by Pete Cooper

Ever since primitive man traded rocks for dead rabbits, there have been objections. A thought like 'those rocks are too small' in those days is a 'your service is too expensive' now. Objections are rife in sales, and if you're selling your own products or services, you're bound to have been hit hard when you encounter them.

Many people in the same situation as you have quickly tired of objections and often tell the prospective customer to 'go find someone else' or ignored them and hoped they'd go away. That's the wrong attitude! If you could convert all of the customers who've had objections with your service into happy customers who love you to bits, you'd have many more customers wouldn't you? Today I want to teach you exactly how to overcome your customers' objections.

Be knowledgeable

The key to overcoming objections is to be fully aware of what your service or product is. You also need to understand how skilled you are or how good your product is, depending on whether you're trying to sell your talent or your produce.

Pretend you're a writer. You're trying to sell a talent (being able to write) and a product (the words at the end) so you need to know the ins and outs of what you do and how it's perceived by your potential customers. Say you're a particularly slow writer but you have an extensive knowledge of chemistry and medicines, and you can explain these subjects in a way which no-one else can. Accept these strengths and weaknesses and use them to your advantage. Once you can do this, you can start to overcome objections with ease.

The timing of objections

When selling a service, at least half of the objections will come while you and the prospective client initially talk about their requirements. This type of pre-sale objection is the type that leads many professionals to stop dealing with the client and move on, whereas if they dealt with the situation properly, they might have made a good deal of money.

You also get after or during-service objections too, and while I can't cover every type of objection you're bound to hear, the following advice can be twisted, tuned and honed to fit your particular situation given a little thought and time.

Dealing with the common objections

Your product/service is too expensive! If your product or service is within the normal price range then you might be baffled by this, but it hassles most professionals today! The best course of action is to inform them that they're making an investment rather than a purchase, and to try and weigh up the cost in terms that they can relate to.

But [other company here]'s is much cheaper. If you're clued up about your competitors you'll be prepared to answer this one. Highlight the benefits of your product but do not speak negatively about your competitor's. If you're offering a service then discuss the benefits you can offer and if this doesn't work, try to dig deeper to find the root of the price problem.

For example, if the customer hands you a quote from a company for a seemingly inferior service, quickly work out the difference in price between your services and then present these on a per day basis. Your competitor may be selling rather feature-less Web space for $30 per month, and you charge $45 for your top of the range service. Over a month this is only a difference of about 50 cents per day. Ask them how much their peace of mind is worth, and demonstrate the tiny price difference. You'll be surprised that many customers can be won over with this tactic.

You don't offer the features I want. The thing to do here is subtly find out whether the features that are absent in your product are those essential to them, or whether they're just 'desirables'. If you continue by highlighting some unique features of your product (which they may fall in love with instead) you can probably resolve this objection.

Another common objection is towards something rather insignificant. If you're selling a special copying machine that is guaranteed to never jam, but it'll only hold 500 sheets of paper, you might get the objection that another copier can hold 700 sheets. Easy!

As with the above examples, you need to work out whether this is really a valid objection or not. Ask them how much time paper jams can take to resolve and how often they happen (usually every week!) and then work out how much longer an extra 200 sheets of paper will really last. If you weigh up the pros and cons, most customers will see sense.

These have only been a few of the most common objections, but if you're faced with a situation you're not sure how to handle, handle it in a step by step fashion:

• Find out what the objection is
• Question the objection and try to find/guess the root of it
• Acknowledge the objection
• Try to highlight other benefits in your product/service

No matter what situation you're in, however, there's one thing that you must never do..

Never lie!

Lying is the worst thing you can do with your customers, and exaggeration is just a distorted way of lying, so cut that out too. The way to get around lying is to answer a customer's objections in a different way.

Let's say you sell inkjet printers for a major printer manufacturer. Your model is 2 pages a minute slower than your main competitor's but yours has a plethora of other useful features. When quizzed about the speed of your printer, don't lie! Give the facts and also point out that speed isn't the only key factor to consider but also the quality of the print. Of course, don't directly say that your printer is slower than the other, and try not to mention your competitors at all if you can help it.

If the customer wants to print out high quality documents, the affirmation that your printer is both speedy (if not as fast as the other) and of high quality will put the customer at ease. In his mind the worst he can be thinking is 'Sure, this printer is a bit slow, but my invoices will be darn crisp!'. The key is to present your product in a good light and to mask any inadequacies without lying.

The beauty of this technique is that you can use it with nearly anything. As long as there's a way of counteracting your disadvantages, you'll be able to explain them away in no time. Think about how you can make this fit your own product or service.

Conclusion

From the people I've spoken to, I've found that many have turned away a good amount of people who've come up with objections about their service. There are also a good deal who will work hard to deal with customers and give them what they want, but even that can fail sometimes. Selling your own products and services isn't the easiest thing in the world to do.

The key thing to remember is that buyers are nearly always compelled to say 'No' or to question your service whatever they actually want to think about it. They're worried about the outlay they'll have to make, complications further down the line, and some may just want to test your knowledge about your product or service.

Your job is to relieve them of these objections, or turn the objections into a way of selling your product. It's a skill that develops over time, but I hope this article has given you a small nudge in the right direction.

I promise that if you learn to work with your customers' objections in an effective way, you'll soon feel the benefits of a larger customer base. Good luck!