There are three areas to overcoming resistance – knowing when an objection has been raised, knowing how to deliver your response, and knowing what specifically to say in your response. Remember that your audience is hip to the game – they can sometimes predict your rebuttal even before you have a chance to deliver it. Therefore, you overlook this tremendous opportunity to explain to them that they are indeed right – they should brush off nearly every other recruiter who calls – but that you are different. If you are saying the same thing that all other recruiters are saying, you will miss this incredible opportunity to set yourself apart.
In her years of training in both the US and Internationally, Helene Buchanan-Dunne has fine-tuned the five steps to structure the conversation that will allow you to uncover the real resistance. She shares those five steps in this video clip.
Before you create scripts for responding to resistance, review this clip packed with a dozen insights to more effectively handle resistance throughout the call.
In this clip from the NLE Foundation Training Program, the critical element of timing is discussed as a methodology to getting more “yes’s” than “no’s.
Recruiting trainer and expert Doug Beabout shares his top tips for empathizing, relating, and expanding the knowledge base of a prospective candidate when encountering any form of recruiting resistance.
If you are a rookie, practice is key. We can essentially predict the objections that you are going to hear on a daily basis. It’s like getting the opportunity to look at the test before you take the final exam – be as prepared as possible to avoid failing.
Veterans, why not refresh the tired old rebuttals that you have used since starting? Take the time to perfect your craft. Think about it – have you ever been delivering your same old rebuttal – the one that you have been using for 10 years – and still thinking, “I bet there’s a better way to overcome this – I really should sit down sometime and re-script.”
If you read any sales books or articles, they will all give you different statistics as to how many times you should expect to hear “no” in an initial sales call. They will also tell you that the majority of recruiters stop after the first couple of “no’s” and that only a handful of recruiters capture the majority of the business that exists. Why does this matter? Because if we believe that we should hear a bunch of “no’s” all day long, you’ll actually convince yourself that you are having a typical day. So we go through the motions – we work the ratios – just hoping that we are statistically that much closer to a “yes”. But have you ever thought about the fact that some recruiters just get less “no’s” than other recruiters? That is because of their confident delivery, differentiating content, and unique rebuttals. They actually set themselves up for fewer “no’s” in the first place.
Let’s break down each of the three areas to overcoming resistance – knowing the art of overcoming an objection, knowing when to deliver your response, and knowing what specifically to say in your response. The better you are at each of these areas, the less “no’s” you will encounter overall.
AREA #1: Knowing the Art
The following steps cannot be universally applied to every single objection you will ever encounter – but they can give you a process to remember with the majority of objections.
Listen and pause before you respond to an objection. This will avoid the tendency to start your response with “yeah, but…” – which is in no way indicative of you actually reflecting on what was just said. Pause for a moment, process what was actually said, and give yourself a moment to select the most appropriate course of action.
Acknowledge the candidate’s concern. The easiest way to do this? Simply repeat what they just said back to them. What typically happens when you do this? They will either expand on their initial concern, or they will hear their words repeated back and change their original stance on the subject. Either way, you have done nothing in the form of a rebuttal other than repeat their own words back to them.
Clarify the objection raised. This is often a common oversight that ends with the delivery of a perfect rebuttal – to the wrong concern. The candidate says “I would never make a lateral move” and you spend the next two minutes covering how “sometimes, when you add up bonus, stock, vehicle allowance, and other parts of the compensation package, what appears to be a lateral compensation move is not actually a lateral move at all.” What the candidate actually meant? “I don’t want to go somewhere else and do the exact same thing I’m doing here.” Not only have you lost the interest of the candidate, they probably won’t have the heart to tell you that you were off track. The easiest way to clarify an objection is to ask “why”, or “tell me more about that”, or “interesting – it sounds like _________ is important to you – can you elaborate?” If you don’t take the time to clarify the concern, it is impossible to form an accurate response.
Empathize with the candidate – once you understand what specific objection is being raised. The easiest way to do this is to share how you, another candidate, or another client have felt the same way or found themselves in a similar situation – with a positive outcome. People like to know that they are like other people – so share a story that shows you can relate to their concerns.
