Bridging the Gap Between Buyer and Seller: The Adversarial Sales Complex

What do you think is the number one motivation behind human behavior? Believe it or not, it’s the avoidance of pain. I know, it sounds a little disheartening. But it’s just a natural part of our survival instinct. Your sales will be improved by understanding this important bit of information.

Think about how people react to a price increase on their favorite product VS. a price decrease. Which reaction is more extreme? 

You may offer an optimal solution, the lowest pricing, and the best service, but if you don’t understand how your customer is feeling during the sales process, you’ll never cross the finish line to a signed contract. 

How does the customer feel?

Trust isn’t established overnight, it’s build over many incremental steps. Opening the door to these micro-opportunities hinges on a basic set of questions. Do they like you, will they remember you, and do they even want to do business with you?

If you don’t like your job right now, your customer can probably feel it. The good news is that making your job more manageable, more enjoyable, also helps create a Feel-Good experience for your customers. This atmosphere affects your closing rate, and then you’ve got yourself a positive cascading effect.

Most MSP sales training and coaching programs ignore this entirely. The issue is part of what I refer to as the “Adversarial Sales Complex.”

The Adversarial Sales Complex

Imagine a typical scenario where a buyer has a specific pain or problem they are trying to resolve. We, as the seller, believe we have the answer. Our product or service can solve their problem.

What often happens first is that we assume what they need, and launch into our proactive sales pitch and start down a road that I call “offensive selling”. It’s exactly what it sounds like, we go on the offense. We start telling the prospect all about what we have and what we can do for them, and the buyer responds instinctively. They go on the defense.

This behavior has been ingrained in their psyche through countless buying cycles and having to defend themselves from aggressive salespeople over and over again.

It’s at this time you start to hear things like;

“No thanks, I’m just looking.” or “I’m still researching.”

You’ll notice some of the common actions. They become elusive, evasive and they may stop engaging with you. They may also get defensive and start grilling you with questions, ask for proof of qualification, cost justification, etc.

And to what end? Often nothing. We’ve all wasted our time. Their problem remains (so they leave, in pain) and we don’t help anyone fix their issue and we definitely don’t close the deal.

Remember who the hero is

This mindset of fighting to convince a doubtful prospect has us asking the wrong questions, using the wrong language, and treating our buyers more like opponents than allies.

You might not even realize that you're doing it. Things like interrupting, assuming things about them, pushing your solution upon them. It’s an unfortunate cycle out there. But cycles can be broken.

Imagine what would happen if we could allow the buyer to be the hero of the story and experience solving their biggest problem on their own. The only way we can do this, and change their behavior is by changing our own behavior as the seller during the sales process.

When all of our language and strategy support the buyer experience, then everyone is more inclined to engage. To bring down this barrier of the adversarial sales complex, we must make changed to our language, our methodology, and all of the scripts, messaging and templates you may have been using up until now.

Best of all, you will generate leads consistently while building meaningful connections and differentiating yourself from other MSPs in the increasingly competitive space of delivering managed IT services.

Learn actionable steps you can take to take down buyer defensiveness in one of our upcoming sales strategy workshops, and pivot away from the adversarial sales complex.