, they can easily destroy our chances for sales success.

Feelings of anxiety, fear or worry don’t go away with age, money, higher positions or more prestige. Modern psychology tells us that complete freedom of anxiety, fear or worry is not only impossible, but also unproductive. Although some Hollywood movies lead us to believe that heroes are always cool, calm and collected under fire, extensive research of very successful people indicates that a healthy dose of these emotions is necessary for achieving top performance.

In fact, Superachievers habitually turn their anxieties, fears and worries into positive energy. For example, Tom Peters, one of America’s highest paid speakers, still worries about every speech before addressing an audience. A few minutes prior to giving his speech, he reviews his handwritten outline with intense concentration. This process allows him to block out all anxious thoughts and turn his worries into a highly energized presentation. David Kearns, Chairman of Xerox, admits to worry about the possibility of losing millions of dollars " even though the company is highly profitable. Kearns knows that his worries keep his senses sharp (not clouded) and make him monitor the financial signals of the 17.6 billion dollar corporation with special care and diligence. Ed McMahon, a former Marine pilot, grew from an unknown actor, filled with fears of rejection, into a ultra-successful superstar. Although he has never outgrown all his fears, he learned to transform his fears into productive energy.

How To Read Signals Of Anxiety In Customers

According to modern psychology, feelings of anxiety are produced by our thoughts. Anxious thoughts can appear at any moment of our lives, and float freely into our stream of consciousness. We don’t need an external cue for these thoughts to appear. They may relate to our past, present or future. These thoughts can drop in like rain from a leaky roof and we never know when or where they are going to hit next.

Feelings of anxiety reduce our customer’s ability to think clearly and they make communication more difficult. Here is how to recognize the common signals that communicate feelings of anxiety.

1. Anxious Speech Patterns:

Anxious customers speak with a soft voice. Their speech patterns are hesitant and cautious. They tend to use many qualifying and words like "maybe," "perhaps," "sometimes" or "I guess." They express vague, incomplete and sometimes disjointed ideas or notions. When a customer starts a sentence and his voice trails off, you can tell that anxious thoughts are interfering with his speech. Long pauses are often used to conceal anxiety.

2. Nonverbal Expressions Of Anxiety:

Scan your customer’s face, hands and legs throughout your sales call so you can recognize the presence of anxious thoughts early.

Anxious customers tend to swallow before they speak. Sometimes they get so preoccupied that they don’t notice that their hands are trembling. When people experience anxiety, they often try to reassure and calm themselves with self-touching gestures like wringing their hands or touching their cheeks (or their forehead) with the palms of their hands. Other subtle signals of anxiety are foot jiggling, fidgeting with objects like paperclips, a toothpick or a pencil. Chain smoking is another common anxiety signal.

3. Mental Detours Provoked By Anxiety:

Feelings of anxiety often lead customers to jump from one subject to another. As their anxiety increases, they become incapable of focusing their thoughts on any one idea. In some instances, anxiety can end the sales call abruptly, without explanation.

Some customers use mental detours as an attempt to find comfort by changing the subject. When your customer displays an unusual interest in a "red herring" issue, you’ll know that he or she is avoiding a discussion about a critical subject.

4. Anxiety Induced Behavior:

When customers experience feelings of anxiety, the most common behavioral response is withdrawal and retreat. They quickly shift from an open minded behavior to an overly defensive posture. Anxious customers are often reluctant to discuss their feelings and tend to mask them or conceal them with clever ploys. They may use little white lies or embellish stories to make their avoidance behavior look more acceptable. People who suffer from chronic anxiety tend to get colds more often. They tend to be preoccupied with their anxious feelings, trying to fortify themselves with the help of over the counter pills, excessive TV watching, alcohol or even drugs. It’s not surprising that customers who experience anxiety often "pass the buck" and let someone else make the buying decision.

How To Recognize Fearful Customers

While anxious thought patterns are non-specific, hard to pinpoint and unpredictable, thoughts that generate fear are very specific, easy to identify and easily predictable. Fear is the result of feelings of impending disaster created by catastrophic thought patterns that put our emotions on a roller coaster ride.

