As a sales person, no matter how experienced or how amazing your product is, you’re always going to run into objections.
…”Your price is too high”…
…”Your competitors product looks better”…
…”You can’t do this, you can’t do that”…
It’s a way of life for the professional sales person and believe it or not, something you should never have to worry about.
No matter your product, your service, your industry, your location, there is always a finite number of objections for what you are selling.
And although the total amount of objections a prospect or customer is likely to throw at you will vary, there still tends to be some that transcends all possibilities.
But again, their objections are finite and once you prepare yourself for that finite number, you’ll be leagues ahead of the rest.
So read on to see some of the most common objections any sales persons will get.
The Objections We All Get
When you think about it I’m sure you can come up with a quick list of objections you’ve heard often from your prospects.
Price for example probably tops the list. No matter your price point, even relative to your competitors, there always seems to be an objection to how much your product is priced at.
You could be the least expensive and they’d still want a better deal.
Objections like this are the common ones. A few more examples include:
- Capabilities
- Appearance
- Timing/Delivery
- Relationships
Capabilities
This sort of objection will likely encompass the functionality of your product.
For example, someone who is interested in property management software might look at a competitors system and give the objection, clearly favoring MRI Software (shameless plug) , that their system does not have user based dashboards.
To be honest just as our software has capabilities others don’t, so do theirs have capabilities ours don’t.
Not to say one is better than the other based solely on their capabilities or that every capability is needed by every user, but objections can easily be centered around the capabilities of your product.
…”it doesn’t have this”…
…”it has too much of this”…
… “if I can’t do this with it then it’s not going to work”…
To give you another example of life when I was selling polybags I often came across the objection that our plastic bags weren’t biodegradable.
When this happened I’d often refer to them to a article I had written on the Poly Bag Pro site I created. The article is called Is It Better For Plastics To Be Recyclable Or Biodegradable? And gave a practical view of the strengths of being recyclable over biodegradable.
Looks Do Matter
The visual appeal of a product can have an impact on objections too.
Some CFOs prefer red, some CEOs like blue. By nature I prefer orange.
Ascetic appeal compared to other offerings, although not usually a deal breaker, can still have a dramatic effect on the outcome once you get past the objections.
Henry Ford once said “You can get the Model T in any color you want. So long as it’s Black”.
Remember that the look and the feel of your product will have an impact on your sales process. If you held an old flip phone next to the newest iPhone. Which do you think would garner more attention? The latest and greatest of iPhone of course.
Don’t discount the power of visual appearance with your product and don’t forget about your competitors as well.
Simply be prepared to have a response ready when the time comes.
Timing & Delivery “I need it next week”
This always starts a fun conversation. You’re in front of a customer, your product is a month away from full production, and they want it next week. What do you do?
In my opinion this is one of the hardest objections to overcome. The reason being that you are now competing with Father Time. And he likes things to take only as long as they need too, no more, no less.
This was especially true when I was in the polybag manufacturing industry. It took time to produce the material, the film, and then the bags. There was only so much you could rush a process before the integrity of the product is lost.
Relationships
You may come across this more often in certain fields like insurance or personal finance and real estate. They’ll mention that their brother is in the business and they wouldn’t think of going with anyone else.
Or in my case I had a prospect who had been working with “Chris” over at Yardi and he had no intention of moving from his services.
This is where your experience will come into play. If your experience exceeds their brothers, tell them. If you think their brother will help them make a 5% return on investment while you can make them 12%, let them know.
When family is involved as a business vendor it’s often because they are just starting out.
Don’t make the mistake of letting your customer make the mistake of going with an inexperienced sales rep. Explain to them some of the things that could go wrong and is likely to go wrong with a green rep.
Hope that helps.
~ Johnny Bravo
Image courtesy of Kittisak / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Great post, Johnny! Thanks for sharing these valuable things. So hat, end of the day - i think it all boils down to LISTENING to your clients? 😀