Improve Your Sales Skills by Learning How to Handle Customer Objections With Ease

Jul 30
19:52

2011

Paul Anderson 2

Paul Anderson 2

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The article provides a number of sales skills guidelines on how to deal with customer objections for successful sales and to encourage the customer to purchase the product you want them to buy.

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If you have ever sold to anyone,Improve Your Sales Skills by Learning How to Handle Customer Objections With Ease Articles you would know that every now and then a customer may object to your sale or remark. Being able to handle these objections well could mean the difference between making a sale or losing a lead. The article provides a number of guidelines on how to deal with various objections to get good results and potentially help the customer to purchase the product you want them to buy.

You are in a face-to-face sales activity and your customer objects to you. The following are a number of possible objections along with how you can handle each type.

Sales Objection to a Feature

Handling: Explain that another customer enquired about the feature recently and explain how after further examination the customer discovered that the feature was actually useful to him and it wasn’t really a problem.

Sales Objection to Lack of a Feature

Handling: A way to handle this is to expand on other qualities of the product and explain how these benefit the customer. Then move on to state the lack of feature is the result of including all the other features and the current price point that the customer is interested in.

Handling: Another way to handle lack of specific features is to simply bring them down. You can explain that your research and marketing shows that the expected feature is not really that critical and the new features invented to satisfy the needs of the customer included in your product are more suited than the features the customer is asking for.

Sales Objection to a Technical Feature

Handling: You don’t have to answer to every objection a customer raises immediately. Often, you might be in the middle of explaining a feature or quality of the product and the customer wonders about some aspect of it. You have a choice to answer it there and then, but you can also postpone it to a later time. For example, you can say, “This is an interesting question and I will be happy to answer it, but let me first go through the presentation and explain these features. It will make it a lot easier to understand what is happening here and what the product does. I will be happy to come back to this question later on and answer it if you still need to know more about it.”

Sales Objection to Price

Handling: Justify the price by explaining how the price reflects the quality of the product and show how much value the product has for the customer.

Sales Objection to a General Problem

Handling: With a general problem, you can always respond in a general way; ask the customer to help you or suggest how they like their perceived problem to be addressed. For example, you can say, “How do you want us to address this problem? We would be happy to take your ideas on board.” Remember, you are not committing to anything, just that you are happy to listen to suggestions and have a willingness to go the extra mile to accommodate the wishes of a customer. This can prove to be a great way to build relationships and preserve the customer for a long time to come.

Sales Objection to an Issue That Stops the Sale

Handling: Sometimes an issue comes to define a problem for the customer. In these cases, you can manoeuvre around to eliminate all other queries and end up only with this issue. Depending on the issue (and your business strategy), you can then proceed to state that you are assuming the sale will go ahead based on the current condition once you address the one remaining issue. For example, you can say, “Am I right to assume that servicing of this 3-year old car and 1 year guarantee is critical to you, otherwise you are happy with the price and this particular model. If we can do anything about the guarantee, then you are happy to go ahead with the purchase?”

As you can see handling objections isn’t that complicated and you should just think on your feet and always consider the best interest of the customer to come up with solutions that are beneficial to both of you and so are taken up by the customer.

Thinking on the feet for salespeople can be quite crucial. A great way to master sales skills is to attend a sales training course and get trained on it. You can also take advantage of sales skills training materials to set a training course for staff and train them using useful sales scenarios and exercises under supervision of a sales skills trainer.