Seek Agreement to find common ground on all or part of the issue to begin aligning your position with that of the individual. Remember to provide a solution that provides a benefit to the candidate – not to you. So often recruiters continue to talk about how much they want to work with you, or how great they are, without giving a solution that actually provides a benefit to that candidate or client. Sell the benefit and close with a question to prompt further discussion on the subject or related subjects.
Following these five steps will not always end with a positive result or perfect outcome, but it will produce invaluable information that can be used in future contacts with the candidate or client. It also lets you know where you stand in the sales process.
AREA #2: Knowing When
Time is on your side when it comes to overcoming objections – it’s just up to you to discern how to use it. You have four options when it comes to timing; with experience, you have a better understanding of what works when.
Answering Immediately
There are some initial objections where if you hesitate, you lose the call. These are typically objections in the opening dialogue of the call. For example, things like “I cannot talk right now” or “I’m walking into a meeting” or other knee-jerk reactions that are thrown out in the first minute of the call must be answered immediately. If you take time to pause, empathize, and clarify, your audience may hang up on you. In these cases, we must be on our “A-game” and fully prepared to deliver our scripted rebuttal with no filler words or stuttering. The key with these types of resistance is that your response be both confident and succinct. Answering immediately is typically the best approach in the first opening moments of the call – but anything further in the call can be handled with a little more creativity.
Answering Later
This is our most creative approach and one that can yield the best results; some concerns simply require more information to be gathered first before a response can be given. Remember that this isn’t about winning an argument, but about understanding and advising your candidate. When faced with an objection, empathize and then put it on the back burner, all while continuing to ask a series of open-ended questions; the goal with these questions is to gather enough information to be able to circle back in the call and present a more sophisticated recommendation. An example could be, “I’m not interested in a lateral move in my career progression.” Instead of quickly responding with “but this is a smaller corporate environment where titles don’t mean much and at my client a project manager actually performs at a level of an executive project manager,” this approach would instead have you acknowledge their position and move on to further conversation. Answering later would allow you to acknowledge their position, and then ask questions revolving around what their current role entails, what their responsibilities are, who they manage, what types of projects they have the opportunity to work on, what would be the next step up for them in their current organization, how often those roles are available, and so on.
Once you have answers to these questions, you can customize your response with something similar to “I understand the importance of career progression and wanting to move up in your career – not back. Based on what you shared with me, it sounds like the opportunities to advance at your current company are frequent, but limited due to the size of the company. Although you are working on good projects, the experience you need is hard to come by there because of the number of your peers working at the same level. The opportunity I’m inviting you to consider, although the same title, will expose you to a greater number and variety of projects as well as give you less internal competition as you move up the ladder. Are you open to discussing further, if in fact this would possibly allow you to advance your career at a much greater pace than your current situation provides?” Because we’ve customized our response to their specific situation, you’ll find you have a much higher receptivity with continuing the conversation.
Answering Before
There are times when addressing a known concern and operating from a point of full disclosure will allow you to maintain control of the conversation and discussion points. Openly talking about the elephant in the room will avoid skirting the true issue at hand. For example, if you know that a prevailing concern is that your client has recently had tremendous press around several recent layoffs, you can bring this into the open before the objection is raised. Support the facts with insights as to why those layoffs had occurred, or perhaps details regarding their restructuring to focus in their core and most profitable areas, or that their percentage of decrease could have possibly been smaller than the industry average percentage of decrease. If you bring these points up first, it can diffuse an objection as well as put you in a position of being an industry expert.
Ignoring a concern
Lastly, it is sometimes best to simply ignore an objection – especially if you recognize it as being nothing more than a smokescreen. Imagine you spilled coffee on your pants and had to buy a new pair at lunch. You walk into the store and the salesperson asks, “Can I help you find anything today?” More than likely, your conditioned response is “No thanks – I’m just looking!” We don’t know enough yet to trust this salesperson, their sense of style, their ability to be honest in their opinion, or trying to sell me the most expensive items. It’s no different than some initial objections that you face as a recruiter – recognize those that are conditioned responses and simply ignore them. If they surface multiple times, there may be some credibility – but more than likely not.
