Prospectors’ Guide To Objection Handling – Part I – Sales eXchange 163

Prospectors’ Guide To Objection Handling – Part I – Sales eXchange 163:from The Pipeline by admin


Last month I posted a piece call “The Reality Of Prospecting Rejection“, in it I argued that rather than trying to avoid rejections, sales organizations and sales people need to adopt and adhere to a specific prospecting process, and leverage it for consistent results.  The goal is to adopt a method for dealing with rejection, rather than trying to avoid them.  With a proper method, executed consistently, you will be in a position to address and manage objections, and convert more of them to conversation and engagement with potential buyers.  As an added bonus, with a process you have a means of measuring the outcome, reviewing and adjusting according to a plan.
A couple of folks enquired about the methodology, more specifically, how to deal with rejection; in reality what they are looking for is how to manage the objections and leverage them to engage with more prospects.  As a result, over the next few posts I will do exactly that, put rejection and objections in context, and then provide ways to manage and use them for success. A combination of a tried and proven best practices used by many leading sales organizations to engage with more of the right prospects. These methods have been gleaned over the years and continue to be refined daily in the field, not only by me, but our clients day in day out, and in the current socially charged recession.
In order to deal with and manage objections, you first need to understand them and put them in context. This is a key point in not only managing objections but overcoming the fear and related call reluctance. The context IS NOT YOU! Let me repeat, the rejection, which will come if you make prospecting calls, is not of you. The context is TIME and VALUE. The demands on the buyer’s time, generally greater than the time they have to do all the things they need to.  Most people already are trying to pack 16 hours into a 10 hour day, so the last thing they need is a distraction or interruption, no matter how cool your thing might be.
Interruptive Marketing
Let’s face it, we are professional interrupters, and that is not a negative it is just a fact. Unless you are on the agenda of the person you are calling, you are interrupting their ability to get through the 16 hours of work they have to finish before they have to get their kids to little league. Given the choice to finish their work, or talk to an unknown interruption, guess which wins, leaving us to be rejected.
Now this can be tempered with a structured approach, taking a number of dynamics into account that will help smooth the bumps inherent in an unsolicited prospecting call; and by the introduction of real value into that approach, giving you an opening to change the perception that you are a completely useless interruption, to one of potentially a worthy interruption.
Remember that interruption and disruption are part of the creative process, it causes change, which is what you want, but you need to prepare for the response and deal with it, not surrender and abandon a potential opportunity. As well, injecting a heavy dose of value will only take you from life threatening to critical, meaning you still need to deal with the rejection.
Let’s start by understanding that YOU ARE NOT BEING REJECTED!  When you have a proper process and understanding that they are rejecting the interruption, and the collective memory of all the bad interruptions they have lived through in the past, you can act with confidence and gain room to manage and engage.  If you can accept that it is not you but the circumstance, it changes the context. Circumstanced can be controlled and altered with some forethought and an action plan. Which is what you will find in the next few posts.
Next we’ll look at the context VALUE brings, and how to leverage it throughout the prospecting call to achieve the right rejection, yes, the right rejection.
What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto