For many salespeople, even some of the most experienced, objection handling skills are seen to be the most crucial attribute to successful selling next to closing techniques. Like many of the best myths in sales, this thinking often stems from the fact that most sales people face many objections in every meeting they have with a potential client. The real question is: isn’t there a better way?

Over the past twenty-five years Huthwaite has researched the world’s best sales people and unearthed a number of very surprising facts; firstly, we found that it’s not the customers who create objections and secondly we found that the most successful sales people spend little time handling objections.

Ironically perhaps, Huthwaite’s research found that it is the seller’s behaviour that is often the cause of objections raised by the customer. Consciously, or unconsciously, every customer makes their decision on whether to purchase based on their comparison of the cost of the problem vs the cost of the solution. Huthwaite calls this process the value equation.

When salespeople move to presenting their solutions or products too early, customers haven’t had the opportunity to fully explore the severity of their problems. This means that they are not yet convinced they need a solution and will put up barriers, in the form of objections, to the sellers efforts to convince them otherwise.

When observing top salespeople, Huthwaite found a very different process in action. The best sellers helped the customers explore their circumstances to determine the size and severity of their problems. By engaging in this process it is the customer that asks for a solution, and this is the time for the seller to introduce their product.

How do the best salespeople achieve this? Huthwaite found successful sellers focus on uncovering and developing their customers’ needs prior to presenting their solution. By using powerful questions to get the customer to examine their current circumstances more closely, successful salespeople avoid objections before they have a chance to arise. This process is at the heart of objection prevention and removes the majority of objections that may arise in complex sales.

As one of Huthwaite’s clients once commented; objections are like a persistent, bad headache. You can choose to either treat the symptoms each time they come back or you can attack the cause so you rarely have to feel the pain – which will you choose?

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James Fennessy is the Managing Director of Huthwaite Asia Pacific. Huthwaite, the creators of SPIN Selling®, are world leaders in sales performance research and improvement.

Phone : +61 (3) 8606 4901

Email : jfennessy@huthwaite.com.au

Website : www.huthwaite.com.au