Certain objections exist to every proposition in the world. What would a soccer, football or basketball game be like without the blocking of shots? And what your proposition is determines what the objections are.
Call on a thousand average people to whom your proposition is salable. You’ll find the self-same objections on the lips of the majority of them. And these objections, boiled down and standardized, resolve themselves into a very small number.
For instance, in the paint business the standard objections are:
(a) “Too much money tied up in present stock to consider changing.”
(b) “Nobody is asking for your products.”
And really these two objections represent the big buffing points of the paint salesperson today, found in the mouths of the great majority of their prospective purchasers.
Now considering the fact that the majority of a salesperson’s calls entertain the same objections, it is only reasonable to suppose that the same rebuttals or answers should overcome them. And that is more than just reasonable; it is absolutely so.
When I say objections, I mean what I say - bona fide objections, not merely excuses for not buying. That kind of objections is a reflection on the salesperson by not yet selling the customer. A real objection can be defined as a valid, existing reason for not taking the products or proposition. When it’s overcome the sale is made.
The effective rebuttal or answer to an objection is one that gets past; it settles it forever. Every salesperson should study and classify the objections met throughout his or her career. Then when these objections are fairly well established in mind, the salesperson should start formulating rebuttals.
They can be (the rebuttals) taken from colleagues, common sense, experience, and experiments.
Whenever an answer overcomes one of these standard objections and makes the sale, put that answer down as a standard rebuttal to that particular objection. There’s nothing better than your own success journal. Except for this book (Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales), you can’t buy one that is better.
And the first thing you know, your equipment includes a standard, effective rebuttal that will clear the path of every common objection you meet.
It is positively a shame to see salespeople stumble and stammer and “hem and haw” in answering an objection they have been up against forty times before. It is inexcusable.
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