Episode #208: Virtual Selling - Handling Objections

Most buyers are hurting at the moment, as entire industries are under assault and many of the remainder are in a perilous state. The common American style of aggressive salesperson reaction to pushback from buyers just doesn’t work in Japan in normal times, let alone now. We need to recognise this when we are sitting in front of the buyer, when we are both online and we need to change our mindset. We hopefully will have thought about the possible objections from the buyer ahead of time and will have dealt with these already in the solution provision stage. There may still be concerns and we will have flushed these out with our trial close.

We have to see objections are good to have. The worst thing is to have no objections and no sale. There is nothing to work with in this situation. The buyer is hiding their objections because they have decided not to buy, but don’t want the aggravation of the seller arguing with them up about it or being annoying. Getting an objection then is good news, not as good as getting a ”yes”, but still giving us something to apply our sales skill to.

We know there is never a “no” answer. It is just a “no” at this time in the market, in this budget cycle, for this offer, in this current context. We have to see the objection as a signal that we didn’t do a good enough job educating the buyer about the value our solution will bring. Remember, we made the decision for them to buy. We looked through our solution line up and selected a solution to match their issue. If we didn’t have the right match we would have moved on to find a buyer we could serve.

There is a structure we can follow to make sure we are going to be able to help the buyer who is in doubt still. In this order we need to listen, cushion, question, provide evidence of value and then evaluate their reaction. Listening sounds easy except that most salespeople are not skilled at really listening. They jump around between pretending to listen and selective listening. Pretend listening is going on because their brains are on fire with what they will say next. They have stopped listening to the client, because they believe they know what the buyer is thinking. The selective listening is where they pick up on key words, which then drives them down a road to a solution. Their seller brain switches over to how they are going to explain that to the buyer. Again, they have stopped listening to the client. We have to suspend these two proclivities and go up the scale to attentive and proactive listening, especially for what is not being said.

If we hear a “no” we tend to get more energetic and forceful with the buyer. This then makes them dig in more and they tend to stop listening to us as well. What we need is the chance to be heard, so we use a cushion. A cushion is a mental breaker switch between the “no” and what we are going to say. The cushion’s job is to open up the buyer’s brain to hear our ideas.

Positive cushions are great because they help the buyer to relax because they think they are not going to get into an argument with us. For example, if they say our price is too high we can say “Yes, you are right. It is very important to consider the financial health of the business when making new decisions”. Saying “yes, you are right” is always a recommended start to the conversation, because we are agreeing with them and their resistance is removed.

Now we have their mental guard lowered, we sweetly and softly ask for clarification. “May I ask why you say our price is too high?”. We are seeking more than the headline they have given us about pricing. We want the full accompanying article, supporting this frosty headline. This will release more information about their issue. A client told me our price was too high. When more information was released on why he thought that, it turned out the issue wasn’t the number, it was the timing of the payment that was the issue. If I had tried to argue with him, I would have never come up with a plan to split the payments to make it work for both of us.

When we were presenting our solution, we were guessing what they will value in our proposition. When we get to the objections stage, we now have a much better idea of the issue for them and whether we in fact do have a workable solution, which will be a win-win for both of us. This is massive progress. If we do have a solution, this is the point where we focus our evidence right on this point of importance to them.

To check if we are on the right track, we need to ask them to evaluate what they have just heard and give us some feedback. We can say, “How does that sound?”, and then shut up. We must not speak. Don’t elongate the point or add or adjust or get mealy mouthed about the wording. Just sit there in stone cold silence but smile. Let them speak, because we will learn more of value now than in the whole conversation to this point. This is the finish line of the marathon and we are centimetres from the result. Don’t blow it.