Overcoming Objections Successfully

A key skill in sales is overcoming objections successfully. This is often a process of trial-and-error as you begin to understand what appeals and what frustrates your key customer profiles.

Being good at sales requires a requisite amount of empathy. You need to be able to feel what grinds the gears of the person you’re selling to, their insecurities, and other factors that play into why they could use your product.

Oftentimes, effective salespeople have been through and found solutions to problems their prospects had, because they can better understand what their prospect is feeling.

Broadly speaking, those who are satisfied with precisely what they have will not require the product, service, or membership you have to offer. The first step to the successful sale is identifying the problem you will solve for them.

This breaks down into three parts. First, what is the problem? Second, what is the problem in the context of the person you’re selling to? Finally, is your solution to the problem plausibly going to solve their problem.

Once you can clearly understand what someone ‘needs’ or wants, it can help you contextualize what you’re offering. One great sales pitch premise I’ve heard from Real Social Dynamics, a pick-up artist training class is something like the following

“You think it’s weird spending money to learn social skills. I can’t imagine anything weirder than to not spend money on learning social skills. You’re telling me that you are struggling to meet women and make friends. If what you’re doing presently was working, you wouldn’t be dissatisfied.”

This pitch has 3 great elements to it. First, it recognizes the objection early on, demonstrating confidence in the face of it. Second, rather than letting the objection go unchallenged, RSD undermines it by showing how in context, the opposite may be true. Finally, it offers a call to action. If you want to see change, as the prospect probably does, you want this product; try this.

There are lots of ways to overcome objections to increase sales. What’s an effective sales pitch you’ve seen?