Fearful customers are afraid of what is immediately in front of them. Fear renders them incapable of concentrating on the issues at hand. Here is how fear is signaled through speech, body language, and behavior.

1. Fearful Speech Patterns:

Customers who experience fear suddenly drop their tone of voice. Often their voices begin to crack, they speak quietly and their speech becomes hesitant. Sometimes fear immobilizes people to the point that their mouths becomes so dry that they are unable to speak.

2. The Body Language Of Fear:

Fearful customers show nonverbal signals like shallow breathing, wide and open eyes, self-bracing gestures like clenched fists, gripping their armrest or breaking a pencil. Nervous pacing, pale skin, sweating or rapidly scanning eye movements are typical signs of fear.

3. Mental Detours Generated By Fear:

Fear often leads customers to leave the scene. However, when they walk out of a room, they often recover quickly. As a self- protective measure, fearful people tend to stay away from fear inducing situations.

4. The Behavior Of Fearful Customers:

Fearful customers often flee the situation using socially acceptable excuses like remembering an important phone call, having to go to the bathroom, suddenly remembering an urgent meeting, having an impulsive urge to give instructions to their secretaries, etc. Some fearful customers tend to take tranquilizers before a fearful situation such as giving a speech or negotiating a big contract, or flying on an airplane. Fearful customers will also conveniently "forget" appointments or double-book them with salespeople so that they will only be able to spend a few minutes with you.

How To Determine If Your

Customer Is Worried

Worry is a feeling of discomfort created by unsettling and repetitive thought patterns. It’s as if our thoughts were flying a figure eight pattern, endlessly repeating the same turns and twists.

Worried customers eagerly express their thoughts and tend to believe that everyone must think the same way. Often they become so obsessed with their thoughts that they are almost incapable of paying attention to your presentation or to any new ideas.

1. Speech Patterns Of The Worried Customer:

Worried customers often voice the same concerns over and over. They bring up their object of worry (like the high price) at every turn of your presentation. They sound like broken records.

2. The Body Language Of Worry:

Customers express feelings of worry through nonverbal signals such as nail biting, frequent sighs, slumped shoulders, frowned forehead, head scratching, nervous coughing or rapid eye blinking. They often display nervous tics, grimaces or facial spasms. Worried customers may also repetitively rub the edge of the table or the arm rest of a chair.

3. Mental Detours Generated By Worry:

Worry leads customers to voice their concerns persistently and repetitively.

4. The Behavior Of Worried Customers:

The predominant behavior displayed by worried customers is avoidance of the situation they worry about. They avoid making decisions, avoid returning phone calls or avoid showing up for scheduled meetings. While some customers openly talk about their worries for hours, others carefully conceal them and refuse to speak about their real concerns. Worried customers may also draft a long, written list of their worries.

How To Respond To Customers Who Are Anxious, Fearful, or Worried

To ease a customer’s discomfort produced by anxiety, fear or worry is a very demanding challenge. It is important to quickly shift gears and consciously adopt a mental attitude of unconditional acceptance of whatever thought, feeling or behavior your customer is expressing. Temporarily suspend your preoccupation with advancing your sale and slip into the role of a patient, understanding, compassionate yet unshakeable friend.

The key word is to employ empathy instead of sympathy. Empathy means that you understand and accept your customer’s feelings of discomfort. However, you mentally separate yourself from your customer and refuse to feel like him. Sympathy means that you allow yourself to think and feel like your customer to the point that you experience the same feelings of anxiety, worry or fear.

The worst possible scenario would be to have your own negative feelings augment your customer’s difficulties.

Your best strategy is twofold: first, calm down your customer to the point where he or she is capable of communicating clear thoughts, and second, lead the discussion back to the sale.

Seven Ways To Calm Your Customer’s Anxiety, Fear or Worry

1. Speak in calming, reassuring tones. Lower your voice, slow down the rate of speech, speak softly and deliberately. Your voice should communicate quiet confidence.

