Objections come up in nearly every sales presentation. The question is why. Many sales training programs will tell you that objections are merely requests for more information. While this is true, an objection is actually raised because you have not built enough value. Meaning the prospect does not yet consider the price or hassle of your product worth the proposed solution.
Without an amount of value bit into your presentation your prospect is not going to buy. Different prospects will require different amounts or levels of value. If you are receiving objections on a regular basis, the simple fact is you have not convinced the prospect that your product or service can truly solve the problem they are meeting with. Or in some cases you have not proved that whatever you are selling will solve enough problems. It all depends on the prospect.
Of course there are two choices you can make with an objection. When using a consultative selling model you have to decide which is your better option. You can base that decision on the prospect and/or the situation. The decision to make is you can ignore the objection and go back to building value or you can answer the objection.
Objections typically come in one of 4 types.
– I don’t have enough time.
– I don’t have enough money.
– It won’t work for me (it may work for others).
– It won’t work for me (it works for no one).
There are specific NLP sales techniques to answer each of the above objections. The basis of answering an objection is you need to use a technique called re framing. Re-framing is taking an objection and redirecting your prospects attention to something they had not yet considered. This is a form of verbal Aikido. The process involves diverting your prospects energy from one aspect to another aspect of the proposed sale. Adjusting how or what your prospect is perceiving is an NLP sales technique that is extremely useful. Just like using photo-shop to crop a photograph, a re-frame changes the perspective or the view of your prospect is holding.
The best advice I can give you in this short article is to take all of the major objections you normally receive, and come up with re-frames for them. By doing this you allow for greater confidence and flexibility on your part. If you often get an objection on price, now you will know exactly what to tell the prospect to change his or her objection into a positive.
The simplest way to work a re-frame to an objection is to ask yourself, how can I make this into a positive? For instance if a prospect is objecting to the time constraint, tell them that’s why he or she needs you product or service. Because your product or service is going to save him or her time. Another example: If the prospect does not believe the product or service is going to work for him or her, show him or her testimonials from people who believed it would not work for them. For the more advanced re framing techniques spelled out in detail you want to learn more about the NLP sales techniques.
I highly recommend learning an advanced re framing NLP Sales Technique called sleight of mouth created by Robert Dilts. Sleight of Mouth gives you a series of 16 re-frame structures you can use for any objection. These re-frames work tremendously well in any sales or persuasion situation. They are, in fact, used by politicians and debaters constantly. To improve your sales I highly recommend learning sleight of mouth.
