If you have ever sold anything in your life then you’ve encountered a sales objections at some point in time. In fact, regardless of your profession, we all deal with objections in life with co-workers, business partners, spouses, and family.

The good news is, there are some simple steps you can take to better handle and even reduce the number of objections you are confronted with if you take a little time to prepare.

First of all, in the process of selling (a product, service, concept, etc.) when an objection arises it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  I would encourage you to embrace the objection and think of it as an opportunity. It’s a clue as to what your prospective buyer is thinking.  This simple step alone will take some of the negativity off the objection as you mentally process it.

When an objection presents itself listen completely, pause, and make sure you understand the situation. When you respond, the most effective responses are generally framed as a question.

Basic Examples:

Objection: Your Price is too high

Reply: “I understand your concern, what were you planning to spend?”

Objection: I want to think about it.

Reply: “That’s a fair statement, so what are the specific items you want to think about?

Dig for information

The main thing you want to do is get your prospect to open up and tell you more about what’s keeping them from making a decision. During this dialog be real, be sincere, be understanding, and be positive. Honest, heartfelt questions will normally get prospects to open up. And, you must answer the objection to the satisfaction of your client, before moving forward in your process.

Objections are never a signal to argue or debate with your client, there may be nothing that stalls or even kills a negotiation faster. They are also never an open door to speak poorly of your competition. If an objection forces you to compare your product or service against a competitor, use factual information only. Hearsay and rumors are not recommended for long-term success.

What if there was a silver bullet to eliminate Objections?

The reality is they are part of the selling process and they will never totally be eliminated. However, they can be greatly reduced. How? By spending more time diagnosing your prospect and getting confirmation about what the needs and expectations are before you’re get caught off guard during your presentation. You need to ask questions, lots of them. And then make sure you listen to the answers. You can defuse objections by clarifying the expectations before you ever start your presentation.

Example: At the end of a perfect presentation the potential buyer announces they need to consult with another person before they can commit. Could this objection have been prevented?  If the salesperson had asked up front about decision makers and had a commitment that everyone who needed to be there would in fact be there for the presentation, this issue could have been prevented completely, by simply asking the right questions ahead of time.

A short exercise to start improving the way you handle objections is to write your top 5 most common objections on one side of a piece of paper. On the other side, for each objections list 2 to 4 clear responses (framed as questions) that will address the objection and keep you engaging with your prospect. Remember – the point of the sales discussion is to really understand the needs of your prospect, the objections help you figure those out.  Review your list regularly and get comfortable with the idea of smoothly addressing the objections.

We would love to hear how you handle objections with your product or service. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Chris Steinlage Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by Marco Bellucci

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Sometimes the hardest part of this whole business thing is getting them to move!  Have you ever had the situation where you’ve had good meetings with potential prospective clients…and then you wait?

They know who you are.  They know what you do.  They need what you do, but for some reason they don’t move and you end up waiting for something to happen!

I’ve got a couple of clients facing this very situation – they’ve put a lot of time and effort into marketing, they’re getting initial meetings with what looks to be the right kind of people (qualified and in need) but things are moving slowly…or really not moving at all!

So what’s the problem?  Well it could be several things…there are times when things just slow down, so it may be just a matter of waiting and things will pick up.  The product might not be a fit (too expensive, not enough value, too general, etc.).  It could be that they’re not talking to the right people…if you’re selling tickets to a Royals game, then a baseball fan seems like the right target, but what you probably need is a Royals fan!

However it’s more likely that they aren’t giving their prospects the emotional ammunition to take action.  Decisions are made emotionally, logic comes into play to rationalize that decision.

Are you too logical?

One of the traps in sales is to put together an airtight case for why someone should buy your stuff.  You’ve got the coolest features, a list of benefits the length of your arm and it comes in 15 different colors.  You have all the bases covered.

All of that’s great stuff and it’s certainly important to think through, but it’s not going to get someone to move unless you also tap into what it means to them on an emotional basis.

A great example of what I mean comes from Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling – his book has been around for quite a while and it’s a powerful approach for anyone who’s selling something more complicated than a consumer widget.  I think it’s something you should absolutely read.

SPIN is an acronym that stands for:

Situation, Problem, Implication, Needs/Payoff

Through extensive research, Mr. Rackham determined that the most effective way to sell more complex products or services was to follow a process and a line of questioning that covers the SPIN components:

Situation – Ask questions that help you place where your potential buyer is coming from.  You need to understand the context and what’s going on.

