Objections to salespeople are like a woman’s desires to men… 99% of us have no idea what to do!
Luckily, there are some basics that every salesperson can learn that will help them better serve their customers and close more deals! And I’m going to attempt to shed some light on this oh-so-elusive skill of handling objections…
What Objections Are
Every sales guru and their mother seems to have “the best way to handle any objection”. Now I’m not knocking anybody, because there are actually many different ways to handle objections!
What you need to do is find a way to handle objections that flows with your personality, ethics and that doesn’t make the person objecting get defensive or feel pressured.
With that said, most “objections” that you hear are meaningless complaints, and should not even be handled or entertained, simply acknowledged and bypassed. Everything the buyer says should first be treated as a complaint or a comment.
Now this seems like a great time to explain what exactly an objections is…
To put it simply, and objection is born out of uncertainty. If everything was perfect, there would be no reason to object to anything, right? So something is missing here…
If you could afford the product, if you did have your partner here to give their approval, if this was actually the right product, if all of these things were lined up then there would be zero hesitation!
As a sales professional, your job is to do a few things when it comes to objections:
- Make it okay for the prospect to object (this is vital)
- Find the one true objection (there is always only one)
- Find a way for the prospect to move forward
When you break this business of handling objection down into this simple idea, you can get pretty creative with how exactly you handle objections!
But if you’re like I was and are currently in a state of “don’t know what I don’t know”, then I’m going to provide a formula and a set of ideas that you can use to start handling objections and staying in more deals!
The General Structure
I’m not going to beat around the bush, here is the exact formula that you can use when handling any objection that is hanging your deal up…
Agree & Acknowledge: I totally get it that __objection__!
Isolate: Is that the only reason you couldn’t move forward?
Verify: That wouldn’t actually stop you from buying, would it?
Close or Probe:
- Why is that?
- When you say that, what do you mean?
Hypothetical: If we could get that handled, could you make a decision today?
You got that? This is how you can verify that you have a real objection, isolate down to the one true objection, and then you can move into handling that objection and closing the deal!
Now let’s break down each of these steps so you can understand the overall idea and start coming up with your own word tracks…
Agree & Acknowledge
You can’t get agreement by disagreeing. Unfortunately, this is how most people attempt to handle objections, and really just people in general. They would rather be right than close a deal. It’s crazy!
The idea of starting with agreement is relieving the pressure that the buyer is feeling when they say No. It may seem silly, but this is a critical step because what you’re really doing with this step is handling their emotions first.
People feel all kinds of emotions when they expect confrontation, so your goal here is to not make them feel any type of confrontation at all. You’re not fighting them, you’re actually going to use the weight of their objection against them to close the deal!
The second part of this step is acknowledging their objection. This is really just repeating back what they just said to show them that you’re listening to them, because you are!
If they say “I can’t afford that”, you would agree & acknowledge by saying “I totally get that you can’t afford it”. If they say “We’re going to wait on this”, you would say “I totally get that you want to wait on this”. You get it?
You want to be welcoming and never combative. Make it okay to object!
Isolate
Now that you’ve heard their objection and made it okay to object, your next goal is to isolate the one main objection, which is also the REAL objection.
This is maybe the most important part in this process because most of what you hear first is not the real objection, and can never be handled even with the world’s most perfect word track!
Why? Because you can make sense of something that isn’t real. If you’re handling a fake objection, the real objection is still lurking in the background and preventing your deal from closing.
So when they say “I need to talk to my partner about this”, you would say “I totally get that you need to talk to your partner about this! Is that the only reason you couldn’t move forward right now?”
Or when they say “Your product doesn’t have this one feature I want”, you could say “I totally get that my product is missing this feature! Is that the only concern you have at this point?”
Another way to isolate is to use a hypothetic scenario that handles the objection they told you. This would look like “So assuming my product had this one feature, you would buy this today?” or “If this was free, could we get this done today?” for a money objection.
Side note, you will probably have to cycle through the Agree and Isolate phase a few times before you uncover the real objection.
Verify
This step of verifying if the objection is even valid is missed by almost everybody, but you’d be surprised how often somebody will seem hung up on something, but that one thing will not actually prevent them from buying (if asked nicely)!
So the way this works is you are simply asking them if that objection is a deal-killer, or if they would close even with that one thing being out-of-sorts.
When they say “That’s too expensive”, you would first isolate to the fact that the money is their one and only concern, then you say “That wouldn’t actually keep you from buying anyway, would it?”
Or if they say “We have other projects that need attention right now”, you could say “That wouldn’t keep you from getting this done now and off your plate, would it?”
