Deal with Sales Objections by Changing Your Message

If you’re sick of hearing, “We’re not interested” or “We’re already working with some other vendor,” you probably want to know how to handle those objections and I’m going to tell you something right that you’re not going to want to hear. The truth is that you’re actually creating the objection that you’re hearing because of the wording of your message to clients. Let me give you an example. If I call up a VP of sales and want to sell him sales training, I might say, “Hi Bob, this is Jill Konrath calling. I’m with Leapfrog Strategies and we specialize in sales training for the complex sale. We offer a full range of training services for all your needs.” And Bob’s reaction, guaranteed is, “We don’t need any sales training.” “We’re not interested right now.” Or “We’re already working with another company.” That is his normal human reaction because he knows that you’re trying to sell him something. It doesn’t work so you need to eliminate the message in and change it entirely if you want to catch that person’s attention. Again, here’s what you might say, if you change your message to say, “Hi Bob, Jill Konrath calling. I know that your company is really focused on sales in the fourth quarter and that it’s a number one priority in terms of cracking it into land larger corporate accounts. I’ve got some ideas on how you could shrink time to revenue on some of those new product introductions. Let’s set up a time to talk about that.” Now Bob at that point is not going to say, “We’re already working with another vendor, Jill.” Nor is he going to say, “We’re not interested.” Because what could he not be interested in and I didn’t tell him anything about my product and service, I simply said I know that he’s trying to increase sales and it’s a focus for fourth quarter of this year and I’ve got some ideas on how he can shrink time to revenue on new product introductions. You change your messaging. You eliminate the objections entirely. Get rid of that old self-serving verbiage that tells all about my company, we specialize in it, we offer a full range of products and services and you won’t get the objections. If you’re creating them, get rid of them. You have the power to do that too.