Problem – Ask questions that identify the problems your buyer is experiencing, typically that becomes digging deeper on something that comes up during the Situation questions.

Implication – Here’s where you start to get into the emotions.  Ask questions that will uncover what this problem really means to the buyer.  This is where you can really quantify the impact.

Needs /Payoff – Finally the Needs / Payoff questions help the prospective buyer feel the emotions of what it would feel like to solve their problem…”If this problem was fixed, what would that mean to you?”

Questions and Emotions

Part of the reason that SPIN selling is effective is because it focuses on the power of Questions.  Questions, especially open ended questions, make sure the focus stays on the potential buyer…and not on you!

The other reason it works is because it gives you a repeatable way to tap into emotions, even if those are as simple as frustration with a problem and relief at a potential solution.  Without that emotion, they will NOT take action!

If your potential buyers aren’t moving, are you asking the right questions?  Are you getting them involved emotionally?

I’ve got a pretty cool worksheet that leverages the SPIN model – especially for Business to Business sales.  Contact me if you’d like a copy of it for free!

Do you have potential buyers who aren’t moving?  What are you doing to try to break that logjam?  What have you identified that might be holding things up?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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It can be really hard to get someone’s attention.  From a business perspective, there are people walking around you right now who have money and could theoretically spend it on your product or service.  If you could get their attention – you might be able to sell them something.

The problem is that other than the fact that they are people and can fog a mirror, you probably don’t know much about them.  You don’t know if they have any money.  You don’t know if they already have a solution for what you do.  You don’t know if they would be interested in what you do or not.  In short, you don’t know them…and they don’t know you.

Did I mention it’s really hard to get someone’s attention these days?  We’re all being bombarded by thousands of messages every day…and it can be really hard for something to get through all that noise!

Seth Godin has a great quote on this very issue:

“Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t”.

Interruptions used to work better…back when there was less noise, but now your best bet is to find people who want to hear from you. 

How do you do that?  First of all you have to know who you want to talk to…be very clear on your target audience.  The more defined you can be the more likely you can get their attention.  It’s the difference between talking to a ‘card players’ or a ‘Texas Hold-Em tournament players’.  If you’re a big fan of Texas Hold-em, you’re likely to ignore something targeted to just ‘card players’.  Conversely, if you’re not a Texas Hold-em player, you will ignore the message…because it’s not for you.

Once you know who you’re talking to, then you need to know what their problems are (ideally the problem that you can help solve).  That’s what’s going to draw their attention…you are speaking clearly to your target audience on a topic they have a strong interest in.

Back to the Texas Hold-em example, using a headline like “How to ACTUALLY make money playing in Texas Hold-em tournaments” would get some real attention.

From there, you need to deliver on your promise – maybe you got them to click through on a blog post or to download a report or watch a video.  Whatever it was, this is your attention to establish credibility and make them interested in you.  If you fail at that, they’re gone, never to be seen again.

But if you succeed at giving them something of value – then…and only then do you have an opportunity to sell them on something.  It can be a tough road, but it’s still easier than interrupting somebody!

What do you do to earn attention from your prospects?  Share your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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Sales is the lifeblood of small business success.  You can have the best product, the best service in the world, but without closing a sale, it doesn’t mean anything.  Unfortunately it can be difficult to get that sale closed, people may like to buy, but they don’t like to be sold.

With that in mind, there is one thing that you can do that will greatly increase your chances for selling success.  It’s counterintuitive and it can be really difficult to pull off, especially if you have a lot riding on closing the deal.  But it will work for any industry and any selling situation and it doesn’t really matter what your sales technique might be.

What’s the one thing that can make such a big difference?

It’s simple – You have believe and act like you don’t actually need the sale!

This came up the other day when I was talking to a friend of mine who had recently been referred for some work.  Unfortunately it really wasn’t the right kind of work and it was pretty clear that the potential buyer was going to be high maintenance.  Since it was a referral from a friend, he agreed to at least meet with the buyer for an initial discussion.

Knowing up front that he didn’t really want the work, he purposely tried to discourage the buyer from moving forward, letting them know he was kind of expensive – there were other, cheaper opportunities out there or that they might want to consider going a completely different direction.

Then a funny thing happened – he discovered that every time he tried to discourage the sale, the buyer became more energized and convinced that he was the help they needed!  In the end, my friend agreed to do the work and even charged a slight premium over normal rates (he could have charged more, but didn’t since it was a friend of a friend).

