Avoiding Systemically High Resistance to Buy

There are some buyers with a systemically high resistance to what you sell. No matter how great your offering, they aren’t going to buy. Spending time with companies that have a high resistance to what you sell is a recipe for failure. You produce results by focusing on buyers with systemically low resistance to what you sell.

They Don’t Need What You Sell

A company has the worst kind of systemically high resistance when they don’t buy what you sell. These companies don’t want, don’t need, or can’t use what you sell. There resistance is chronic.

Sometimes new salespeople get frustrated by the fact that their very best prospective clients, their dream clients, already have strategic partners. They come up with something like this: “Hey, everybody already has a partner. Why don’t we try selling to people that aren’t already using what we sell?” In their minds, they are eliminating one of the biggest forces of systemic resistance to buying: relationships. But in reality, they are replacing one form of systemic resistance with an even greater one: no need.

Salespeople that choose to call on prospects that don’t buy what they sell don’t make their number. Think of this way: Even if you obtained all of the business from all of the companies that don’t use what you sell in your territory, you still wouldn’t have a single order.

Unless you are selling something new, something with no existing market, you are better off selling to known buyers than you are selling to prospects with this form resistance to a sale.

They Don’t Value What You Sell

You have prospects that spend a lot of money in your category. They buy a lot of what you sell, and from all appearances, they look like your dream client. But they still have a systemically high resistance to buy from you because they don’t value what you sell.

If I were to ask you to sit down with a piece of paper and write down the list of the dream clients that you could win if they were willing to pay a higher price, you could easily rattle off the names. These prospective clients don’t value what you sell. If the value that you create isn’t what they value most, and in this case they value a lower price more than the value you create, then the resistance to a sales it high.

But don’t be confused, there aren’t as many of these prospects as you might imagine. Most of your prospects are willing to pay more if you can prove the value. The prospects I am pointing at here only buy the lowest price. You know the ones I mean.

You kind find this resistance selling products too. There are some companies that don’t value having the newest equipment or tools, regardless of the value that they create, and believe instead that they need something that is just good enough. Even though these prospects can afford what you sell, they don’t value the benefits new technologies will bring them.

You will produce better results selling to your dream client, the clients for whom you can do breath-taking, jaw-dropping, earth shattering results that will pay for the value that you create.

They Have Deep Relationships

Deep relationships are a form of systemic resistance to buying. But this is the only category of systemically high resistance to buy that you must absolutely ignore!

Your dream clients have deep relationships. They have strategic partnerships in place. If you are ever going to win your dream clients, you must ignore this form of systemic resistance. This means that you nurture relationships. You create value without claiming any. You make yourself known, and you make yourself known for your ideas. You chip away at this resistance, working to create some opportunity.