Hi, I’m Heather Prestanski, and I am the Business Coach here with Emerge Sales Training.  Today’s blog post is How to Get to the Root of Any Objection.

 

One of the top questions that I get asked as a business coach, is to help people handle objections, and I think that we all come across very similar objections from the day to day life of our business. We come across things like, “I don’t know if I can afford it, or I need to talk to my spouse.” Or it might just be that they say, “Well, I’m interested but now is just not the right time. Hit me up later, right?” And when we get those objections, we tend to not know how to deal with them, or we deal with those objections, and then the person hits us up with another excuse, and then we kind of write them off as, “Well, they didn’t want it bad enough, or they don’t see the value in what I do.”

 

The truth is, though, those are the stories that we write for ourselves, because we know the value in what we do, and it’s really difficult for us to understand why somebody else doesn’t see how great it is. When it comes to objections, the truth of the matter is that if you’ve done your job properly, if you’ve had a great sales conversation with somebody, if you didn’t just throw the product in their face, but actually took the time to get to know what they really and truly needed, they clearly have some interest in the solution you’re providing.

 

So why then when we get to the end and we start to ask for the sale do people start giving us objections? Why is it that when we pre-handle things like money, time, spousal interest, all of those things, why is it that when we address those early on in the call, we’re still getting objections at the end of the call?

 

The truth of the matter is that objections really come down to three different roots. Here’s the thing: Sometimes an objection is 100% legitimate. So what I don’t want to hear is you writing things off, like, well, it’s a no for now. If they are a 100% “No,” and they’re telling you, “This is not for me,” then we need to respect that person, and we need to respect the fact that they know what’s better for them, than we do. And as long as we’ve given them the opportunity to buy the product or to move into the solution, we need to respect their decision.

 

However, most of the time we don’t leave the conversation on a 100% no. Instead we leave the conversation on a 100% maybe, and that really is the issue, because when we leave that conversation on a maybe, we go into this weird follow up phase.  You don’t know whether or not you should reach out to them, they don’t know if they appear flaky, and if maybe they’ve waited a little bit too long to reach out to you, and, even if you do reach out to them, and they feel like it’s been too long, then they might sort of avoid you a little bit, because they just don’t know.

 

Or more often than not, the reason that they gave you an objection to begin with is because they’re missing some sort of information, and their brain just can’t at this point in time come to a conclusion on whether they’re a 100% in or 100% out.  So they stay in this weird limbo, and it really isn’t loving to leave somebody in a weird limbo phase, because they’re torturing themselves. They’re like, “Why can’t I make a decision on this? Why is this not feeling right? What questions should I have asked?

 

Now here’s the thing. When people leave, they typically didn’t know what was off. They know something was off, they know that they couldn’t get to a 100% yes, but they didn’t know exactly what that was, and so if we let them go to process the information, what can happen is they won’t be able to get the complete information that they need in order to make a decision. So really when it comes to an objection what we want to work through is, is the objection a true objection, or, is it one of the three things that are very, very often the true root of the objections that they’re giving you?

 

Everybody has their default objection that they go to. Mine is always, well, I need to talk to my husband. My husband’s kind of a big guy, he can be scary to look at, he’s a giant teddy bear, but I use that objection when I’m not feeling sure, and everyone has their default objections. Some people go to price, some people go to spouse, some people go to “I just need to think about it, I need to look over it in writing, send me the details,” etc. And we go to those when we don’t have complete information or when something is feeling off.

 

So what we want to do is we want to test the three different things that might be off that are usually the true root of any objection.

 

  1. They don’t trust your offer. There’s some piece of information that is incomplete. And so we want to go back and we want to dive into those details and we want to ask them, what’s missing for them? What’s missing for them that would make this the perfect 10 for them? Ask them those questions. Help them figure it out.
  2. They don’t trust themselves. And so maybe your product requires them to use it on a regular basis, and maybe they don’t trust themselves that they’re actually going to do that. And so maybe you have some solution for that, maybe you have a tip or a trick that will help them to drink their shake at the same time every day. Maybe they’ve tried something similar in the past and it hasn’t worked for them, and maybe they think that they just don’t have the willpower or they don’t have the confidence that they would be able to move forward. Maybe they’re confused. So maybe they’re not feeling confident that they could use your product, because they feel a little bit confused, and we’ve overwhelmed them with information and they feel like “Oh my goodness, I feel super overwhelmed, therefore I’m not confident that I can move forward with this.”

