Handling Sales Objections When You Are A Newbie

6 Common Types of Sales Objections You’ll Come Across If You’re a Newbie

In order to handle sales objections as a sales newbie, you need to understand what types of objections you are likely to come up against during your presentation. This means you need to ask questions which encourage your prospect to give you clear answers. Good listening skills, and a good understanding of your product or service inside out. You will likely come across 6 common types of objections when you are speaking to a prospect. These objections are Product, time, need, alternative source, bad experience and cost.

So what is a sales objection?

A sales objection could mean that the prospect you’re speaking to hasn’t yet decided to do business with you.

But don’t worry, no doesn’t always mean no.

It could actually mean that the person you’re speaking to, hasn’t been given enough information to make an informed decision.

When it comes to sales and selling whether face to face or over the phone, handling sales objections is one of the best skills you can learn.

In order to overcome and handle sales objections you need to understand what the objection really is.

That’s why it’s important that you ask open questions which give you a deeper understanding of the prospects requirements from your product or service.

You need to be an active listener, the answers your prospect provides may have clues to how they feel about your product or service.

It is also important that you understand how your product can benefit the person you’re speaking to.

So what are the 6 types of sales objections that you are likely to come across?

If you are unfortunate enough to encounter any one of these sales objections while you are pitching.

It could throw you off guard but if you have done your homework with your presentation.

You should have uncovered most of these sales objections before you present your price, proposal or solution

Let’s take a look at these 6 categories of sales objections in isolation and discuss how you can handle these objections with a bit of preparation.

The Time Sales Objection 

Have you ever jumped onto a presentation and the person in front of you has practically turned over an egg timer and told you that you only have 10 minutes?

Well, I have, and if you have a presentation that you know is gonna take longer than 10 minutes.

Then you need to rebook, don’t try and rush your process.

The customer needs to have been fully educated on your product before you leave even if they don’t buy……

Anything other than that and you are just chasing dust for the next couple of weeks, months or even years trying to get another appointment

In a nutshell, make sure you qualify the call first:

Before you begin your presentation. you could say

“Hi Mr Customer, my name is —— thank you for seeing me today to discuss the product/service with you, the presentation will take around about x minutes, is that ok with you?”

You can see a video below where I demonstrate overcoming the time sales objective.

The Product Sales Objection

The product objection is a strange objection to encounter, I mean if you think about it the customer has accepted your appointment.

You have obviously explained briefly to them what you are going to talk about but……

It still turns out to be the wrong product for them.

There are many reasons why this could happen

it could be too small, it may be too big.

It may not align with their needs.

An example of this is found in the payment terminal industry which is as cutthroat as any other direct sales operation.

Changes in technology mean that the terminals that are offered by the various companies can vary widely in terms of design, function and capability.

You can now get a payment terminal which links to a tablet, so you can take orders and which also doubles as a stock control system.

If the customer is looking for this kind of solution and you don’t have it, then the sale is lost before it started.

These customers are inaccessible to the competitors who don’t have this technological advancement.

One way to overcome this objection would be by simply asking any of the 3 questions below.

“Mr Customer, what does our product need to be able to do to integrate successfully with your business?"

“What would you like our product or service to achieve for you?”

“If you were to rate our product on a scale of 1/10, where would you say we are?”

You can see a video below where I demonstrate overcoming the product sales objective.

This leads nicely onto our next objection which is

The Alternative Source Sales Objection

Obviously, you would want a high score for your product or service but a low score may indicate that your prospect is comparing you to a competitor.

This is where you need to have done your homework, and this also depends as to what market your customer is in.

A competitive market means that you need to know who is offering what you’re offering and at what price and terms and delivery rates,  etc.

It is not extra work finding out this information, find out once then just update your database every 6 months.

The kind of questions you could ask around this would be:

“So tell me Mr Customer, do you have any other suppliers of this product or service, how do we compare to them?”

Depending on the answer this will tell you how you can improve your offering or value proposition.

