4 Steps To Overcome ALL Your Customers’ Sales Objections!

Sales objections are something that all sales professionals must deal with. 

Pretending that there’s a way to prevent them is a mistake. There will always be objections and that’s OK. A trained sales person will know how to manage these “buts” without stress nor despair. 

Here we’ll show you how to handle objections in sales with 4 simple steps. Shall we start? 

Good, but first of all:

 

What is a Sales Objection?

A sales objection is a buyer’s demur expressing a reason why he or she’s not able to buy your product or service. 

The key aspect of it is the fact that the buyer is interested in buying, he’s engaged. So, if we don’t want to lose this customer, we must develop a strategy to turn these objections into sales.

 

The 4 steps to overcoming sales objections

Many specialists agree on this: there are 4 steps to successfully handling objections in sales. 

Let’s see how it works:

 

1. Listen / Read

Don’t get upset when you listen or read a customer’s objection. Listen/read carefully before you respond. 

A very common mistake in sales is to reply to complaints and objections with anger or assuming an emotional defense of our product or service.

Keep calm and think twice. This is not personal. 

Focus on the customer’s concerns and show some empathy. If it’s a face-to-face complaint, express with your body language that you’re listening and, in fact, do it: listen.

Most customers will assume that you’ll have a defensive attitude, so if you demonstrate from the beginning that you’re actually listening to what they have to say, they will probably let their guard down and a more friendly communication process can emerge.

 

2. Understand

As all students should know, reading is not the same as studying. Well, the same logic can be applied here: listening is not the same as understanding. 

We can carefully listen to a foreign language speaker discoursing without understanding a single word, right?

Regarding sales objections, it’s not unusual to find that many times what people really want to express is underlying beneath their words. 

A good sales professional should have the ability to read between the lines. And also: we can’t expect all customers or buyers to have great communication skills.

If you don’t fully understand the objection, try to reformulate it and ask for the buyer’s approval. If you did understand the objection, rephrase it anyway.

It’s important to show that you’re making an effort to understand and that you’re trying to be on the same page.

It’s also recommendable to ask if there’s something else he/she wants to say. Sometimes it is at that point when people actually tell what they wanted to say in the first place.

 

3. Respond

Now is the time for action. You have listened to the objection and made an effort to understand your customer’s concerns. Even if those concerns are not quite serious to you, you’ll handle this complaint as a critical issue. 

Don’t procrastinate. Every sale counts and a real time response can make a difference.

If you can solve that issue right away, do it. If that’s not something you can handle, let your customer know that you’re escalating it to the responsible person and set a time to give him/her a response. 

Be concise and straight to the point. Avoid long meaningless standard phrases that only make your customers feel that they’re talking to a machine.

If a customer is expressing more than one objection, start with the one that looks more important, not the one that’s easier for you to solve. Addressing the main issue may help dissipate the other ones.

 

4. Confirm

Confirmation is very important. Don’t assume that everything is solved just because the customer stopped talking or writing. A nod, an “ok” or a thumbs-up emoji are not enough. Ask your customer if he/she agrees with the response you’ve provided.

It happens that a customer nods to you while you respond, but when you ask him/her if he/she agrees with what you just said, the whole process starts again. Don’t take it for granted.

Also, don’t force a “yes”. Respect your customer’s doubt and work it out until he/she looks convinced. Make clear that you can overcome his/her objection.

At this point we should say something important: not all your objecting customers are willing to buy. 

Experience will give you the ability to identify when someone is genuinely expressing a concern and when you’re wasting your time with a person won’t buy because it’s not his/her decision to make, because he/she doesn’t have enough budget or because he/she’s not showing signs of having real intentions of buying. 

You’ll have to learn to figure it out along the road.

 

Sales Objections and Answers

Now you know the steps you have to follow to deal with sales objections. 

Now it’s time for you to learn some of the most common sales objections and how to overcome them.

We can cluster sales objections into four types:

• lack of budget;
• luck of trust;
• lack of need;
• lack of urgency.

The truth is that there’s no universal formula for successfully handling sales objections, but we can give you a couple of examples for you to see some of the best practices for overcoming the most common sales objections. 

Check it out:

 

“It’s too expensive”

Budget limitation is a very common objection in sales. The first thing you have to keep in mind is that the price is not the point, it can’t be argued. 

If the customer finds your product too expensive, well, they do. Don’t reply with something like “it’s not that expensive” or “we’re cheaper than our competitors”.

Tell your customer that you understand his/her objection and focus on the price/quality ratio. 

Share experiences of success from other buyers who had the same concerns. Work with the concept of “you get what you paid for”. Paying a little more for a product or service could mean a great deal of difference in quality and satisfaction.

 

“I’m not sure about your product/service”

Take this response as a request of information disguised as an objection. This is your moment to display your sales skills. 

But if you don’t fully understand what you’re trying to sell, it’s most likely that your customer will notice it.

It’s not enough to just mention your product/service’s benefits or features. Your customer is not sure if it will be useful for him/her. 

So, you’ll focus on his/her needs. Avoid generic phrases stating how great this product/service is. Sell the experience of enjoying it.

 

“I’m not interested”

This is a hard sales objection and it shows no intention of buying. It’s also a very common intent to prevent salesmen from displaying their sales speeches. It means: “don’t bother me”.

If your customer says that he/she’s not interested, don’t contradict him/her. Make him/her feel that you understand and that you know people who felt the same way, but with a little more information they changed their minds. Ask him/her if there’s another time for you to contact him/her again.

 

“It’s not a good time”

Answers like “I can’t make a decision right now” or “Call me again next month” are ambiguous. Your customer is not telling you that he/she doesn’t want to buy, but many times these responses are intended to reject you politely due to budget, resources, time or any other reason. Maybe it’s just that: not a good time right now.

Try to adjust your offer to your customer’s current needs. If not, ask your customer what’s stopping him/her from buying and which conditions should change for him/her to actually buy. Then you’ll understand if you’ll have to follow up or not.

There are more examples we can show you, such as “it’s not my decision to make” or “I’m happy with your competitor”. 

But what we wanted to share with you today is which steps you should take to overcome sales objections and we think we just did it quite well.

Do you have any doubt, suggestion or even an objection? Let us know what you think.