Don’t Overcome Objections: Three Value Creation Strategies Triggered by Objections

I recently observed an interchange between a high value customer and a mid career salesperson. The rep was a “closer.”

In our meeting the customer responded to the end of the presentation with, “We don’t have enough budget for that.”

The sales rep replied, “What if we could make this fit in your budget?”

To this the customer said, “Um, well, I don’t like the payment terms, either.”

The rep pressed on, “What if we changed the terms to meet your needs?”

The customer shifted in his chair, glanced at the clock, and then grudgingly admitted, “I have to check with my boss.”

The closer let out a soft sigh, “Great!”

We know that objections are a fact of sales life. We’ve all heard them.

Remember early in your career, when the sound of an objection leaping off the prospect’s lips was a loud and scary noise? Most of us, however, learned how to quickly “overcome” objections with an answer. Some of us may have even been caught interrupting a customer’s objection with the answer, as if we were a “quick-draw” artist. No sooner did the familiar question begin to poke its head out, and, BANG—smoking answer—stunned customer.

What an objection really is

On a level, knowing the answer is good, because it allows us to vault over the objection like a hurdler, neatly clearing an obstacle to the sale. At least this is the theory of overcoming objections.

The faster, more pithy and tight the response, the more rapidly we can move forward to the close and collect our reward. In fact, you might have been trained or may have learned to look for objections as signs of progress.

We would like to show you with a different dimension.

We take issue with the view of objections as hurdles to dash over. We see objections differently and “overcoming them” as hazardous. As a sales task, overcoming objections needs to be reversed; we’d prefer that objections be dug into.

Objections are unmet emotional needs. Rather than overcome them like a hurdler, we recommend addressing them, and meeting the need. This can only be done by digging into and amplifying the objection; a process which can be scary.

Notice that digging into the objection should not include a concession, nor should we succumb to our instincts and offer a Band-Aid fix to the hurt it exposes. Instead, the hurt a customer voices has to be probed, examined, and amplified.

There may be, and most often are many more reasons for the customer to buy wrapped around an unmet emotional need. A pricing concession doesn’t address that hurt – at all. By digging into the objection, tremendous value can be created for both parties.

In the next section we briefly sketch three strategies which might be useful in satisfying the emotional needs behind the objection, and by doing so you can create more value for your customer and yourself.

Three strategies to satisfy objections

A reality of professional selling is that customers buy people, not products.

That fact makes your credibility as a salesperson critical in the trust calculation made by your prospect. If they buy you, you can make effective recommendations.

Here we propose three key strategies to achieve greater credibility when encountering objections, i.e. un-met emotional needs:

1. Dig-in: Digging into an objection can improve the success of your deal for you and your customer. Remember, we’re not advocating that you become stubborn or antagonistic; dig into the objection. A lot of times this is called probing, but when considering objections as unmet emotional needs, it is very important to examine the objection to look for the prospect’s own personal need.

The response, “we’re not budgeted for that much,” when dug into shouldn’t increase your understanding of the budgeting process. Instead, it should highlight the prospect’s personal and emotional stake in the budget. Addressing these personal emotional needs is a key to building your credibility.

2. Wear-down: Another strategy involves wearing down resistance. This strategy is appropriate when your antenna tells you that the emotional need is to “get a discount.” This sort of emotional need is satisfied when the customers can point to a “deal” when defending the transaction to themselves or others.

If your gut tells you digging in will just get more hammering on price, then your best option is to absorb the negativity. Let your prospect run the string out without interrupting him to overcome the objection. In fact, we would advocate engaging the prospect with amplification questions. We like this one: “Tell me more about why my price is too high.”

Once the prospect has used up some energy, ask more questions that probe and provoke other objections so you can build more value before you get back to price. After all, it is better that you get all the other objections out in front of you, than have them remain nipping at your heels after a price concession. Once all of the objections are there, in plain view, you can deal with them and build value with them.

Stop, ask, absorb, and provoke.

Getting a hold of some negative energy can improve your close rate. Furthermore, when a prospect is expressing negative emotions, you have the best opportunity to build your value proposition with strategy 1.

3. Re-frame: An alternative option involves doing some repositioning. With this strategy you re-frame the discussion as one that is not aimed at getting a sale. Instead, you can position your role in the process as aimed at helping the customer make a good decision—for them. Keep in mind, that when attempting this strategy you must be genuine.

Being genuine is critical!

If you adopt a consultative approach, you can’t position only your own product/solution. You have to position your competitors’ offerings as well.

Doing things this way makes you an industry expert, with superior credibility in whatever you are promoting as a category (see the video on our homepage). To be sure, compared to your customers you are most likely an expert, even though you’ve only been promoting one solution – yours.

We would urge you to think differently, and sell solutions that fit the high value customer.

If your sales career involves a constant fight over high value customers, you should become a valued resource to those customers. Such a high value sales rep sells high value customers every solution they buy, independent of which vendor it comes from. If you have the stomach to recommend a competitor’s solution, openly, honestly and correctly, you can become a high value consultant. You’ll earn more sales too.

In Conclusion

Objections are going to happen. We have given you three strategies to create value from these objections and enhance your credibility in the sales process.

Each strategy is designed to be most effective in particular situations, but overall we challenge you to adopt the third strategy—reframe. Contingent upon the type of sales task you are facing, reframing can create a great deal of long term success, especially in complex and difficult industries. As with any sales technique, it is up to you use it to create value for your customers, and company – in that order.