 

  1. They don’t trust you. Now this can be a really hard one to swallow, because we don’t like to think that we get on a conversation with somebody and we have this deep conversation and we get to the end, and the person actually doesn’t trust us, and so therefore they’re not able to move forward with buying from us. And sometimes that person can’t vocalize that. Sometimes they don’t even know that that’s the reason until we start to talk in that direction. Maybe they need to know a little bit more about your own credibility, or your company’s story. Maybe they read a news article many years ago about the company and that stuck with them over time, and they didn’t even remember that they read it. And yet they have this image formed in their mind from way back when.

 

We want to be able to get into these conversations when it comes to objection handling, and we also need to handle their surface objections as well. So if they’re saying that they can’t afford it, we can utilize a drop-down, or we can talk about different finance options that they might have, or we can go into different ways that they might be able to come up with the money. There’s lots of different ways that we can go to handle that objection, but then we immediately want to start diving into the three true roots of the objections.

 

So we’re gonna handle their objection, and then we’re gonna go immediately into that first root, which is, do they trust your offer? And then we’re gonna ask for that sale again, or ask them, “How would you like to move forward?” And then what we can do is if they give us another objection, which, about 20 to 30% of the time, you only need to go through the first round of this, and you’re going to have your answer, and they’re going to be able to move forward, right? So then we can get into that second objection, and we can kind of hear a little bit more about what it looks like.

 

When you take the time to really care about that person in front of you and not just care about making a sale, but you care about helping them get to a yes or a no because that’s what’s best for them, that is what’s going to help them feel safe, that is what’s going to help them feel supported, and that’s what’s going to help them feel as if they are not just a number. And so if we let them go, and we just say, our product is the best, and this is all the reason that this is the best, and oh my gosh, you should be able to afford it, because X, Y, and Z, and we just handle the surface objections, they’re going to feel a little bit like they were pushed, or a little bit like they’re just a number, and they don’t really matter and that’s not what we want for our clients.

 

We want them to feel loved, we want them to feel supported, we want them to feel safe in these sales conversations so that they can move forward with the decision, and we as salespeople are unattached to the outcome. If they come back with it’s a 100% no, great. We just sorted out that they’re not a fit, and we’re not going to go into this weird follow up mode, where we’re going to continuously be following up with them, but they’re continuously missing information, right? And so they can’t make a decision, and then it just gets awkward and uncomfortable for everybody involved. If they actually do have a true objection and they really just need that time and they’re so busy right now and they really want to get into it, but now is not the right time, we’re gonna get to that true root, and they’re gonna feel confident that that is the thing.

 

How many times have you left a sales conversation using an objection, and you know it wasn’t really your objection, but you didn’t know what exactly your objection was? It happens a lot. And so when we take the time to get into those conversations and when we get the time to really feel into what’s missing for you in this offer? What would make it perfect for you? Or, what keeps you from being confident that you can move forward in the utilization of this? So let’s just say that it were free. Do you feel confident that you would use this appropriately in order to see the results? If not, why do you think that is? And then when it comes to their confidence in you, just stepping back and saying, “I just want to make sure that you’re 100% confident in me, and that I’m doing the best thing for you, so let me just talk a little bit about my own story.”

 

This is very, very late, I actually wouldn’t recommend going too deep into your story until we get to the point where we’ve really spoken about them, we’ve dove into all the objections, and it’s very, very, very few times that we would actually get this far into the conversation. Many, many other times they’ve made a 100% yes or a 100% no decision before this. So it’s maybe about 10% of the time that you get to this, but that’s where they might need to know a little bit more about the company and the credibility and those types of things, and maybe they have these preconceived notions in their head about what that looks like.

 

Thank you so much for reading today’s post.

 

To sign up for one of our free trainings on closing or recruiting, go to Emergesalestraining.com/freetraining.

 

Have a great day!