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Article 5: How To Handle Objections
Once you’ve qualified prospects as buying candidates and engaged them in discussion, begin the artful stage of exchanges to determine precisely what it takes to close the sale.
At the same time, prospects will seek to know what they stand to gain.
As author John H. Waters points out in his book, “Selling for People Who Hate to Sell” (Prima Publishing, 1996), people raise essentially four objections: price, quality, service and what Waters calls “hidden objections.”
The sales process is designed to address the first three types. You need to overcome objections without engaging in a win/lose contest. Your purpose isn’t to win, but to clarify. If objections can’t be overcome, a sale isn’t likely and to proceed only wastes everyone’s time.
But objections can be overcome, according to Waters, with “information, reassurances, warranties and guarantees; or . . . (by trying) to outweigh the objection with benefits.”
Be prepared for objections by being intimately familiar with your product or service. Offset price objections by negotiating, or offset cost with value by mentioning benefits the buyer is unaware of. Overcome objections about perceived low quality by stressing the product’s cost savings.
In all cases, these strategies, Waters says, “are based on looking at things from the buyer’s point of view.”
Unfortunately, when buyers have hidden objections, they may be unconscious objections or they may be irrational (maybe they hate your hairdo or they’re bigoted).
Waters concedes, “sometimes there’s nothing you can do... You can listen carefully, watch body language, look for hidden clues, test theories . . . and still never know what went wrong.”
Don’t fret about what you can’t control.
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