He didn’t need the sale and actually didn’t even want the sale – and yet the customer ended up closing themselves despite his pushback.  Why would that happen?

There are actually a couple of key reasons why this works:

1. You are in a position of power….

Think about the situation – you don’t need to make the sale, you don’t really care if it happens or not and that gives you a lot of control over the situation.  Additionally it gives you a lot of confidence – which makes you very attractive.  Everyone wants to hang out with the confident person who has it all going on!  Because you don’t need anything, you get to dictate the terms!

2. You using the Reverse Selling technique…

Whether you realize it or not, you are using a technique that David Sandler called Reverse Selling.  This Sandler technique is all about purposely pushing your prospective buyer away from the sale – here’s a good example from SitePoint on Reverse Selling.

This process actually does a couple of things for you – it makes you drastically different than most sales people who are anxiously trying to close the sale and the psychology of the approach allows the customer to sell themselves – here’s some more detail from an article by Andrew Wall:  You Can’t Sell Anybody Anything.

Of course this can work really well if you don’t actually need or want the work.  The trick is can you get into that kind of mindset when you DO really want the work?  It’s not easy and it takes some practice, but it can be done.

What do you think?  Have you ever used a reverse sell?  On purpose or accidently?  You probably don’t want to share your thoughts on this – but if you do, leave a comment below…or not…it doesn’t matter to me. 

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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I had a chance to check out Shrek Forever After this afternoon and one of the scenes that caught my attention was the sales process between RumpelStiltskin and Shrek (see picture above, courtesy of Dreamworks)

Rumpelstiltskin, if you’re not familiar is a magical dealmaker who specializes in granting wishes…with unfortunate consequences and lots of fine print.  In the movie he hangs out at the Crone’s Nest Carriage Park (full of witches and crones) and desperately wants to become the ruler of Far, Far Away (where Shrek lives).

What does this have to do with business?  Well our man Rumpel is a true salesman and he displays some serious selling skills in the movie that could benefit anyone in business.

He pretty much goes through the entire sales process, although in this case it’s a one session close type of opportunity.

What’s your target?  What do they want?

The sales process starts with understanding who your target market is and what it is they want to buy.  In our example, Rumpelstiltskin is a bit down on his luck and he’s missed out on some big opportunities, so his target is really anyone who’s looking for a big change that magic can deliver.  As it turns out Shrek fits the bill – he wants one day when he could live the life of a single Ogre again without all the stress that’s in his life.

Rumpel does a bit of back alley research to figure all of this out and he learns exactly what his prospective buyer is looking for and how he feels about it (what his pain points are).

Establishing Contact

The next step in the sales process is to get in front of your prospect.  Most of the time, your best bet is to be introduced, but sometimes that’s not possible.  If you can’t do that, then you want to find a way to get in front of your prospect.  It’s a little unconventional, but Rumpel goes the route of staging an accident and asking Shrek for help.

Not only does this put Shrek off his guard, but it give Rumpelstiltskin a reason to offer Shrek a ride, a drink and dinner as thanks for the rescue – a great opportunity to build up rapport.

Building Rapport

As they’re riding along in the carriage, they share stories over drinks and Rumpel sympathizes with Shrek’s problems.  He puts himself into Shrek’s shoes and lets him know that he really understands where Shrek is coming from.  Shrek finally has someone who gets where he’s coming from, what his problem is and he’s thrilled to be listened to.

The Offer

The offer is a very natural conclusion to the discussion…hey – if you’re interested, I have a contract here that can give you what you want. 

Of course Shrek wants to know what the catch is and Rumpel plays it cool – he explains clearly that to get something you have to give something…and in fact he even takes the offer away as a great persuasion technique (“Well if you’re not interested – it’s no big deal, we don’t need to do anything…!), prompting Shrek to make the move to keep talking about the deal.

Now I will say that Rumpel deviates from the ideal sales script at this point by tricking Shrek into a Win-Lose deal that’s pretty one-sided.  He does ending up closing the deal, but he lies about the outcomes -  however like most of those deals, they don’t pay off in the long run.

Aside from that though, the overall sales process was very effective and would make an worthwhile framework for a lot of sales.

So how was the movie?

In case you’re wondering, the movie was good – worth a trip to the theater in my opinion.  It’s not as engaging as the first couple in the series, but the animation and 3D are very good, it’s got a good story, it has several funny parts and overall it’s a nice way to get away with your family for a couple of hours.

Have you seen the movie?  Did I miss any sales tips?  Share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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