I’ve spent a lot more time writing about sales topics than I typically do, but I’ve begun to see a need for more and more sales topics to be covered.
Mainly this has popped up as a topic because so few people are getting the real skills they need to be successful as sellers and everyone is in sales.
That brought me around to the idea of objections.
We are all afraid of hearing, “No.”
Or, that’s at least what most sales trainers tell you.
I don’t think we are worried so much about hearing “no” as we are unsure about how we are going to handle “no” when we get it.
The thing about it is that most “no” answers are built around four key objections.
If you know that, you can handle them more effectively.
And, if it comes to it, you can also know that if you don’t turn around a “no” after 3 tries…you’ve done your best.
So what are these 4 objections?
Trust:
To make a sale, you need trust.
The amount of trust you need goes up depending on how large the sale is.
Think about how much trust can play in a buying decision today.
As we have more and more information available to us on the internet, we look for reviews and examples everywhere to justify any decision we make.
Where do you think crowdsourcing came from?
It came from a lack of trust: trust in the service provider, product, whatever. Probably most importantly, it came because people don’t trust themselves to make the right decision.
That’s objection number 1. Lack of trust.
Need:
Need can cover two things: perception or real.
Let’s say you run out of gas, you need gas. That’s a real need.
On the other hand, if you have a lemonade stand and your neighbor has one too and your business is suffering and you think that your sales skills need improving…that’s a perceived need.
Either way, the second big objection is one about need.
After you’ve had your sales conversation, you should have created a need, real or perceived for your prospect.
If you get a no, it may be due to the fact that you haven’t generated a strong enough perception of need. Real or perceived.
That’s number 2. The buyer doesn’t feel a need.
No Urge:
The 3rd objection is all about urgency.
To get a sale completed you have to generate a bit of heat for the results that the person is going to get.
I remember when I was working selling tickets on Broadway early in my career and my colleagues would talk about the “heat” of a show. This “heat” was usually something that would encourage people to buy their tickets ASAP as opposed to waiting.
The same environment is at play in any sales environment.
This is what makes being a commodity such a bad way to go through life. Because you have no capacity to generate any “heat” at all.
In the process of having a sales conversation, if you haven’t built up any energy around the results to create the urge for the buyer to say yes to the results you are going to achieve or the negative impact that will happen if you don’t work together, you have failed.
That’s objection number 3. You haven’t started a fire in the mind of the buyer and they don’t feel the need to put it out.
No Money:
I saved the best for last because everyone feels like this is the most common objection.
I’m going to tell you that it isn’t.
Money is just the easiest one. The most knee jerk one.
Why?
Because most sales people can’t or haven’t figured out how to overcome the objection.
The truth is that the money objection is the easiest to overcome because it is almost always not a real objection.
In my experience, the price is too much has been the real issue probably less than 20% of the time…and, likely, even less than that.
What no money is really an objection to is the fact that you haven’t illustrated the requisite value for your prospect.
In other words, you have generated enough “heat” or enough trust or enough desire for the results.
That doesn’t make closing the sale any easier, but knowing that most of the time money isn’t the real issue means that you can spend much more time actually working on building relationships, establishing value, and creating the desire to take action.