Now I’ve closed deals using this when confronted with product concerns, unavailable parties (CEO not in the meeting) and all the money issues!
This step works because you are basically helping people voice what their thinking, which is “the overall value is still bigger than this one concern”.
Close or Probe
Depending on what answer you get from the Verify step, you are either going to close this deal if their objection was not a deal-breaker, or you are going to have to probe to start collecting data so you can help the buyer make sense of your deal.
Probing is as simple as asking “Why is that?” or “When you say that, what do you mean?”. You can add in really any type of Why question to dive deeper into the underpinnings of their objections.
When they say “It’s too expensive”, are they really saying they don’t have the money, they actually want a different product, they’re ok with the over price but not the monthly payments, what is it?
When they say “I want to think about it”, are they saying they product isn’t what they want, they don’t have the money, you’re not the person/company they want to do business with, what is it?
These underlying issues are what you’re trying to bring to the surface. You need to understand exactly what their concern is so you can work with the buyer to find a way that they can buy now and start using your product now!
You’ll see in a minute how this process will actually push you back into the isolate phase before you can close this deal…
Hypothetical
As a final step, once you’ve uncovered the main issues as to why the buyer’s objection is legitimate, you can use a hypothetical scenario (or a tie-down) to lock the buyer in if you can handle their one ral objection.
That would look like this “Assuming we could get your monthly payments to $845/mo, can we get this deal done today?”
Or “Assuming we can get your CEO’s approval, can we get this deal done today?” Or “Assuming delay your payments for 90 days, could we get this deal done today?” Or “Assuming you’ve already spent 2 weeks thinking this over, which way or you leaning?”
What you’re really saying here is “If we can do this for you, would you do business with us?” Now to be clear, this doesn’t mean you will bend to their will and give them anything outlandish, but it does mean you will do your best to accommodate them so they can take delivery of your product!
Putting It All Together
Now that you understand the formula, and each step within it, I’m going to give you some ways that you can handle objections so you can get a taste for how this whole process works together!
“Price is too high”
Agree & Acknowledge: I totally get it that the price is too high!
Isolate: Is price the only reason you couldn’t move forward?
Verify: That wouldn’t actually stop you from buying, would it?
Close or Probe:
- Why is that?
- When you say that, what do you mean?
Hypothetical: If the money made sense, could you make a decision today?
“Need to think about it”
Agree & Acknowledge: I totally get it that you need to think about this!
Isolate: Is that the only reason you couldn’t move forward?
Verify: Thinking about this wouldn’t actually stop you from buying, would it?
Close or Probe:
- Why is that?
- When you say that, what do you mean?
Hypothetical: If everything was perfect, could you make a decision today?
“Going to wait”
Agree & Acknowledge: I totally get it that you want to wait!
Isolate: Is that the only reason you couldn’t move forward?
Verify: Wanting to wait wouldn’t actually stop you from buying, would it?
Close or Probe:
- Why is that?
- When you say that, what do you mean?
Hypothetical: Assuming you’ve waited 3 months, could you make a decision?
“Need to talk this over with my partner”
Agree & Acknowledge: I totally get it that you need to talk this over with your partner!
Isolate: Is that the only reason you couldn’t move forward?
Verify: Talk this over with your partner wouldn’t actually stop you from buying, would it?
Close or Probe:
- Why is that?
- When you say that, what do you mean?
Hypothetical: If your partner says Yes, could you make a decision today?
“Your product doesn’t work”
Agree & Acknowledge: I totally get it that our product doesn’t work for you!
Isolate: Is the product issues the only reason you couldn’t move forward?
Verify: That wouldn’t actually stop you from buying, would it?
Close or Probe:
- Why is that?
- When you say that, what do you mean?
Hypothetical: Assuming we could get these product issues handled for you, could you make a decision today?
“We are going with your competitor”
Agree & Acknowledge: I totally get it that you are going with our competitor!
Isolate: Is that the only reason you couldn’t move forward with our product too?
Verify: That wouldn’t actually stop you from buying, would it?
Close or Probe:
- Why is that?
- When you say that, what do you mean?
Hypothetical: If we could give you everything our competitors gave you or more, could you give us another shot?
As you can see, you’re able to use this same structure to handle any objections that comes your way! Once you have the overall idea of this formula, you can alter the words as you need to, or even come up with your own formula for handling objections that accomplishes the same thing.
If you want to go deeper into this topic of objections and closing, all you have to do is contact me from my home page and I’d be extremely happy to connect with you and/or your team!
Happy Closing!
-Jake Martincic
JakeMartincic.com 