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Dealing with Sales Objections: General

Written by: Niall Devitt

Article Overview: Today I’m going to start a new series of blog posts about handling and overcoming common sales objections. The title for each post will be “Dealing with Sales Objections” followed by the particular objection that will be tackled as part of that post.

Dealing with Sales Objections: General

Today I’m going to start a new series of blog posts about handling and overcoming common sales objections. The title for each post will be “Dealing with Sales Objections” followed by the particular objection that will be tackled as part of that post.

Before I start, I think it’s important to point out that there are no hard and fast rules when dealing with sales objections, anyone who tells you otherwise is frankly talking through their bum. There are however some general rules of thumb that you can apply.


Don’t get stuck

Not effectively dealing with a prospect’s objection/s is akin to freezing the sales opportunity in time. Waiting and hoping that a sales objection will go away has about as much chance as Ireland topping the medals table at the London Olympics. The only way to move the sale forward is to deal with the particular objection.

The Starting Point

Dealing with sales objections should never be a confrontation, it is not a battle of wits or logic, its about two people starting with two slightly differing points of view, talking through until each understands the other’s perspective and than agreeing a solution that satisfies both parties.

Listen to the Objection, Become the Prospect

To better understand any sales objection, always first try to look at the situation through the eyes of the prospect, listen, consider and weight up the factors that led to him or her taking this position. This allows you to empathise which is the key starting point for the negotiation.

Now Communicate your Point of View

The next skill is then getting the prospect to understand your position, if you have taking the time, listened and understood his or her concerns, they now will be open to hearing yours. Ensure that you take the time to explain why things are the way they are; why you can’t offer an additional discount or what additional value is attached to your higher price point.

Negotiate to Reassure
Why is that when we talk about negotiating with prospects, their is assumption that we are merely talking about further discounts, in reality price is merely one factor that can be negotiated. Unskilled salespeople and badly run companies handle objections by dropping their price. Rather, look at negotiation as an opportunity to reassure the prospect as to existing value that they will receive, providing them with evidence that this is in fact the case.

So always choose to provide them with an opportunity to talk to an existing customer over a additional discount, offer a upfront trail period to evaluate your product, but always tie in a commitment to close provided the trial is successful.

Agreement and Time scales

The final but none less important piece in overcoming the sales objection is getting the prospect’s agreement to the proposed solution. If it has merely been a case of having to better explain the finer details of the sale, this agreement can be sought there and then. However if there are other factors such as getting a recommendation, these need to be agreed including time frames.

Attaching a time scale to the proposed solution is crucial in that it ensures an upfront commitment to close. In the event, where the prospect is unable to give this commitment, the salesperson has either been unable to deal with the original objection or there is another objection that has not yet surfaced. Either way, this should demonstrate to the seller that more probing and/or reassurance will be required.

Future Posts

As I said at the start of this post, this is the start of a series of posts on overcoming common sales objections. In the next posts, I will be looking at particular objections such as “price”, “competitors”, ”bad experience” etc, however If there is anybody out there who would like me to talk about a particular objection they have difficulty with or indeed offer advice to others, please e-mail me or leave a request in the comments section of our blog.

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  How to avoid objections during your sales presentation

Article Tags: battle of wits, bum, common sales, confrontation, empathise, ireland, logic, london olympics, medals, negotiation, olympics, perspective, point of view, prospects, rules of thumb, sales objection, sales objections, sales opportunity, taking the time



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