It is critical for success to be good at handling objections in selling. The reason is that objections are guaranteed to come up throughout your sales cycle. Following are three objection handling options.

 

1. Comply with the Objection

The option to comply with the objection is always there to agree or give in to the objection.

Importantly, you need to realize that, at some point, complying with the prospect’s objection is the best way to go. At this point, we stand to cause damage to the level of rapport with the prospect by continuing to try to pursue other objection-handling options. You don’t want to use complying as your first objection response every time because that will lead you to minimize your sales results. One approach to avoid that is by using two to three attempts to defuse or get around the objection before complying.

 

2. Overcome the Objection

In addition, another option when handling objections in selling is to overcome the objection by trying to defuse or resolve it.

Overcoming an objection is possible, but this can be challenging because it involves changing a prospect’s mind. There are certain times when trying to overcome an objection makes sense, and there are times when it doesn’t.

Trying to change someone’s mind is challenging, and to be effective at doing this, you will need a little time to plead your case. This results in when you try to overcome an objection during a cold call, there can be a very low probability direction. Simply, there is not the time and attention from the prospect that you need to defuse the objection effectively.

Trying to overcome becomes a good option for handling objections in selling when you’re in more formal meetings and discussions with prospects. An example of this is if you are giving a demonstration or presentation and an objection arises, you then have the time and attention that you need from the prospect to face the objection head-on and give a good attempt at resolving their concerns.

 

3. Redirect the Objection

Redirecting the objection is a third option for handling objections in selling. This is not to give in to the objection and not try to resolve it.  It is more in order to redirect the discussion in a new direction. Following is an example of that:

Prospect: “We are already using something for that.”

Salesperson: “Oh great. Do you mind if I ask what you all are using today?”

In this example, we didn’t comply and move forward. In addition, we didn’t try to overcome the objection to try to convince the prospect that they should change. We did keep the conversation going by asking a question that changed focus from the objection but stayed in a related area. An ideal tactic when facing objections is redirecting. Simply, there isn’t time to effectively deal with and respond directly to the objection at that time. You can improve your ability to keep discussions going and help to improve results by redirecting.

SalesScripter provides web-based sales training to help with hand objections in selling.