One of the basic skills required by the professional sales person is the ability to effectively handle customer objections. If you have been in the selling profession for any length of time then it is highly likely that you hear the same, or very similar, objections from a number of your customers. How these routine objections are handled can either make or break the sale.
You have also probably found out by trial and error experience what reply to the routine objections you get seems best in each case, and so by now your answers when faced with such objections largely come automatically. This in turn means that your customers keep hearing the same automatic replies to their objections from you! But is your habitual answer to a familiar customer objection always the best possible one? Often the answer is no. So how can you improve your handling of routine objections in order to close more sales?
Richard Stone, one of Spearhead's sales training experts, suggests that you monitor the effect of your replies. "Over a period of time" he said" "you should record your customers’ reactions to your response to the objections they raise". He went on to suggest that sales people use a simple form for this, writing down the objections your customers typically raise on the top left-hand side of the form and your reply, in an abbreviated form, on the top right-hand side. Below each objection, list the names of all your customers who used that objection and so were confronted with your standard reply. Also note whether the customer reacted in a friendly (f) or an unfriendly (u) way, thoughtfully (t) or dismissively (d) to your standard response. Richard also advises that it is often useful to make a few further notes on the customer’s response: did they place an order, raise more objections etc.
After you have been gathering this information from your customers for a while you will need to make time to review your forms. Richard says that if the letters ‘d’ and ‘u’ proliferate, then the reply you tend to use for a given objection is not the best one for your industry. "The notes you made at the time will" he said "give you pointers as to what direction to look in for a better reply to the objection."
You may find the following training from Spearhead useful:
- Closing Sales - an in-company training course
- Module 9: Objection handling - from our on-line sales training
- Handling Customer Objections - from our professional sales skills series of self-development books
