NFIB

Overcoming Objections in Sales, Part I
03/ 22/ 2002

Salespeople constantly face resistance to the entire sales process. Learning to overcome that resistance is the key to a successful sales career. Almost every sales presentation involves at least one main customer objection that needs to be addressed before any true progress can take place. In today's and next week's articles, Jeffrey Moses shows how to spot a main objection and discusses ways to overcome it.

From the very start of a sales meeting, the salesperson should always be on the lookout for the potential client's main objection, the most important reason that the person might have for not completing the sale.

When selling in person or over the phone, the salesperson has the chance to delve deeply into the potential customer's needs, likes and dislikes. But it's often difficult to dig out the customer's main objection. Short of asking, "What's the one single thing that's stopping you from buying today?" (a question that can lead to a dead end), a salesperson needs to use a blend of experience and intuition to determine what's really holding up the sale.

When selling through letters or the Internet, a salesperson needs to continually think about objections to address. Every paragraph should be written with this in mind. Since letters and the Internet usually do not involve a direct conversation, experience of former sales presentations becomes important. To write a good sales letter, a salesperson almost always needs to be highly experienced, not only in the specific field of the customer, but in overall sales.

A veteran writer of sales letters recently wrote an introductory letter for a large manufacturing company that was contacting dealers with the proposal of expanding their lines. The company manufactured very high-end equipment, which would, as stated in the letter: "expand your sales potential and enhance your company's profitability." But even with that, the writer foresaw a main objection that the dealers might have when reading the letter. Would they not balk at having to train their sales staff about the new equipment? Certainly many would, so the writer inserted a direct statement assuring the dealers that a sales rep from the company would teach the dealer's associates about the equipment, at no additional charge.

Often, a potential client's main objective is personal, which forces the salesperson to not only address the technical objections, but also to consider the client's psychology.

Because sales is as much an art as it is a science, there are no set answers to how a salesperson can determine a customer's main objection. Each customer is different, and has certain needs that must be addressed. In next week's article, Jeffrey Moses continues by describing five common main objections.

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