Identifying Objections

There are two basic lines of thinking in sales training and in sales literature. One is that objections don’t actually exist and if you are hearing them it just means that you did not do a good enough job selling so it’s time to return to discovery and presentation. Another line of thinking is that no matter how much you do right, you are going to get objections. Every client will have objections, and you have to prepare for them; I’ve seen 4-step plans, 5-step plans, and 7-step plans, and everything under the sun.

So which is it? Prepare yourself for a disappointing answer from yours truly. Both are right and both are wrong.

Both are right because it is true that sellers who do a great job with discovery, ask the right open ended questions, and do the right kind of follow up, will open up conversations that cover most potential objections. These objections can be discussed in discovery, when the seller is in control, and are less likely to be raised again as formal objections later on, when the seller is not in control. At the same time, new buyers can enter the mix, new information can be presented and focused on, and people can change the way they think about things over time. Plus, we are human, so it is possible that not everything gets covered in discovery and presentation. For these reasons, it is entirely possible to do most things right and still have objections come up towards the end of a deal cycle, so it is important to have a plan for how to deal with them.

Both are wrong because, although some trainers and writers may take buyer mentality and behavior into consideration, neither of these high level summaries of the matter take these factors into account. Basically, what this means is that objections exist because buyers are independent people, and the way we deal with them is important, whether it is informally, early in the process or more formally, later in the process.

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More to the point, not all objections are the same, and identifying the nature of an objection is key when it comes to dealing with it. There are real objections that actually express a true reservation about the solution, the value equation or the situation, but there are also a number of other kinds of objections that are not about solutions and are sometimes more innocuous than real objections, but can sometimes be more insidious.

Objections

The first type of objections are real objections. They express a true reservation about your solution, it’s fit for the problem, the situation, or the value equation. These objections are real, and they tell you that you need to return to the process of discovering more about the problem and ideal outcome before talking more about your solutions and how they can help. These objections come from a real place where the buyer is trying to genuinely make the right decision, and regardless of if they are leaning towards buying or not, a real objection is still a real objection and should be dealt with. I will be writing more in future posts on handling real objections.

Social Dynamics

Social dynamics based resistance is when a buyer resists you or your solution due to social expediency, and not due to the deal components themselves. These can be things like the buyer wanting to show an internal group that he is being tough on the vendor and preparing to negotiate so that he can look good in front of a boss or team. This can also include situations where the buyer does not have enough power within the organization to make a decision and rather than admitting that, they prefer to object so that there is a reason the deal doesn’t get done other than their lack of power. There are a number of other social and political dynamics that can cause resistance. It is important for sellers to identify these types of resistance, and understand why they are happening, because the solution to the problem is almost always to change the makeup of the individuals that are in the room for the next meeting. This sometimes means getting to new decision makers and sometimes it requires limiting participation, but if social dynamics is the problem then the dynamics themselves need to be changed.

Prospecting Resistance

Prospecting resistance seems like it would only happen in the early stages of a sales cycle, but as new people enter the mix, and as a cycle advances to new stages, prospecting resistance can pop back up. It usually manifests itself as resistance to meetings, and lack of commitment to events and venues of choice. This is essentially the client saying to you, “hey, I have other important things going on that are more of a priority right now, and I just don’t have time to deal with this at the moment”. This is partially a power play, but it is partially the ‘pre-programmed gatekeeper’ in their brain expressing resistance to something new. This is human nature and the way that we guard ourselves against having to exert mental energy to consider new things. These activities can be prospecting resistance, and they can also mean that the client is legitimately not interested. It is important for you to understand which is the case. Prospecting resistance can be handled by persistence and a focus on client problems.

Fear of Commitment

Fear of commitment is essentially the buyer finding a conceptual objection that sounds legitimate in order to slow the process down. Just like in relationships and other types of social interactions people are afraid of change and are especially afraid of rapid change. Sometimes resistance is just an effort to delay a process so that the buyer or the buying organization does not have to confront the fact that they have already decided that this is likely the right solution. They are legitimately scared of making the wrong decision, but don’t necessarily have a well founded reason why. But they are also scared of the perception of making a big decision too quickly and being blamed for making a hasty decision if it goes wrong. Fear of commitment resistance can be dealt with through urgency creation, patience, and sales process rigor.

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Those who argue that objection handling does not exist will tell you that objections are borne out of a failure on the part of the seller to adequately position the product or the solution. The argument essentially says that objections come from one of two places. One place is a buyer who wants to buy but has not been properly sold, and the other place is a buyer who does not want to buy but is not willing to confront the situation and be blunt with the seller. This means that the seller has created the environment for both types of apparent objections. In the first situation they have not sold well enough, and in the second they have failed to recognize an uninterested buyer.

There is a certain degree of truth to this as I mentioned above but it does not mean exactly what it seems to mean. It does not mean that objections don’t exist and it does not mean that we should not spend time thinking about how to deal with objections. It’s not that objections don’t exist per se, it is that they are a natural part of the conversation that is your job to stimulate. Objections can be good, and they are not a discrete part of the sales process. Of course, it is better to draw them out on your own terms earlier in the sales process, than have them come out in more surprising ways later on in the process, but regardless of the timing, they are still objections, and they still need to be identified and handled. The point is that the only difference between discovery and objections is that discovery is a conversation on the seller’s terms that addresses objections, while objections, as we are used to thinking about them, are brought up by the buyer on the buyer’s terms and demand that the seller to address them.

It is your job, as a seller, to ask the scary and challenging questions, and confront the possible situations that could kill a deal because if you don’t do it, a doomed deal will still get killed, but you will spend much more of your time and resources before you find that out. The scary questions bring about real objections on your terms so that you can deal with them, and perhaps more importantly, they bring about the objections that are unresolvable so that you can move on and spend your time and resources on deals that you can close.

Not All Objections Are Created Equal