Overcoming an Objection…Be Bold!

Most of us have 30 days left to finish the 1st quarter with a bang. Whether it is in sales, management, professional services or with our family we all face objections either to purchase, take action, respond to a request, or join a cause. These all can cause frustration and despair.

Stop feeling sorry or defeated! Instead, put more energy and enthusiasm into getting to the root of issues and win people to your way of thinking. The secret lies not in their benefits, but rather in understanding what is their motivation to buy.

One of my favorite sale representatives in the whole world discovered this while trying to close a sale in California. He was selling to a school district where the apparent objection was that it would be political suicide for the school Superintendent to purchase his offering with all the impending layoffs happening due to the California Sate budget crisis.

My friend found out that all the product benefits in the world about why his offering would help the local school district was not going to be able to overcome the potential political fallout. However, when my friend was able to understand what the school boards desired outcomes were for the Superintendent, it helped him to put into context what the buyer’s true motivations were in writing checks. Once this was uncovered, political reluctances turned into political pull to authorize a purchase order.

7 Steps to Determine Motivators to Buy and to Overcome any Objection:

1. Develop an honest and open relationship.
2. Always be curious as to what individual desires are and what people want to create.
3. Once you discover what an outcome is, spend time refining it to be certain its real; a major issue or a challenging outcome.
4. Question every outcome to determine the real correlating current reality. (This will create natural tension).
5. Explore what actions have been taken and to what level of success. Then determine what actions need to be taken to move them from their current state to their new reality.
6. Refine the action steps.
7. Make your offering a critical connection to the action steps or strategy.