Handling Sales Objections: How to Respond When a Prospect Disagrees

Learn how handling sales objections with curiosity, rather than defensiveness, can more effectively lead to better sales outcomes from your prospects. 


Overcoming Sale Objections

Sales objections happen. At any given time, a sales prospect might say something negative regarding whatever it is you’re selling. In this video, our sales trainer Brian Kavicky discusses handling objections by understanding your prospect’s belief system. By explaining how to understand a prospect’s belief system and then how to respond to those beliefs in a productive, focused manner, you can get past those sales objections.

The issue is actually what their concern or worry is if they choose a new product or service. Don’t be defensive. Let them know you are listening to their pain points, help them work through the reasons for the objections and discuss your solutions. This helps you with prospects sales objections and keeps defenses down.

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Video Transcript

We're dealing with prospect beliefs.

My belief system is I should buy this way. My belief system is this should solve my problem. My belief system is all of you guys suck. It doesn't really matter what my belief is, but I have to know what the prospects' beliefs are and where they come from to solve them.

So when a prospect objects to something, they say something that is anti what you're trying to do, which is sell to them. And they position a belief, a thought, a question, how do you react? Do you react by acting curious and wanting to understand them, or do you react with defensiveness? I have to prove myself. I have to deal with this. I have to eliminate it.

What most people do is they think B, I have to eliminate it. I have to fight these things. I have to be ready for that. I have to come back. What happens is you're missing the whole point. An objection is a prospect's belief. It's what they think, what they're concerned about, and what they're worried about. If they went with you, what would happen?

And so, unless I understand their perspective, where that perspective is coming from, why they're doing things, all I'm going to do by being defensive is weaken their confidence in me. I'll give you an example. Let's say that you say to somebody, “Hey, you know, we're a small company. We're nimble. You know, we can really help you.” And they say, “You know what? We really want to work with somebody big, capable, and able to handle our problem.”

Well, if I get defensive about my nimbleness and say, “Well, why do you want big and all these different things?” and I start fighting them, that's not a productive conversation. But imagine that I said, instead, “So, why do you think big is better? What tells you that a big organization is going to be better suited for your problem?” 

And if I allow them to think that through, process that, and really think about where that comes from, most of the time, what the prospect actually does is work that out themselves.

They might say, you know, it's like government. It's so big, it's inefficient. And maybe we'll have poor communication, and you know, maybe, I don't need it after all. But just by us acting curious and trying to understand the place that they're coming from, will either or work it out or you'll have a lot more knowledge and understanding of their perspective that you can help work them through.

So don't be so defensive when you hear those things. Understand that sometimes, just being curious and understanding it solves a problem all by itself.

Brian Kavicky

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For 25 years, Lushin has guided business leaders toward intentional, predictable growth.

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For 25 years, Lushin has guided business leaders toward intentional, predictable growth.