1: All objections are about value

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All objections are about value

Almost all objections about one thing: value. Either the customer doesn’t value spending time with you, or they don’t value spending money with you. And where you are in the sales process determines the type of objection a customer says. So at the beginning of a sales call, when setting up a call, values just is time, it’s I don’t want to spend any time with you and these kind of objections take the shape of: I’m in a meeting, I can’t talk with you right now. Send me an email, I’ve got no budget or even how much is it? And towards the end of the sale, it’s really about money. The customer’s not convinced of the value of buying your product. And objections are either, okay, I don’t want to spend any money with you or I don’t feel confident making a decision on my own. So I want to talk to someone else. And these objections might be: send me an email. I want to think about it. I need to speak to my partner or my marketing department or my accountant. And the question how much it is takes them a very different meaning than at the beginning of the sale. So when you hear an objection, you should think what my objective is. So what am I trying to achieve in overcoming this objection? Which means that most of the time the purpose of overcoming the objection is not to close the sale at that stage.

So, what is handling objection about? It’s about getting to the next step in the sales chain. I’ve heard the old sales adage, that’s objections are one step closer to getting a sale. They’re not, anyone that’s told you this is clearly misinformed or has not taken this course. The reality is there’s a complex sales chain with different stages that happen once a prospect’s been identified, and objections can happen at any of these stages. So, step one initiate contact two qualify prospect. Three, arrange for good time for the meeting. Four engage prospect with an introduction. Set the agenda problem find where you ask questions, summarize. Sell the benefits of your product. Seven recommend. Eight, close the sale. Nine, cement the deal. So, you need to understand where you are in the sales process in order to handle each objection correctly. So if you’re trying to set up a meeting, the objective is to get the meeting, not to close the sale, nor sell the benefits of your product at this stage, unless it helps you get the meeting.

So if you’re the type of sales person who gets a lot of objections later in the sell, it’s because you didn’t do the early part of the sell correctly. Look, the reality is you shouldn’t be getting objections at stage eight when you close for the deal, because you’ve handled all of these early objections at the earliest stages. So look, how many times have you experienced this situation? The sales pitch went really well. They went away to think about it and they came back and told you, oh, we don’t have any budget. Or their partner said no, and now you’re upset because you wasted your time and you think, ah, it’s terrible. I’m going to blame the prospect right, no. You need to blame yourself because you failed to qualify the prospect at the earliest stage. You didn’t ask their role in the buying process at step two and qualify whether they can make a decision or not to buy your product.

Did they have to speak to a partner? Did they have the available money? There was an old acronym which was M.A.N, the money, the authority, the need and later in the sale when you try to close that step eight, you’ll hear third party objections. I want to talk to someone else or they don’t have budget and you won’t know whether this objection is real or not. So does the prospect genuinely want to talk to his partner or is this an excuse for not buying your product? Does the partner exert a greater influence on the buying process than the person you’re talking to that they really have no budget after he spent an hour listening to you, of course, you could qualify the prospect and they still come back and say they need to talk to their partner, but now you do have a lot more ammunition and you can ask them, Mr. Prospect, at the beginning of the sale, you mentioned you could make the decision alone. Now, obviously you’re not sure about something. What would you say is on the back of your mind? Don’t expect the same rationality in business conversations you’d get in real life to why do it in your sale. So the question is, why don’t salespeople qualify the prospect early? Why do they take shortcuts? Is it out of fear? Is it ignorance, blind hope, or just laziness? So maybe salespeople think by asking qualifying questions early on, it hurts your chances of getting the deal. So this course is as much about reducing objections as handling objections. So in the next session we’ll be talking about the psychology of objections.