Episode #92: Handling Buyer Objections In Business In Japan

You would expect that salespeople would hear a lot of objections from buyers, particularly the same objections and therefore would be pretty good at handling them? Well that actually isn’t the case. In some cases, the salespeople imagine they can drive the process by force of will and by pushing the buyer to change their mind. This is ridiculous anywhere, but especially so, here in Japan. Or they want to argue with the buyer, outmaneuver them, outwit them, some how trick them into buying. Again ridiculous.

Japan is a very risk averse culture and the objections are important to the buyer, to get a surety of making a low risk buying decision. The buyers are salaried employees who don’t want to see any decision they make, coming back to haunt them and negatively impacting their ride up through the ranks. The easiest way to do that is to take no new decisions (like buying from you).

An objection is like the headline in a newspaper. It is very concise, but there is a long article explaining what that headline is all about. When we hear that objection headline, we need to get the full story in order to be able to successfully deal with that objection. There is no point hearing the objection and then answering what you second guess the point may be. It is a bit like at school, when you get the essay topic and you write your answer only to discover that is not what the teacher was after. We have to be sure what the buyer is after before we attempt to answer the objection. Don’t answer what you think might be the problem, ask them before you say anything.

I was at an event recently, sitting next to a Japanese Sales Director and I asked him how he handled objections. His answer nearly had me falling off my chair in shock. He said whenever he meets an objection, he drops the price by 20%. I was mentally calculating what that meant, because he had told me there were ten salespeople in the team. So ten people, dropping the price by 20% every year, for 5 years amounts to a diabolically large number. There is no need for that, I told him, which was a new concept in his case.

He was dropping the price because he didn’t know what to do. What he should have been doing was questioning the objection. He should have been asking the buyer why they held that view? If they say the price is too high, we need to ask them why they think the price is too high. Remember, the price is too high is only the headline – what is in the main body of the article?

In another example, I had that exact reaction from a client. When I questioned why they thought the price was too high, they said because the amount exceeded their budget allocation for training for that quarter. So I asked what if we could spread that investment over two quarters, would that help? They said yes, that would be fine. So the real objections was timing, not price, but if I had just dropped my price by 20%, I would never have known that.

Also when people give their objection, we have to be thinking, is this really the objection? It is like the iceberg metaphor. What they say is the bit above the waterline, but the real objection is out of sight, underwater. We do this ourselves when we are out shopping. We see a nice suit, check the price, then take a deep breath because it is too expensive for us. When the clerk asks us about buying the suit we don’t say, “well I have been too unsuccessful so far in my career to be able to afford an expensive suit like this one”. No, we talk about that bit above the waterline. We don't like the colour or the pattern or whatever, but not the real reason.

So when we get an objection, we need to keep asking if there any other points and keep asking if there are any other points, until we have flushed out some of the issues. We then ask them to rank these issues in priority order and the most pressing objection is the one we answer. Often all the others disappear, once we handle the main one.

If the objection is a game breaker then that is it. You can’t force the buyer by force of will and badgering them to buy. Leave that sales call and go and spend time with someone you can properly serve, don’t waste your most valuable resource – time.

Don’t argue with the buyer because they may not be a buyer today, but one day they may buy. Leave the door open. You may find that you can do a deal in the future, so don’t burn your bridges over one deal and don’t be remembered as a pushy pain.