In the sales world, a new day often presents an old story – another prospect with another objection. Once you remove the factor of being in the wrong place with someone who has no need for your product (which is a huge time waster), you must still determine the other elements that create these objections. If you were to do a study, you would find that over 60% of all prospect objections come from salespeople. Yes, we salespeople create more monsters/objections in prospects’ minds than any other single cause. We accomplish this task by bombarding all who will listen with an endless supply of canned pitches, “boiler plate proposals,” and “one size fits all” PowerPoint presentations. We believe that our mission is to place “ideas” in a prospect’s head as opposed to guiding their ideas and perceptions to a sales solution. But we insist on pitching when we should be listening. When we do this, our prospects are sometimes catching all right, but they are catching our words and applying them to their personal reference points, and BANG – an objection is created.Let’s take a look at an example that illustrates this point. Once there was a salesperson that represented a website design company. He received an inquiry from a three man law firm about creating a website for their organization. The salesperson arrived, and if the time had been taken to find out what the prospect was thinking, he would have found out that there was no “IT” help on-site for the firm. In fact, the firm wanted nothing to do with updating the site. The prospect believed that having a website was something he needed, but worried that it would surely take time away from his practice to develop and maintain. Details were something reserved for his law practice, and this whole website process needed to be handled by someone else. However, the salesperson didn’t uncover these facts ahead of time, and instead arrived with an open mouth and an open PC, determined to show how great his product was. At this point there were no objections to the salesperson’s product or their company, just beliefs on the part of the prospect. The salesperson began the canned presentation just as he had done hundred times before. With all the enthusiasm the salesperson could muster, he told of how the law firm could customize the site’s look and feel. Out came the endless samples of fonts, followed by colors, graphics and clipart, all for the prospect to choose from. Next in the presentation came the customization of the site that could be performed including content changes, video insertion and semi-automatic HTML coding. Then came the mini-training overview on how, as an administrator of the site, the prospect could monitor and filter e-mail as well as all other mailbox options. The prospect asked (in an attempt to slow down the avalanche of information), “What is price for this service?” The salesperson, now encouraged with a buying sign, went into a twenty minute list of options, which led to a further detailed description of features. The call ended with a firm handshake from the prospect, a promise to “look over” everything, and an “I’ll get back to you”.

Let’s take a look at what happen here. There was never a direct benefit given to the prospect regarding what was important to him. How could there be, as the beliefs the customer held were never uncovered. In football, would a quarterback run into the game without knowing what yard line his team was on? Or where their goal line was? Or what down it was? Or where the opposing team’s defense was weak or strong? Of course not, but then why do salespeople run into the “sales game” unprepared? And worse yet, why don’t they ask for the very information that would help them avoid creating objections? In the case of the lawyer prospect, if his thought bubble could have been seen, it would have said, “I have some serious concerns about this offering. It’s too complex, too time consuming and I need to get back to work.” The salesperson realized that after the pricing conversation, the call ended. Therefore, “price” must be the objection. Armed with his new wisdom, the salesperson returned back to his office and told management that if they wanted this sale, they had better address pricing.

Where did all these objections come from? The truth is we (as salespeople) create them. In our example, there wasn’t even a chance to uncover the explanation of what was really going on, which ultimately prevented a sale. And what if the true objections had come out? It doesn’t really matter now, as the damage was done, and now all the salesperson is left with is the dilemma of how to undo or “handle” those objections in the future. Just as David slayed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, these objections were created using the same instrument.