If you have ever had the pleasure of attending classes in the fine art of making sales, you will remember that a very important section is “Overcoming Objections.” In class the trainer gives students two lists; frequently used objections and scripted responses for each objection. The trainee is required to memorize the responses and parrot them back whenever the trainer throws out an objection. I attended this type of class in a previous career back when I was a door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson on summer vacation from college. Some vacation!

Since then quite a few years have passed and, over time, I found there is a better way of overcoming objections than memorizing scripted responses. The better way is to eliminate those objections before they occur. I’m not suggesting beating the prospect into submission with a baseball bat, but integrating probing questions into the conversation to find the prospect’s needs, preferences, dislikes, and deal-killers and then using that information to customize the offering as much as possible to fit the prospect’s preferences.

A typical sale goes through a number of steps or phases from the introduction to the discovery of needs to the creation of a proposal. Normally the salesperson talks, the prospects listens then after the proposal is delivered, the objections start appearing. Usually they are pretty predictable, centered on price, terms, quality, esthetics, and timeliness. So, after a great deal of time and energy is spent going over the various attributes of the product or service and creating a proposal designed to impress the prospect, now the objections start flowing and the salesperson has to overcome them one by one, almost in an argumentative situation which is not the most forward-moving manner.

The better way is to ask questions early in the process to surface potential objections and deal with them as they arise, diminishing them if possible, or modifying objectionable aspects if necessary to resolve those issues and get past them so, when it is time to ask for the sale, in a perfect world there are no objections left. I sure would have sold more encyclopedias this way!

Come to the FEAST! FREE “Lunch with Larry” Tele-Seminar Wednesday May 23The second in a series of six discussions on the theme:

"Grow and Manage Your Business Based on Your Intentions - Don’t Let Your Business Manage YOU!”

A systemized approach to the process of building and managing your business

Develop your Intentions, be able to articulate them. Design a system to discover the chaos in your business and strategies to eliminate that chaos and make those tasks intentional

To help you get your business to deliver on your “intentions” and become managed by “intention” join me on a free “Lunch with Larry” telephone seminar:

The one-hour phone call will begin at:

1:00 Eastern 12:00 Central 11:00 Mountain 10:00 Pacific

Register by “reply” email with “LUNCH” in the Subject Line to larry@larrygaller.com. You will get connection instructions by return email