2. Consciously relax your body. Your customer needs to be with someone who is able to radiate soothing, calming and reassuring signals. Allow your customer more personal space. If your customer is sitting or standing within the reach of your arms, you need to back up slowly. Avoid frowning, don’t imitate your customer’s jittery body language. Positively accent your words with frequent smiles and slow head nods. Slow down or eliminate your hand gestures. Keep your hands relaxed and your palms open. Avoid self-touching gestures, slow down the frequency of your eye-blinking. Close your lids slightly as if you felt a little tired.

3. If necessary, change the environment. Lead your customer into a quiet area, or a private conference room. Direct your customer to a chair facing a more quiet scene. Let him or her look at a beautiful picture or the view out of your window. Don’t have his chair face a wall clock, a busy office scene or a busy hallway. If necessary, reschedule your meeting or plan your next meeting in a quiet restaurant or a country club to further relax your customer.

4. If your customer is showing signals of anxiety, help him focus on one simple, reassuring thought or a calming image like, "I have an idea that will make you feel a lot more confident with this plan …" or "I have good news for you that will put your mind at ease…" or "Let me share a comforting thought with you…"

5. If your customer displays symptoms of fear, you can ease her discomfort by diverting her attention away from the discomfort with statements like, "You’ll be pleased to know that there are many different alternatives. Have you ever considered…?" (introduce new idea) "Why don’t we discuss this subject over lunch?" or "I don’t know about you, but I’m running low on energy and I feel it would be more comfortable to talk about what seems to be a big deal over a healthy meal."

6. If your customer continually shares his worries with you, you can break his repetitive thought patterns with ideas like, "I am glad you brought this to my attention and you will be pleased to know that we’ll take immediate action on this concern of yours because we want you to feel completely secure and confident about this project."

7. Anxious, fearful and worried customers respond well to reassuring words like, "We are in harmony on this point…," "I think I can put your mind at ease," or "Here is one way to make you feel more comfortable." Choose words like "certain," "safe," "sure," "quiet," "satisfied," "content," "agreeable," "acceptable" and "normal." Avoid talking about money, timetables or decisions. Avoid any closing pressure. When you hear objections, always welcome them with, "I am glad you brought that up, you will be pleased to know that…"

14 Techniques For Selling Anxious, Fearful Or Worried Customers

After your customer has calmed down:

1. Isolate the customer’s major fears. Start with friendly understanding, questions. After each answer, respond reassuringly and show sincere concern. Don’t say: "There is nothing to worry about!"

2. Assure your clients that other customers have expressed similar emotions prior to buying from you. Explain that their concerns were taken care of in a completely satisfactory manner.

3. Help your clients focus on one or two particularly strong and reassuring benefits. These will serve as anchors of stability you can always return to.

4. Reassure them of your ethical standards, your personal values and your total commitment to customer satisfaction. Cite statistics about the stability of your company, the number of employees you employ, how long you have been in business, your membership in the Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau, and your participation in local civic and charity events. Show the anxious or worried customer that you are a trusted and respected member of the community and you will reduce his or her fears.

5. Talk about your satisfied customers. Provide a detailed list of clients he or she can call to check out your claims. Offer to have a few of your existing customers call the anxious or worried prospect at his convenience. Share "success stories" that relate to his or her industry. Show references from executives in the highest positions. Prospects who are worried or fearful know how difficult it is to get company presidents or members of the Board of Directors to provide an endorsement.

6. Allow your customer to express his or her fear or worry. (Don’t use this technique with the anxious prospect.) Ask, "It seems that you are concerned about something. May I ask what that is?" Or, "I get the impression that there is something else on your mind. It there something that you are not completely comfortable with?" To successfully deal with fearful or worried customers, you must flush out their hidden objections. Don’t make the mistake of guessing what their concerns are " go ahead and ask. If you ask your questions in a friendly and polite manner, they will open up and share their deepest concerns with you. Once you know what they are, you can deal successfully with them and move on to complete the sale.