Another great question is:

“So tell me Mr Customer what do you expect from us/me/we as a supplier”

The No Need Sales Objection

“Do I even need this?”.

You will never sell unless the customer has a need, or unless you can create a need.

How do you get a customer to want something after you have spoken to them?

Especially if you consider, that if they had never met you they would never in their, wildest dream of thought of using your product or service.

You can create a need by asking questions which relate to areas that your product or service can help them.

The answers they provide will allow you to educate them about how your product or service can help them.

And the best part is, you can do it in a none Salesy way.

If the person opposite you cannot appreciate what your product or service will do for them, then you will never ever stand a chance of getting the business.

To gauge whether a customer is on-board with you, look for signs of appreciation of what you’re saying.

Nodding, agreement, engagement in what you’re saying to them,  these are all good signs.

Some of the questions you could ask would be:

“Mr Customer, can you see how this product is going to save you time, money, hair loss, etc etc”

If the customer agrees with you then you are certainly on the right path.

You can see a video below where I demonstrate handling the no need sales objective.

The Bad Experience Sales Objection

This sales objection normally comes up early in the presentation, which is good as it allows you to firefight straight away.

A customers bad experiences can come about from any of number ways.

The main thing is, handling this sales objection early allows you to make a call whether to fight or flight.

Fight to mean extolling the virtues of your product and how it is going to solve all their problems and that cost is not an issue because of the great return on their investment.

Flight to mean, say your thanks, grab your coat and run.

You won’t close every presentation that you do.

But every presentation that you do will help you get better.

The Cost  Sales Objection

This is the one sales objection that you will come across the most, time after time.

Now if you have done your homework, you will know your parameters.

How high can you go on price?

How low should you go if you need to?

You also need to factor in the ROI for the customer.

Let’s look at an example of handling this sales objection

You are offering a marketing service which is more expensive than the competition.

Having done your homework you know who your competitors are they are and what they’re offering.

You also know that you can offer this customer something that the other company isn’t

This is your Unique positioning in the market place.

You also need to know what a new customer is worth to your potential customer in terms of

a) current acquisition methods and

b) cost per acquisition

they normally don’t know this, by the way, the most important thing is what is a new customer worth to them.

Let’s say it is £1000

Well if your service is £500 per month, you effectively need to demonstrate that you can get them, 1 new customer, a month from your services, everything else is just profit.

Let’s say for example that you were selling a cleaning product.

Again you have done your homework you know your competitor sells something similar.

Let’s say in this case that the only difference between your products is your delivery is 24 hours and the competitors are 72 hours.

The unique position in the market place is that you ensure that customers are never caught short on said product because you always turn around your deliveries in a quicker time

Handling sales objections with benefits will nearly always win when it comes to price, most people know if you buy cheap you buy twice.

I once got a contract where a customer agreed to spend 200% more for my product as it had a 10-year guarantee, as opposed to what he was buying, which only had a 1-year guarantee.

So How Do You Get Better At Handling Sales Objections?

Practice your presentation, find somebody who will listen and maybe even critique you.

If you can’t find somebody to help you do that…

Stand in front of a mirror and role play it out, it’s not perfect but you will get better.

Make sure you learn from the presentations that you are doing, because in my experience.

If you're not getting enough sales then you ain’t speaking to enough people.

Implement a lead generation system that provides you with a steady stream of leads on a daily basis – you can check one out here.

Like anything in life you get better at anything that you do on a regular basis.

Handling Sales Objections Conclusion

So today we spoke about the 6 most common types of sales objections that you are likely to come across

The Product Sales objection

The Time Sales objection

The Need Sales objection

The Alternative Source Sales objection

The Bad experience Sales objection

The Cost Sales objection

I hope you have enjoyed these handling sales objections examples and if you have any examples of sales objection handling techniques that you would like to share.

Then feel free to drop them in the comments.

Right I’m outta here, I got prospects to speak to and presentations to close.

Don’t just be a reader, start putting some of these tips into action and let me know how you get on.