Objection Handling 101 - Part 1

Ever went into a key meeting thinking you are all set and half way through, someone raises an unexpected question and you are caught with a deer in the headlights stare? If you have, trust me you are not alone. All of us often get into situations where an unexpected objection throws us off the beaten track and then we struggle to regain composure and control over the situation. Often, a poorly handled objection can sink an otherwise well prepared meeting while a well handled one is often the turning point in your favor. A personal example. Early in my ERP selling career, we were selling to a switchgear company whose CIO was a grizzled veteran of the IT industry and I was not yet 30 years old. We had studied their issues and processes very well and had created what we thought was a great solution to their needs. The final presentation to the CIO and his peers in production and finance was going on. I thought we had nailed it but towards the end, the CIO looked at my manager and said, “This is great but I would find it a lot more compelling if Sundar had some grey hair.”. He then went on to mention how our competition had brought in a veteran from the electrical equipment industry who knew the issues and processes and best practices inside out and had impressed them with his track record. My boss and I were nonplussed as this was the last objection we had expected to hear. As you can imagine he and I yammered for a while about our solution being great and being used by others in the same industry but we lost the moment and the deal subsequently. In retrospect we thought of ways we could have handled the situation a lot better but that is like coming up with a stinging repartee today to the nasty comment someone made to you at last week’s party… Take heart though because not all situations are so sticky that they have to be managed in real time.

Knowing how to become an expert in handling objections is as you may have realized not easy and requires some detailing. So I am splitting this article into 2 parts. The first part will look at the common fallacies surrounding objection handling while part 2 will go into methods that have worked for me and others that I have observed.

Two quick comments. One, I use the term objection in the generic sense. The intervention in your flow can come from a comment or a query or a divergent viewpoint. Am clubbing all these various types of intervention into a common umbrella term i.e., “Objection”. Two, objections can come in any setting –when presenting to a customer or when talking in a larger event or when presenting in an internal management meeting etc. Whatever I am discussing in this 2 part article will in my opinion hold in all cases with some minor variations. On to part 1. The first step to become a master at handling objections is to dispel some common fallacies on the topic which have acquired the status of urban legends.

• An objection is not a disaster. Most people worry that if an unexpectedly tough question comes up, they are finished. Far from it. By raising the point, the person is doing you a massive favor! If they had bottled it up, do you think they would decide in your favor after you leave the room? If they raise an objection it is because you have kindled their interest and they feel involved in what you were saying. So don’t feel bad if you get hit with a zinger. I was once doing an ERP demo to a paper producer. The head of the evaluation committee all of a sudden said, “Sundar you have made things look easy these last 3 days (yes it was a 3 day demo!) but I don’t see how our people who have limited IT literacy could do most of what you showed. So I am not sure this is the solution for us.”. My heart initially sank as this was the most complex demo I had done up until then and this came from the head of the committee and that too at the fag end when I had limited time to correct anything done till then. Fortunately the years of experience kicked in and I managed the situation (more on that in part 2). Later they told me well after the deal was signed that their unease had been building up over the 3 days but not one person had wanted to raise the objection for fear of appearing dumb or IT illiterate. Had the point not come up, we would not have known this was a potential deal breaker.
• The next major fallacy is that all objections are equally important. Hardly the case again. Objections come from different people for very different reasons, not all of which are equally debilitating or even logical. So before you jump into try and retrieve the situation, take a deep breath and analyze the situation. I have seen 4 types of objections in my career and am describing them below. Think back a bit to your experiences and am sure you can map these 4 archetypes to the situations you have faced.