7. Offer to meet with the worried, fearful or anxious customer at another place or time. If you are dealing with a sensitive subject or if there is a lack of privacy, you might suggest in a quiet part of the company cafeteria, or at a nearby coffee shop. A worried or fearful client may have a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" personality. He may be fearful in his office because the boss may come in at any moment, or because there is so much work hanging over his head. However, in another environment " such as a country club " such customers can fully relax and show their more confident personalities. By taking them to a more comfortable environment, your odds for sales success can go way up.

8. Many fearful or worried customers are overly concerned about the opinions of other people. If they were making the decision only for themselves, they wouldn’t be ill at ease. To address this concern, ask early in the sale, "Is there anyone else involved in making this decision?" When you find out that there is, say, "I’d be happy to speak with … There are many details involved in this purchase and I don’t expect you to memorize all of them. If would be my pleasure to do the job for you. Should I call them, or would you prefer to set up the meeting?"

9. If you suspect that you might be the main cause for your customer’s anxiety, fear or worry, you need to address the issue. You may be perceived as too young, too old, too experienced, too inexperienced, too technical, too new in the industry, etc. If you think that any of these is a factor, ask, "Is there someone else from our company that you would like to talk with to put your mind at ease about this situation?" Or say more directly, "There is a question that I have been meaning to ask you for a long time. (Pause) Is there anything about me that prevents you from feeling confident about this purchase?"

10. One of the most powerful techniques you can use is the role reversal. Ask the customer to assume your role for a moment. This technique works on the theory that customers frequently know the answer to their own worries, fears and anxieties. They simply need to be prompted to reveal that answer. Ask your customer, "Imagine for a moment that we switched chairs. How would you handle this situation if you were in my position? What would you do?" The very fact that you are asking her opinion is flattering to her. It captures her imagination, she can think about herself and you show that you respect her and that you are willing to listen. Frequently customers will give you a fair and creative solution to their own problems right on the spot. They often come up with compromises that you would have never thought of.

11. Sales superstars often use a strategy called "Let’s find the exception." Here is how it works. Let’s say that your customer is worried about the price. Help him find the exception by asking, "Has there ever been a time when something like this was approved when there was such a major price difference?" Your customer might say, "Well…once, a few years ago, the vendor set up a longer payment schedule so that we could afford it." The sales superstar replies, "Great! Can you tell me about how you managed to do that?" This question will lead your customer to look at the old roadmap to the company’s treasure chest. Once you find out who approved the exception, when, why and under what circumstances, you only need to point out why you and the customer are facing the exact same situation today.

12. A tested way to deal with your worried customer is called "confrontation." When you hear your customer repeat the same old worried question, say, "It seems that we have dealt with this issue several times before. What do we need to do to put this issue to rest?" Then be quiet. Use the power of silence. Later, remind your customer of all your other happy clients. After the successful confrontation, congratulate the customer for successfully breaking through the worry barrier!

13. Show your anxious, fearful and worried customers your warranty and service policy. Invest extra time to highlight each item in detail. Tell them success stories of how your company has stood behind every single customer, large or small, day and night, summer or winter.

14. Step down from your high horse and apologize politely by saying, "I’m sorry. I can see that you are a little uneasy about this. I apologize, I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I know everything. I guess I got a little too excited about my presentation. How can I ever earn your trust and confidence?"

This "one-down" posture will make you appear very vulnerable, human and caring. It can lead to a very dramatic improvement of your customer’s feelings. Your job is to help the customer. If that includes letting your customer help you, then you’ll be working much smarter as a sales professional and a human being.

Editor’s note:

In a future issue, PSP you will find the second part of this article, Selling Without Anxiety, Fear or Worry, which will contain a review of the most effective techniques that salespeople can use to achieve superior emotional fitness. You will learn how to turn the negative energies of anxiety, fear or worry into more productive energies that increase your success, your income and your level of happiness.