How to develop your strategy for handling objections

- To be a successful salesperson, you have to follow the framework of the sales process and methodology that you were trained on. However, you should adapt and refine it to fit your own style and personality. With topics like pipeline tracking, presentation formats and sales analytics, it's pretty straightforward. Generating a consensus between salespeople about the best approach is rarely controversial. That said, there are three sales topics that I can guarantee will generate a lot of discussion and trigger some good debate for the best way to handle them. I'm referring to prospecting, closing sales and handling objections. With overcoming objections, there are many books, online articles and sales trainers who have posted their own videos, making some pretty bold guarantees. Sales experts telling us to be more aggressive and not take no for an answer from our buyers. Some of that advice from those sources can be really in your face, and I'll admit it, it can and does work for a percentage of sales people, but that's not my approach. If you're looking for hand waving, finger pointing and guarantees, that's not me. However, I do believe in hard work, being tenacious and that we must constantly be looking to improve our selling technique. You have to develop your own strategy and one that works for you. There are so many objections that buyers can raise and as soon as you think you've uncovered them all, there will be a new one tossed your way. I believe there are five objections that are the most common and are the ones you'll face 95% of the time. First is money. Price is an issue or there's no budget. Next, I'm happy. The bar doesn't want to change or they're content. Third, decision isn't mine. There's a committee or they don't have final authority. Next comes features and benefits. The buyer isn't sure about your product or service. And finally, not now. Stalling or saying they'll get back to you. The ideas and strategies I believe in for handling those five objections may not be exactly how you want to follow it for yourself. However, my hope is that any recommendations you receive will motivate you to think more, evaluate how you're doing things currently and enhance the sales method that generates the most success for you. I want to reinforce the importance we have as sales professionals to constantly be looking for new techniques to prospect better, close more sales sooner and develop the best approach for overcoming objections. Each of us has our own style or methods of working with our buyers, but it's so critically important that we constantly try to improve and learn from as many sources as we can. This learning process must continue throughout our careers and it's especially the case for developing your own strategy for successfully handling sales objections.