5 steps to handling objections

At some point in the sales process, it’s highly likely that your sales team are going to encounter an objection from their prospect. This is not unusual and objections should actually be viewed in a positive light. This is because if the prospect is engaging with you, you can start to work towards a solution.

When it comes to handling objections it’s always best to try and pre-empt them. In an ideal world, your sales team should overcome them as early as possible, but it’s not always that easy! Prospects like to ask questions for a whole manner of reasons.

So, how should your sales team handle objections? Here are 5 steps we would suggest.

1. Acknowledge The Objection

Your sales team should firstly acknowledge the prospects objection. They should do this by using their active listening skills, whilst showing respect and empathy. They may not agree with the prospect’s objection, but instead of becoming defensive, your sales team needs to seek clarification. It’s important at this stage that rapport is maintained.

2. Question The Objection

It’s not uncommon for objections to be centred around price, delivery, need, desire, availability and trust. What’s important is for your sales team to seek to understand the real reason behind the prospect’s objection. They should ask open questions and actively listen to what they have to say. In this way, they can try and establish what is being said by reading between the lines.

3. Tackle The Objection

Once your sales team really understands the prospects objection, they need to respond in a way that tackles their objection whilst providing a convincing argument to overcome the objection. Evidence can come in many forms but what the prospect is after here, is information or data from your sales team to confirm what they are saying is correct, can be achieved, or proof of experience. Examples could be a production schedule, test certificates, examples of previous projects, customer testimonials etc. You may also wish to negotiate terms and conditions of contract or introduce stage payments. Listening and trying to find solutions to the objections can only strengthen their relationship with the prospect.

4. Gain Acceptance

After your sales team has provided their prospect with evidence to overcome their objection, their next point of call is to seek confirmation that their response was satisfactory and has met their needs. After all, their prospect needs to be convinced to continue along your sales process to ultimately purchase the product or service.

5. Objections Are Opportunities!

We’ve already briefly mentioned this earlier, but objections should be viewed positively by your sales team. This is because their prospect is still communicating with them and as such, they have the opportunity to try and convince them to buy. Unfortunately, there will be times when the prospect decides that they are going to purchase from elsewhere. While this will obviously be very disappointing, this is another opportunity for your sales team to learn from the experience. We will cover this in a later blog when we write about the most important sales stage, following up!