Sales MessagingOvercoming objections within sales – a data driven approach

September 21, 2021by Jack Kennedy

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Even if you spend hours researching your prospects, tailoring your sales messaging, and perfecting your pitch, prepare to face objections.

An unexpected objection can stop a salesperson dead in their tracks. Although an accepted, inherent part of the sales process, inexperienced sellers may still struggle to know how to respond and keep a conversation going to potentially overcome an objection.

As a sales rep you need to think about what comes afterwards, knowing how to handle objections to deliver your messaging. Even if a prospect might not be interested at the time, successfully conveying your company’s offering and how you can tackle their particular pain points might put you first in line when they eventually go looking for a solution.

In our latest blog we’re going to tell you how to overcome objections in sales. We’ll explain the essentials you need, from preparing cold calls and researching prospects, to handling those surprise rebuttals and successfully overcoming objections. This is all done with an emphasis on utilising data from feedback and turning this into a valuable asset.

By leveraging these techniques and better understanding your prospects, you can improve the effectiveness of your sales pitches and elevate your performance.

How to Cold Call: Best Practices

Stay one step ahead of objections

Whether a prospect sees little use for your product or service, disagrees with the price, or requests additional features, salespeople need to have prepared responses ready that they can deliver with confidence in conversation.

One of the key skills to being a successful salesperson is active listening. Instead of waiting for a gap in your conversation to plug with sales messaging from a script, take time and make sure you are being attentive, showing a genuine interest in their pain points and business needs.

In order to become a master in handling sales objections you need to be ready, as if you’re expecting the objection to come at any time during your sales outreach. Eliminating that surprise factor allows you to maintain composure and have a response ready for any rebuttals that may come your way. This is learned through experience and researching your prospects, though also requires resilience.

Here are five sales tips on overcoming objections to get us started.

Reiterate

Don’t rush. Try to listen and understand the objection instead of making assumptions and potentially make the wrong response to their rebuttal.

Discover Pain Points

Take time to get to the real root of their problem. If you can do this within the same conversation, it shows that you are listening and genuine in attempting to help understand their issues.

Be Personable

The more tailored and personalized you are in your response, the less resistant your prospect will be.

Get Feedback

Even if you deliver what is seemingly a successful response, make sure you confirm with a prospect that you have satisfied their concerns. Follow this up by asking if they have additional queries about your offering.

Collect Data

Create an objection management document. We’ll cover this in more detail later!

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Encountering Objections: What Comes Next?

Objections fall into different categories, each type requiring a different response. These include:

Your prospect may be too busy to talk
They may not interested in your product or service or say they don’t have time
You may not be able to deliver or implement what you are selling within the required timeframe
They might not understand what you’re offering or how it can benefit their business
Your product or service may be too expensive for their budget
They may already buy from a competitor in your market
You might be talking to someone who isn’t a decision maker

Already, you can start to see how you might be able to respond to some of these rebuttals and overcome your prospect’s objection.

If your prospect is too busy, you can offer a follow-up at their next convenience. Chase them up, employing a touch pattern that aligns with their BuyerDNA for the best chance to re-engage them.

If your prospect doesn’t have the budget, highlight the value proposition of your product or service and how cost effective it is. Make them understand that what you are offering is a good deal. Be transparent with your pricing, providing a discount or adjusting/removing features to help them find a more favourable price point.

If a prospect claims they don’t have time to learn more about your product, or they simply aren’t interested, this indicates that they may not be aware of a problem you can help them solve. Leverage your research on the prospect, highlight the challenges common in their industry and specify how your solution can help, using relevant case studies, marketing collateral, and other resources to illustrate.

When making your sales pitch, you should already have an awareness of competitors working in your industry. So when a prospect objects, telling you they are currently buying from another company, you will know which of your company’s strengths to directly compare to their weaknesses, whether that’s value, functionality, or another element buyers in your industry focus on.

Knowing who is responsible for making purchasing decisions at a company isn’t always immediately clear. Even if your contact doesn’t have authority, you should still build trust with them instead of simply asking them to direct you to a decision maker. There’s a chance they will be reluctant to do so, in which case provide them with tailored content about your product. There’s a chance your contact will then circulate this information which could lead to a response later down the line.

The worst objections are those that don’t provide any context. A hard no with zero explanation is not only a lost sale but a lost opportunity to get your foot in the door and make the prospect aware of what your company is offering. It’s important to remember that objections = feedback.

As you become more experienced, you will begin to understand that there’s a value to your prospect’s objections. That’s right, objections can actually be a good thing!

Being ignored or dismissed by a prospect won’t give you insights that can then be actioned in your next sales play. If a prospect objects, always attempt to politely get a response from them as to why they don’t want to buy with you. This creates a direct form of feedback that you can collect, helping you to better communicate the value your solution has to offer them.

Overcoming Objections: How To Use Data

Let’s talk more about data collection and creating an objection management document

Being able to mentally steel yourself is a valuable skill in overcoming objections but what’s more effective is pre-emptively knowing how to respond and steering the conversation back towards a potential closed sale.

Knowing common objections allows you to change a pitch to focus on setting yourself up a clear and focused rebuttal.

Understanding the number of touches needed per prospect and the number of prospects needed per yes also boosts confidence.

Creating an objection management document demands that you collect data from your sales outreach.

Make sure you are logging the most common objections you’re facing in your market.

Do your research and establish the best way to respond.

Keep responses succinct and focused on how your company can solve your prospect's problems.

Understanding your BuyerDNA can offer an additional layer of insight. This methodology fuses together ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas, giving you a better overview of who you are reaching out to, their role within a company, personal traits, and how they can be best communicated to. This, combined with the objection management document, will give you a conversational compass to steer you through your sales outreach.

Still unsure of how to respond to certain objections? Ideally, your inside sales organization should have a process in place, allowing you to exchange data with the members of your team to establish the best approach, leveraging your combined experience to overcome objections. The more data you log as a team, the better you will be able to pinpoint the way to handle rebuttals.

It’s also important to rehearse your responses. Don’t worry, this isn’t broadway – you don’t need to memorise pages of script, word by word in front of a mirror.

The goal here is to deliver your response as clearly as possible.

Make sure they aren’t too long or contain too much jargon for your prospect to process. If you can read these back confidently, in a way that doesn’t feel scripted or as though you are shifting focus away from the conversation, you have a greater chance of overcoming their objections.

Overcoming objections within sales - a data driven approach

Conclusion

For new sales reps, the idea of handling back to back objections can be stressful and daunting. However, as we’ve established throughout this blog, these same objections are an essential resource in helping your sales performance.

By collecting data on your prospect and their reasons for objecting, you are able to craft and hone responses to their rebuttals, improving the effectiveness of your sales pitch.

Not sure why you still aren’t booking quality appointments? Our sales experts at InsideOut want to help. Having tested sales messaging across many markets and industries, we have the experience needed to help you minimize and overcome your objections.