QUOTE OF THE WEEK Drop the idea of 'having it all.' That's an impossible standard for anybody. Arianna Huffington, Cofounder of The Huffington

OBJECTION HANDLING TECHNIQUES Team Meeting 28th August 2017

INTRODUCTION Objections in sales happen when customers try to break the sales process. Often customers show reasons why they are not going to buy. A bad seller will become disappointed when such an objection arises and will make mistakes that will not allow the deal to be closed. Off course it is possible to move to another client and sell only when no sales objections appear, but it is not wise.

HOW TO HANDLE OBJECTIONS

1. Be Prepared Do as much preparation as you can before you start selling. Try to analyse the objections that your customers usually have and categorize these objections. After that you should come up with several answers or tactics that you can use in order to handle each sales objection.

2. Active Listening Your first aim is showing your customers that you empathize them and that you really care about what bothers them. Even if you already know what the objection is and how to handle it, don’t try to interrupt your customers. In contrast you should use active listening and show that you are very interested in what your customers are saying and that you will try to help them.

3. Thank Most of sellers treat objections as a bad phenomenon that will harm the opportunity to close the deal. When customers object they give us a chance to win the competition. All your competitors will get the same questions and objections from these customers and who give the best answers will win the competition and make more sales. Therefore, you should thank your customers for the objection because this means that you have been shortlisted.

4. Agree and Argue If the objection is reasonable you should give some arguments against it and support the sale. However, you should make it softer by agreeing with the objection before giving your reasons against it. If you show that you understand your customers, they will be more likely to understand you.

5. Deny With some sales objections you can not and should not agree. If you are sure that your customer builds the objection on personal assumptions you can deny this objection. You should feel the right situation when you can apply this technique. Straight denial will show that you are very confident in what you are saying and it will change the customer opinion about the issue.

6. Clarify Often it is hard to understand the actual sales objection you have to handle because some customers objections are very vague. In this case you should not guess, because it will be very harmful if you start handling an objection that you are not sure exists. If you do so you will show that you don’t understand your clients and that there is no rapport between you. Moreover, you may mistakenly bring to the discussion new issues that were not important for the client.

7. Express the Objection If you are sure that some objections will be expressed you can express them by yourself. This is a great technique that makes your customers more favourable to your arguments. When your customers express objections they perceive the objections as their property and they try to protect it because this is normal for the human nature. So, you will be in a situation where you are not on the same side with your customers as you are protecting opposite points.

8. Reprioritize Many objections are very subjective because customers base them on their individual system of prioritization. For example, for some people quality is more important than price and they may express their concerns about the quality without considering the lower price. Here you can try to change their priorities by pointing to strong sides of your offer.

9. Accept It And Carry On At some point you can notice that some clients continue objecting over and over again even though you have already addressed all of these objections. If this is the case you should accept it and move on to other clients. It is not profitable investing all your time and efforts into dealing with sales objections of just one customer while there are many other customers waiting for your time.

10. If You Fail Ask Why You can’t win every sale and sometimes your customers will refuse to buy even after you tried to handle their objections using all of the previous techniques. Don’t let them go without asking why they decided not to buy from you. Learn from this situation as much as you can and adjust your tactics of handling sales objections for your future sales.