Tool Box
Issue No. 24 - August/September 2005
Secrets of how to handle objections
by Craig Stubing
Sam was a wise and experienced salesperson who was often asked the question “What is the best way to deal with objections?”
Sam’s response to this question was always “If you really want to know I can help you – grab a piece of paper and let’s talk”.
“If you want to be good at handling objections there are three points you need to remember.
The first is that many salespeople unwittingly provoke objections. They do this by making ill-conceived and inappropriate recommendations to their prospective customers because they are ignorant or insensitive to their customer’s needs and wants.
Sometimes this comes from not asking sound questions of their customer in order to understand their customer better. Other times salespeople simply don’t listen to their customer.
It follows therefore that a lot of objections can be avoided by simply asking sound questions of your customers, listening to the answers and using the knowledge gained to create recommendations that your customers find easy to say “Yes” to.
The second point to remember is that not all objections are sincerely held; by that I mean that customers sometimes try to play games with salespeople. One of the games is that of offering an insincere objection just for the fun of seeing how the salesperson goes at handling it.
If the salesperson goes OK with the first objection the customer will offer another; and then another. This may be fun for ...
