You ask any salesperson; sales objections are always going to happen. No matter what it is you are trying to sell, the chances of you hearing an objection from your potential customer are very high.
You see, every buyer and consumer (this includes you) is always going to have some doubts about what you are trying to sell – it is human nature. We have been told time and time again to question things, and to not jump at every opportunity that comes our way. Which to a degree is where the majority of objections come from.
The trick with objections from prospects is to never take them as gospel. Every objection you are ever going to hear as a business owner or sales person has a way to overcome it; the key is to never walk away the second you hear an objection. Empathy and understanding plays a big part in any form of objection handling as it is during this phase of the sales process that your job as a sales person are really tested; especially if you are tying to maintain a long-term relationship with the prospect.
Over the years, I have heard plenty of objections and if I had to list them all down this article would go on for 27 pages at least. What I would like to do however is share with you five of the most common objections I have heard, and also ways in which they can be overcome.
If you or your team hear objections different to these, and would like to know some ways in which to overcome them, please do get in touch.
“It is just too expensive, or, your price is too high.”
Price objections are always going to come into play when selling anything, and there is two ways at looking at this.
There is a chance you have not qualified the prospect well enough to understand if they can afford your products or services, and potentially do not have the budget for you. Even if this is the case, it is still best to question this to see if the objection is genuine or not.
Secondly, (and the most common if you have presented the prices during a long prospecting and qualification phase), there is a chance that your prospect does not understand the value in what they will be getting from you.
If this is the case, go back and review it all with your prospect, and ask open questions about the value they would be looking to receive and reiterate the value they would be getting with your proposal.
“Can you just send me the information and I will come back to you if interested?”
Let’s not beat around the bush; if you are hearing this objection then there is a high chance your prospect is just being polite and can’t find it in their heart to tell you they are not interested.
The key here is to go ahead with the prospects wishes, but you also want to ensure that you get to the bottom as to what they want, how to send it to them, and ask for relevant timescales and thoughts on when they can put time aside for the information and for you. This then gives key hints as to who is being polite, and who is genuinely busy.
“What stands you out from the others?”
No matter your industry or what you are selling, it is very rare that you have an absolutely unique product or service. And beyond that, it is rare that your prospect has not heard similar proposals from your competitors, so you cannot blame them for asking you why you are different.
In this situation, I recommend you don’t get into any battles about why you are better, or why your competition is worse; it quickly becomes a battle of tit-for-tat that no customer ever wants to hear. Instead, turn this into your advantage. Simply by saying a sentence such as: “Of course, I don’t blame you for wanting to know what stands us apart from the rest, and I would love to share those with you. Why don’t we book in for a meeting on Thursday and I can go through our ways of working with you?”
“We already have someone for that…”
Once again, this is another key objection you are always going to hear. Once again, it is crucial you do not start bad-talking your competitors or whom they use already; let’s face it, your prospect made that buying decision once and if you attack that, you are attacking their decision.
Instead, delve a little deeper and ask nice open questions to uncover pain points and see what your solution can do to solve those problems. For example, questions such as: “Oh fantastic, how long have you used those for? Are you tied into any contracts with them? Is there anything you wish their product or service could do better?”
Once you have uncovered some of these pain points, it gives you a chance to go back in to sell!
“Let’s put it on the back-burner…”
Or, “this isn’t really a priority of ours right now.”
This objection always hurts; especially after you have spent time developing a relationship with the prospect, presenting and following up with your prospect. However, the likelihood is that you have not created enough urgency, or hurry, for the prospect to be ushered into a decision.
Once again, remain calm and empathetic. The last thing you want to do at this stage is destroy the business relationship. Instead, ask questions to gain clarity, and gently remind your prospect as to why they were looking at this option with you in the first place. For example: “Of course, I fully understand that. Just for my understanding, when do you think you would be looking at it again? Also, when we first spoke you mentioned you needed to save money/time/improve productivity etc; are you happy to neglect those points over that timescale?”
As mentioned earlier, there are always going to be plenty of objections you and your team are going to hear and I would love to work with you on those to see how we can overcome them, and close more sales! Get in touch if you feel you would like to learn more about my objection handling techniques.
