Sales objection overkill? How to handle prospects who keep requesting more and more
I recently listened to our sales guy talking with a prospect who had a seemingly endless list of objections. He wanted feature X, he didn't like the way our sales CRM lacked social features, he thought we should improve the mobile experience, and it just went on and on like this. A never-endling list of requests.
Our sales guy defended our app. Immediately jumped in after every objection. Lots of explanations and excuses.
The prospect kept on going. More objections. More demands.
It went back and forth like this for several rounds, and the call wasn't going anywhere. It was just tiring and exhausting, and no value was created for either party. The sales conversation slowly but surely deteriorated into one big waste of time.
How do you handle a situation like this? What can you do when you're inundated by objections, and for every answer you give, you just get another objection?
Let them talk themselves empty first
First of all, don't immediately jump at every objection they give you. Instead, let them talk and just listen. Don't create an situation where it becomes a competition between sales rep and prospect. Give them space to express their concerns.
Ask if there's anything else, and keep listening. Don't defend, don't respond to these objections directly at this stage.
Prioritize objections
Now you ask them, "Out of all these things that you mentioned, what's a deal-breaker, what's important, and what's nice-to-have?"
Let them prioritize their requests and objections into these three categories.
And then focus on the deal-breakers. Completely ignore the nice-to-haves. Just handle the objections that can kill the deal first.
Then ask them: "Did I do a good enough job? If we could address these particular things in this way, would you consider us the right solution?"
You'll either get a yes or a no. If you get a yes, it's easy—you can move on with the sale.
But what if they say no?
Then you ask them another question. You ask them, "What's missing? What else do you need?"
Prioritizing their objections, so you can focus on the things that matter, rather than forever dancing back and forth with them around an endless stream of objections.
Ignore the nice-to-haves
Don't talk about nice-to-haves if you haven't dealt with deal-breakers and the important stuff. Even if you can fulfill all their nice-to-haves, and you're the perfect fit for them in that category ... if you can't resolve the deal breakers, the nice-to-haves are worthless.
Keep the conversation on track
I can tell you from experience that many times prospects will bring up a dozen different things that they want to have, and when you ask them: "What's a deal breaker, what's really important to you?" they will bring up things they haven't mentioned at all.
Prospect: "Well, if you want to talk about the really important things, that's A, B and C." (And during the entire conversation, they've talked about everything from D to Z, but not a single word about A, B or C.)
If that happens to you, don't get frustrated with the customer—it's your responsibility to keep the sales conversation focused on what matters.
YOU have to ask the right questions so that they give you the answers that matter.
