In your heart of hearts, you know you’re right. You have all the facts. You have the perfect solution to a customer’s need. You know the customer’s wrong, but you can’t say that. So what do you say? How do you convince the customer, without being argumentative or insulting? To compound things, how should you deal with a customer who believes that it is “his way or the highway?” What do you say to a defensive and argumentative customer?

To learn how to handle this situation, Selling Power interviewed Bill Tebbenhoff, branch sales manager for Canon Business Solutions (a Canon USA Company) in Arlington, VA, and Irene Hulse, an inside sales representative for Kinsey’s Archery Products in Mt. Joy, PA.

Remember the old saying: A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.

“The premise that I always operate on is that customers have certain opinions, and if you try to change those opinions against their will, they will be resentful,” says Tebbenhoff.

Tebbenhoff works toward finding common ground with customers, where they mutually agree, and moves on from that point toward more yeses.

“Approach it as if you are a partner, and that customers are always right, even though they may not always be completely right,” says Tebbenhoff. “If you can get the customer to say yes often enough, chances are good that the opinion change will remain unchanged once you leave.”

Tebbenhoff points out that the process of selling copiers may appear simple on the surface, but it’s actually a fairly entailed transaction because of multiple needs and products. The sale can be made even more complicated if a customer has a firm conviction on a particular issue and an attitude about it.

“Rather than attacking an opinion and an attitude head-on, we skirt around it and concentrate on having a meaningful conversation, touch every objection and try to add value,” says Tebbenhoff.

“We chip away at the wrong opinion. Our objective is not to blatantly show customers that they’re wrong, but to get them to the point where they see it for themselves,” says Tebbenhoff.

Hulse advocates letting a disgruntled or opposite-opinion customer vent before trying to defuse a situation or change an opinion. “Be quiet and let the customer vent,” says Hulse. “Once they’re done getting everything off their chest and telling you what they think, you can respond with a low level of emotion. Figure out what the customer really wants or needs.”

Once a customer vents, both Hulse and Tebbenhoff agree that salespeople, whether it’s on the telephone or in person, need to ask questions to find out what is really going on with the customer and carefully listen to the responses…with empathy. “If you’ve done a good job about covering all the other issues, you can go back and ask them questions as to why their opinion is what it is, how it was formed and what are their proof sources,” says Tebbenhoff.

“The validity of the proof sources adds a lot of credibility to the data that you receive from them. It’s important to find out where the customer received the information that affected his opinion,” says Tebbenhoff. “If a customer says Xerox is the best, it could be from the legacy or from how the Xerox salesperson presented the products. So we need to tell them that Xerox used to have the number-one market share but now Canon does,”says Tebbenhoff.

“Salespeople need to ask questions to find out what the real issue is and concentrate on listening to the answers,” says Hulse. “It’s especially important in telephone sales, because you don’t have the ability to judge body language.”

“Listening is a hard thing to do because most people listen for what they want to hear and when they hear it, they stop listening and can’t wait to respond,” adds Tebbenhoff.

Peer and Competitive Testimonials

Tebbenhoff utilizes testimonials and instances where other business owners and Canon users disagree with the customer’s opinion. “Talk to a disagreeing customer about the people in their world that have different opinions, whether they are peers or competitors,” says Tebbenhoff. “Let them know that while their opinion may be true, there are other people who have found value in a different way. That’s not to disagree with them that they’re wrong, just to make them aware that there is more than one right opinion.”

The Power of Knowledge

“Empower the customer with your knowledge,” advises Hulse. “The more you know about what you’re selling, the more confidence and respect the customer has for your opinion and advice. Trust can sway and affect the way they think.”

How to Handle a Problem Child

If you have a continuously disagreeable or argumentative customer on your hands, you need to find out why. Once again, that means asking questions and listening to responses…with empathy.

“With a customer who has a track record of being difficult and argumentative, it’s up to the salesperson to problem solve,” points out Hulse. “That may mean stepping back from a specific situation to evaluate the overall relationship objectively, including your personal actions.

“The problem may be that you just can’t click with a customer on a personal level. Maybe he’s just argumentative by nature. Maybe there are pressures on the customer that you’re not aware of,” says Hulse. “You need to ask questions to find out why his behavior is what it is and figure out a way to smooth the path.”

“The best salespeople are empathetic and can relate to a customer’s concerns and understand that the world is full of different personalities with different goals,” says Tebbenhoff. “Be earnestly and sincerely interested in people and keep in mind winning over customers for life.”