For those of us in sales, many of the above are a common place. There are many more objections, obstacles and ‘avoidance’ tactics that many of us would have come across. I will be happy to hear from you on some of the tough, interesting and funny objections you faced and how you overcame them. In my view, objections are good and shows customer interest in us. The challenge however is to make sense of them and handle them effectively.
How do salespersons react to these objections?
Typically majority of salespersons react to these objections by reacting B.A.Dly i.e:
Let’s understand these three reactions in some more detail.
Bending backwards to please the customer.
Basically if customer says you are expensive, they work furiously to give more discounts in trying to close the deal.
If customer says your service is not good, they start making over the top commitments to reassure the customer, many of which cannot be followed thru leading to credibility issues down the lane.
If customer asks for unreasonably long credit days to pay for the purchase, they fight within their organization to satisfy customer ask without realising the impact on cashflow and margins.
Aggressively answering back to push the customer into deciding.
No Sir, we are not expensive. This is the best you will ever get. You need to decide now.
Oh! Come on Sir, you can’t be serious. Our services are the best in industry. No one can match up to us.
I can’t give you 90 days credit. At best I can give you 30 days and an upfront 2% additional discount.
No way Sir. I know about that brand and how bad they are. (bad mouthing competition brands)
Ducking and sidestepping.
Simply choosing to ignore the objections and act as if they haven’t heard it.
Keep the selling efforts on by continuing to talk about their core strengths and and leave the decision to customer.
Keep following up without ever changing customer perceptions and not taking any effort to overcome the objections.
The above B.A.D technique of handling customer objections, seldom results in a Win-Win deal. Most of the times, the salesperson ends up losing the deal without even knowing either the reason for losing the deal or the competition to whom they lost the deal. In fact many times, customers don’t even keep the salesperson informed of the fact that they have gone ahead with someone else. They don’t feel obligated even to inform because they don’t find the sincerity in salesperson’s effort or intent. Few times, when the salesperson does manage to win the deal, it turns out to be a painful experience. After the sale, soon both the parties find themselves incompatible and you are left to handle an extremely dissatisfied customer.
How to overcome objections effectively? Is there a methodology to do so? If so, what is it?
Well, here the steps that one must follow to overcome customer objections.
Step 1 – TREAT every customer objection as a request for more information.
When customer says you are expensive, give as granular details as possible, about your product or solution or service that you are proposing.
Talk about each feature, its advantage and the benefits that customer will accrue. The advantage is ideally shown by live demonstrations, POCs, test drives, customer self-evaluation or site visits etc.
Give comparison charts where possible (if you are a challenger fighting to unseat an incumbent) with competing brands on the additional value you bring to table.
Leverage marketing collaterals like Brochures, Whitepapers, FAQs, Videos
Step 2 – ACCEPT the existence of Psychological Objections and try to overcome them proactively.
All of us humans have a monster that stalks us everyday. This monster is called, ‘pre-qualifying’ or ‘making assumptions’ or ‘forming perceptions’ about others. We assume things about people we don’t know at all. When we meet a person for the first time, we decide mentally whether that person is good, bad, dependable, unreliable, cunning, haughty, shifty, smart, dumb etc. even without interacting in depth and getting to know about that person in detail. Also we are preconditioned to ‘stereo types” created by society and people around us over a period of time.
Your customer will have many objections which are psychological in nature and they will never be spelt out verbally. Some of these psychological objections would be:
Deep distrust of salespersons in general. Ex. For some people, an agent or broker would mean a sleazy person!
Anything new or latest is not to be trusted. It is not tried and popular.
Opinions about brands/companies/individuals from different geographic regions. It could happen in many contexts. Chinese Brand, A South Indian customer dealing with a North Indian salesperson or vice-versa, A “suave customer” interacting with a “normally dressed” salesperson or vice-versa.
Language Barriers. A local customer who is not comfortable with the smooth, English talking, convent educated MNC sales rep or vice versa.
How to overcome these objections. Well, majority of salespersons are “order takers” and not “order getters”. Only “order getters” don’t assume things and actually take the effort of “synchronizing with customer frequency”.
Few tips for handling psychological objections are:
“Don’t assume anything. Probe as much as possible to know the customer better”.
Share as much information about you as possible. Give example of how you helped customers of exact similar profiles like the one in front of you.
Share success stories/testimonials from similar customer profiles who are using your product. These things comfort the customer and makes them feel that they are in safe hands.
Interact with passion and candor. Customer should see and feel the passion you have for your product and brand. Your un-hesitating candor will increase trust of the customer.
Step 3 – MEET Valid Objections head-on and address them to conclusion.
Many customer objections are practical and genuine. Don’t avoid or run away from them. These are the objections that allows you to fix the shortcomings in your product, solution and process and not just satisfy this customer but win you more such customers in future. Be it price comparison with an equivalent brand, shortcomings in your proposal which needs to be made good or compensated in other ways, proof of your capability to handle similar projects etc., address each one to customer satisfaction.
Few things you must practice are:
Revert back to customers promptly with answers. Do not dilly dally.
Take help of specialists, seniors and superiors in your organization to address these objections. Make them meet the customer. Customer will become more confident with you, your product and your organization.
Ask for confirmation whether they are satisfied with your responses and actions. This is important.
Document everything and bring all stakeholders within customer organization on to the same page.
Step 4 – EMPATHISE with customers on the issues and objections for which you don’t have answers to. Remember, customers appreciate openness and honesty.
Be honest with customer on the queries you don’t have answers to.
Gracefully acknowledge them and say you cannot overcome them or by when you would be able to address it.
Try and explain, if you can, how it won’t impact user experience.
Explain how you are giving other things that are going to enhance the experience.
Step 5 – DROP out of deals where you face irrational objections and unreasonable terms in comparison to your competitors. To be able to walkaway from a deal, you must be aware of WTF, which is
We cannot win every deal that we participate in.
There are only so many working days a week/month/quarter/year that is available for us within which we have to not only achieve our professional objectives but also personal ones.
For every unqualified opportunity we persist with, there is a qualified opportunity we could have spent our time on, that we are missing out.
It is important for any salesperson to qualify the opportunity, as early as possible in the sales cycle, to decide whether to continue investing further time and efforts on the deal or drop it.
In Summary:
Objections are good and show customer’s intent in either buying from you or not buying from you.
Avoid the standard B.A.D way of reacting to objections.
Objections can be TAMED.
Thank you for reading patiently. Look forward to your valuable feedbacks, comments and suggestions.
Happy Selling!