Sales Skills

Objections

Listen for what is meant, not what is said.

Any excuse or apparent reason a customer gives you for not going any further is called an Objection.

This is a technical sales term whose history goes back a long time. I have a book called `How to Overcome Objections in Selling’ first published in 1954: although some of its examples are a bit dated, the main message is as valid today as it ever was…never take an objection at face value – always test it to see what’s behind it.

The funny thing is that most objections come up because the customer hasn’t understood something, and that can only be one person’s responsibility – yours.

When you get an Objection it’s usually your own fault. Either because the customer hasn’t understood something, or because you have mentioned a Feature they aren’t interested in.

Take the most common one – price. A customer might say to you, “It’s too    expensive”. Instead of getting into a slapstick exchange of  “No it isn’t”, “Oh yes it is”, “Oh no it isn’t”, just take a step back and think; `what hasn’t this customer understood?’` Obviously a major point they haven’t seen is where the value for money in your proposal is. So you can’t have really found out what they want and how your solution fits.

Or it could be that you haven’t discovered what the budget is, or how much they typically invest in this sort of thing.

Often, Objections come from Features which you have suggested to your customer, either in your brochures, or during your face to face meetings.

“Of course we have a worldwide service capability”

“But I don’t need that level of service, you sound too big for me”

“Naturally we’re ISO 9000 approved”

“So it’ll take ages to get anything out of you I suppose”

Clearly these holes are of the self-digging variety; you have only yourself to blame if you find yourself in one. If you do, then remember the golden rule: STOP DIGGING.

Never argue with or contradict the customer.There’s an old saying in selling folklore: win the argument – lose the sale.

You’re not in pantomime, so conversations of the “You never deliver on time” – “Oh yes we do” variety aren’t much use to you or the customer.

Nor is it any good justifying to the customer why you’re too expensive, you’ll just confirm it to them, and at the same time turn them off because they’ve lost the argument.

Always test the Objection to see what’s behind it. Until you do this you can only assume what the real reason is, and to ASSUME makes an ASS of U and ME.

You test by using your Open Questions.

Take the Price Objection which comes in many forms, one of which is “Your price is too high”.

The danger of not testing this one is that you will assume you are in a negotiation and start to discount or trade. Actually the customer probably hasn’t reached this stage yet, so not only do you give away margin unnecessarily, but also you STILL haven’t found out what’s really worrying the customer.

Once you’ve probed it a couple of times and there’s definitely nothing lurking behind it then you can safely go into the negotiation phase with your conscience clear.

Get the customer to answer their own objection.

This is the golden rule, firmly rooted in the psychology of selling. If YOU explain something to the customer they might not believe you, but if THEY come up with the explanation themselves they’ll definitely accept it. And you do this by feeding the question back to the customer to get them to think it through.

This technique does several things:

• it takes the pressure off you
• the customer persuades themself
• the customer gets what they want
• you stay in control

As in all your face-to-face interactions it’s the way you say things that matters, even more so when you’re feeding objections back to the customer. You must avoid seeming evasive or cheeky.