1. The senior most person in the room has a basic objection like the one I faced in the previous point. These objections will seldom be related to a tactical point but will be potential deal breakers as they would pertain to the basic premise of your presentation / demo / whatever. You have no choice but take these very seriously and try to address them immediately as you may not get another audience with this person.
2. Some of the next level people are raising concerns that typically are more specific to their domain. For example in a CRM demo I was doing to a pharma company, the sales lead of a division raised a quesstion, “How do you ensure that data that reps from my LOB are adding to the system can’t be seen by reps from another LOB?”. This was not a deal breaker but a genuine concern as reps in this industry are very territorial, literally. Before answering such questions, you ought to consider some basic questions. More on these in part 2 but for now, please note that in this case, you usually will have a little more leeway in addressing the issue as these objections tend not to be deal breakers.
3. Someone more junior is asking what is clearly a planted question either on behalf of someone else in the room (who does not want to show his / her hand) or on behalf of a competitor. How you handle this objection depends on your reading of the situation. Sometimes they can be deal breakers if not handled well but can be pivotal to your success if you handle it well. I had this situation when a person in the room during a demo repeatedly kept saying (even out of context) that our solution was too expensive. This was clearly a plant by our competition as the person asking the question was too junior to have to be bothered about the cost as the project owner whose budget was going to be affected was also in the room but was not asking the same question. My then manager calmly handled it by pointing out that what we were offering was a way more comprehensive solution. So any comparison that did not take that difference into consideration was bound to be an apples to oranges variety. The project owner was irritated by the question and motioned for us to move on. Clearly the questioner was either not too popular or was seen as a time waster. If however we had tried to get into a detailed price comparison on the spot (as some reps are wont to), we would have lost the interest of the decision maker and possibly the deal well. We later won the deal at a reasonable premium.
4. Lastly, there is that smart ass who wants to throw you off your pace just so show others how smart he is. He has come prepared with these questions and will try to get them in as early as possible to prove who is smarter and to not let you fall into your stride. I have seen this so often especially in cases where we are presenting to a senior audience in companies where the bosses feel bringing in their entourages makes them look important. There will be some pipsqueak in the entourage who seldom gets to see this senior person. So he would love to use the situation to score some brownie points at your expense while others in the room who presumably would have had similar experiences with the questioner would be rolling their eyes even as the senior person evinces no interest or limited interest at best because he is busy seeing the bigger picture. If handled well, these objections can even provide some minor comic relief. Even if not handled so well, usually people in the room will be rolling their eyes irritated by the smart ass so you don’t really lose much unless you really make a mess of your response. I was in the room when we were doing an ERP presentation to a mixed audience. A smartass related a detailed issue they were facing due to some lacuna in their current homegrown system and wanted to know how we would prevent a recurrence in our ERP. My team member who was doing the presentation handled it beautifully. He first pointed out that the issue was coming because they had built an unnecessarily complicated process with additional twists which were not really adding any value. However the questioner dug in his heels and insisted they would want to repeat the same process in the ERP. My team member then politely pointed out that if the company was going to spend millions of dollars to merely repeat what they were already doing, then why bother at all. That got some laughs and the questioner retreated with an injured air into his shell as no one else was supporting him.

• The next major fallacy is that you need to answer every question on the spot and prove you can think on your feet. That again is not the case. Questioners, if they are in decision making roles and are reasonable (and at least most of them usually are), will realize that often you may not have all the context so you may not be able to answer every question. Also, a rapid response without full context may make you look cocky or unprofessional at times. So long as you log the open issues and commit to a time by which you will get a response, in most cases it is okay. Of course if it is of the first type of objection listed above, you have to answer on the spot failing which you may not get a second chance. Those occasions however are few and far in between. Most objections fall into categories 2,3 and 4 where an immediate response is not always required. Yes sometimes, you will be confident of what you are going to say and may want to do that because it helps minimize the number of open issues or maybe because the issue if not handled on the spot will resurface later in the session etc. Other than such cases, taking the time to come up with a considered and complete response is usually worth the trouble. A related fallacy is that objection handling is somehow a magical inborn personality trait / art form that can’t be learned. That is bunkum to say the least. I have personally seen and coached people who have gone from deer in the headlight types to experts in this regard. It is a science like a lot of the other topics I have written about such as “Story Telling” or “Handling Debates Better” etc. It can be learned if you are willing to put in the effort and have an open mind.

In summary, the 3 main fallacies are assuming objections are a bad thing to happen, assuming every objection has to handled the same way and lastly that you have to think on your feet and answer all the queries ex tempore or that you can’t learn objection handling. These are the main types I have come across but am sure you may have others you can relate to so please to share the same. Likewise for the 4 types of objections. In part 2, I will focus on how to handle each of the 4 types of objections and some tricks of the trade common to all types of objections. I hope these thoughts help you become better at handling objections.