Everything has led up to this point. Marketing has spent money on the lead. Your SDR set the appointment. You spent an hour on the pitch. Now it’s time to ask for the close.
And you get your first objection …
“You know Cole, this sounds really good, but I want to take some time to think about it.”
Now, an amateur salesperson is going to respond with a statement. If they’re really bad, they’ll start by saying, “But …”
If they’re kinda bad, but not terrible, they’ll try to re-sell value from earlier in the call, “Bob, my product is going to solve your paint point. It’s great for x, y, and z reasons.”
Answering an objection with a statement creates confrontation. It feels like your bumping heads with your client. No sales are made this way.
Instead, respond to objections with a question.
And don’t forget to use an empathy statement before you even ask the question. Here are some examples of empathy statements:
- No worries.
- I totally understand.
- That makes sense to me.
- I appreciate you sharing that.
All together, it should sound like this:
“No worries, Bob! Remind me, when were you looking to get your project started?”
If you’ve qualified well, you already know the answer to this question because you asked about the client’s timeline earlier in the call. But you ask again anyway because:
1. It makes the conversation flow.
It gets the client talking at a time in the conversation that would otherwise be very awkward.
The client is usually emotional when they’re giving an objection. They’re scared about spending a lot of money. They’re nervous about upsetting the salesperson that has spent a lot of time with them on the phone. They’re stressed about the pain point that has caused them to be on the call in the first place.
The last thing you want to do as a salesperson is add more emotion to the conversation by creating confrontation / argument / anger with your client – this is what happens when you respond to objections with a statement.
2. It keeps the conversation going.
The client likely wants to get off the phone at this point. If that’s the case, hearing the salesperson talk more is not going to inspire them to stay on the phone longer. But everyone loves to talk, especially when it’s about themselves or their company. Make your question good enough that the client is happy and comfortable to continue the conversation.
3. It forces the client to remind themselves of their pain point, in their own words.
If you’ve pitched well, your client might even bring up some of the value that you mentioned earlier in the call in response to your question. They’ll make the value statements for you!
4. It gives you another turn in the conversation.
Question, statement, question, statement – this is the natural flow of conversation. Have you ever watched two self-absorbed people try to have a conversation? One person talks about themselves, then the other person talks about themselves. Two boats passing in the night. It’s painful to watch.
But when you ask someone a question, and then listen respectfully for a while, it feels natural that you can take a turn to talk. The client might even ask you a question in return. If so, this is your opportunity to re-sell value and ask for the close again.
In summary, the process looks like this:
- Ask for sale
- Objection
- Ask question
- Listen
- Re-sell value
- Ask for sale
Jordan Belfort calls this process “looping,” where you loop back to asking for the sale over and over again until the client buys. This seems aggressive, but if you follow this strategy correctly, the client won’t even notice you’ve asked for their credit card 4-5 times.
Anybody can close a deal when the client has already made up their mind to buy. But this is only 10% of sales, and somebody in marketing should really be the one getting paid commission for cases like these.
Sales isn’t about searching for yes’s. It’s about turning no’s into yes’s. And the only way to do this is by developing the skill of objection handling.