When you are in the initial contact step of the sales process, there is a very high probability you will face some type of sales objection. But four main objections will come up again and again:

I am not interested.
We do not have budget/money right now.
We already use somebody for that.
We are not looking to make any changes right now.

In this video, we will show how to use the conversation-based sales approach to get around some of these and other common sales objections.

 

Product Selling Objection Responses

Let’s first look at how a product selling salesperson might respond to these objections. These salespeople will typically try to overcome the sales objection by responding by trying to make the prospect more interested in the product. For example, if the prospect says they are not interested, this salesperson will try to say something that makes them interested.

While that sounds like a logical approach, it is has a low probability of success because of these factors:

  • Prospects are likely not in buying mode
  • There is a mismatch between what the salesperson wants to talk about and where the prospect is at
  • You only have a couple of minutes, and that is not enough time to change the prospect’s mind
  • You do not need to overcome and resolve the objection

 

Conversation-Based Objection Handling

The really cool thing about applying the conversation-based selling approach to your objection responses is that you actually make the prospect’s objections invalid. When the prospect says, “I am not interested,” if you are trying to sell the product, that is a valid reason to stop talking. And you indeed need to say something to make them interested in order to get around their position that they are not interested.

But if you are selling the conversation, many of the prospect’s objections become invalid. If the prospect says, “We do not have budget right now”, that is a valid reason to stop talking if you are selling the product. But if you are simply trying to talk more, the fact that the prospect does not budget is not a valid reason to stop talking.

You can actually build your objection response around this mismatch by responding so that you educate the prospect on what you are trying to do and the process you are trying to work through by saying something like:

I understand. I am not reaching out to sign you up or sell you anything today.

I am just trying to have a first conversation to learn more about you and share a little information about us.

That way, when you are ready to make some changes, you will know more about us and the options available to you.

 

Deflecting Sales Objections

That objection response tries to deflect the objection instead of trying to overcome the objection. Instead of trying to change the prospect’s mind, we try to bounce off of the objection to keep the conversation going. You can also deflect these objections with your building blocks. For example, you can deflect these and many other objections to your pain questions by saying something like:

I understand. I am not reaching out to sign you up or sell you anything today.

If I could ask you real quick, how do you feel about the amount of leads your reps are generating?

You could also deflect to your current state questions with a response like:

I understand. I am not reaching out to sign you up or sell you anything today.

If I could ask you real quick, do you provide any type of sales script or sales playbook to your reps?

We hope this gives you some new ideas for how to respond and get around sales objections!