How to Overcome Objections & Stalls

Face facts! Objections and stalls are a fact of life for anyone involved in sales. They can either get you off your path or can be viewed as merely a detour in the road that must be acknowledged. By doing so effectively you can ultimately reach your destination.

 Objections can actually be viewed as the prospect’s attempt to gain:

• More information
• More confidence in what you are offering
• More selling points (that they can present to other people involved in making the decision)

In other words, their objection may simply be their way of asking you to better explain what makes you different and why doing business with you will equate to some sort of improvement in their situation.

If you can change your mindset from viewing objections and stalls as a total block to your sales success, and use some proven success techniques, you have a good chance winning the business. 

Here are some how-to’s for handling the situation:

1)  Take a deep breathe. Many sales people (and especially those who are not “traditional” sales people) get thrown off course by objections. After all, most of us were brought up to take “no” as an answer, and to not nag and continue to ask for what we want again and again. Well, sales is different. A “no” may simply be a veiled request for more information and if you immediately retreat, you may be backing out of a potential sale.

2)  There are some tried and true “steps” for overcoming objections. The following strategy has proven to be effective at re-opening the sales dialogue.

It goes like this:

A) Mr. Prospect, I understand how you feel (or say, I understand what you are saying)

Why say this: This statement acknowledges their hesitancy and shows that you are listening respectfully rather than tuning them out

B)  We have other clients that have felt the same way

Why say this: This makes them feel more comfortable that they are not the only people that have reacted in this manner. It helps you to maintain rapport and to not make them alienated and anxious to terminate the conversation.

C)  What they found is INSERT BENEFITS STATEMENT & RE-SELL

Why say this: This is your opportunity to RESTATE your VALUE PROPOSITION. You’ve earned the right to resell because you patiently acknowledged and responded to their objection with a benefits statement.

The pivot point and critical moment in dealing with an objection is what you do AFTER the re-sell. You can’t just stop there. By trailing off with your re-sell statement you are leaving the prospect confused and unsure as to what they need to do next.

Rather, you should CONTROL the course of the dialogue by asking a question – preferably one to which you will get a positive response or at least know what the answer will be!

So that’s it—a simple roadmap for how to handle and hopefully, overcome objections.

But what those folks that don’t really give you an objection, nor do they say “yes” or “no”, but simply put off making any sort of decision at all 

Yup, these are the folks that are stalling and handling them effectively will help you to close more business.

When dealing with stalls the most important thing you should do---in fact the thing you MUST do, is to uncover the real reason for the stall. Until you know the reality of the situation behind the stall you cannot possibly overcome it.

And in order to find out the true reason for the stall you must utilize some effective probing:

“Can you tell me more about ______”

“How are you currently handling _____”

“What’s your feeling about_______”

By using open-ended questions you will encourage dialogue and eliminate the shut-down you may encounter when using closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”, making it extremely difficult to get the real reason for the hesitation.

Some stalls are entirely valid. For instance, an accounting firm might stall about making a decision for an office renovation because the decision comes smack in the middle of tax season. Their plate is full, their minds are distracted and a stall about making a decision is entirely valid.

But some stalls beg for clarification:

“I have to think about it”

“I’m not certain. Let me talk about it with_____”

“Call me in a few weeks/months”

“Not now/maybe later”

These stalls provide you with little or no insight into the prospect’s “real” situation and require you to probe for more insight:

“Can you please clarify what exactly you need to think about”

“What’s going to be different next week, next month”

“How about you and I speaking with ____ together”

It might seem that these types of responses might be a bit aggressive but remember:

--You can’t lose something you don’t have and since you haven’t won the job, you can’t be at risk 

--Their stall might be based on the fact that they don’t see enough value. They’re not really sold. By uncovering their need for more information you put yourself in a better position to make the sale.

No one likes to deal with objections and stalls but they are a very real part of the sales dance. Get used to it, get comfortable with it and by employing these techniques you’ll find yourself in the driver’s seat and winning more jobs than you ever though you could.