First, let’s get one thing out of the way. In business, you are either in sales or you are in sales support. There is no middle ground. If you are in sales, you will fully understand and appreciate my statement for all its meaning. If you are in sales support, you may object to my black and white statement. In either case, this article will be relevant since we all deal with objections whether we see ourselves in sales or not.
For those business owners who face the daily challenge of trying to sell their product and/or service, there is an obstacle that we sellers all struggle with. And that would be overcoming objections. In fact this obstacle is so great that it has fed a whole other industry called sales training where the main focus is how to handle and overcome objections. Some names you would recognize include Zig Zigler, Brian Tracy, and even Anthony Robbins. They all sell “how to sell.” But guess what, the easiest people to sell to are sales people. Think of the irony.
Back to my original point — how to overcome objections — because in real-life, outside of guru sales training, your potential customers are very skeptical. They will object to every claim that you make. The worst part is that they will not vocalize most of their objections. So you will have to guess based on body language and other clues that they may leak out. And that’s the easy part. The hardest part is how to overcome their objections when you are making your sales claim on a piece of paper, like an article, a white-paper, a special report, a sales letter, an advertisement, an email, and other written sales material.
Are you starting to see the challenge here?
Let’s start with what I find is the best method. This method will run counter to what you may have heard from guru sales trainers. I call this method, “selling into the objection.” Here is what I mean…
You know from being in your niche or industry what the wants and needs are of your target customer. You also know that your product or service satisfies 75% of your target customer’s wants and needs. So you sell on your strengths in your presentation. Your potential buyers, as opposed to tire-kickers, tend to focus on the 25% of the product or service where you are weak. Did I mention that this is good news? Why? Because the psychology of people who are ready to buy is to look for reasons not to buy. If you are lucky, they will point out all the things that are “wrong” with your product or service. They are looking for you to trip up in your response so that they are forced out of your sales process.
Most business owners at this point will instinctively defend the 25% weakness. These sellers will say something like, “Oh, it’s not that bad. You’ll get use to the freeway noise. Just close your windows and you won’t hear a thing.” In response, the potential customer will think, “I don’t believe this guy. The interstate is only one block away from this house that he’s trying to sell and he tells me that I won’t hear it when the windows are closed.” Do you see the push-pull effect here? You don’t want to go down this route. Instead, you want to sell into the objection.
Here’s an alternative discussion. The seller says, “Betty, you’re right. This house is very close to the freeway and the noise is bothersome. Some people get used to it and some don’t. Let’s try opening the windows and see how bothersome it is at it’s worst. Let’s also turn on the TV to check if we can hear the TV show even with the windows open.”
This part is daring, I know. It’s human nature not to what to admit fault. Yet here we are admitting to the potential customer that the freeway is noisy. We’re even trying to make it worst by opening the window. But this is precisely what we must do in order to keep the customer in our sales process. We must not slip up by going against an obvious weakness. Remember that the customer is serious when they are looking closely at your weakness. So admit your weakness and let them decide for themselves whether they can live with that weakness or not. Sure you’ll lose a few, but not anymore than you would lose if you tried to insult their intelligence. In fact, you will lose less customers by selling into the objection.
Try this method for yourself and let me know if it works for you in overcoming objections. By the way, you can use this method in print by creating FAQs that address your weaknesses head-on.
