The Expert Podcast

So if you are a professional salesperson, you probably run into what you think are objections every single day. Your buyers, your clients, your prospects are all going to say things to you that seem like their problems of you closing a sale. It seems like they are reasons the customer's giving you why they're rejecting your sales proposal. You're asking them for the sale, but they're presumably saying no. But unless you actually hear the words "I'm not buying from you" out of their mouth, everything else may not be the objection or rejection you think it is. We're going to go through six different levels of communication from a customer that, in many cases, are confused or misinterpreted as a rejection of the sale. A lot of times, it makes the salesperson just quit and go away and stop trying. Even if you do continue the effort to make a sale, if you try to overcome an objection that really is just a statement of opinion or subtle hint or an observation of the client, you might try to sell a non-buyer that really is already committed to buying. So let's take a look at the different levels of customer communication.

Here they are on the screen. It goes everything from a subtle hint all the way up through request, complaint, objection, and demand. We'll start with objection, even though that's not at either end of the list. That is the type of communication that most salespeople believe they are hearing anytime the customer sends something that is in the negative or opposition or in conflict, an argument or "yeah, but." Very rarely is that thing actually an objection that you need to solve. An objection would be something like "I can't afford this price." It might be "I don't think that car fits in my garage." It might be "My boss is not going to let me buy this." It might be "Our budget doesn't include any capital for this type of expenditure." Those are objections—those are the client telling you a reason that this proposal is running into problems.

Now, if you notice within that, they're not saying "forget it, I'm not buying." In many cases, the reason that a client, prospect, or customer gives you an objection is to give you the chance to try to solve that problem, to overcome that objection. And that's what we're all trained in sales to do, is to overcome the objection. And in those cases, that's what you need to do: overcome the objection, give them reasons why. If you notice, it's not a rejection of the sale because the customer's still there in front of you. They didn't leave. They didn't disappear. They're still there talking to you. The objection is yours to overcome; the sale is yours to lose.

Let's go one down on the list to complaint. A complaint is one level below an objection. It's something that is an inconvenience to the customer. It's something that they wish wasn't true. It's something that doesn't feel right. It may not be something that prevents a sale. "That's a lot of money for that product." "Man, that's like a really big package to try to fit in my truck." "Man, that paint on that wall—that house is ugly." If you're selling a service, "Man, that's going to be hard to get people in our company to agree to that." Right? It's not saying a reason why they're not buying; they're making a complaint or sometimes it's even just their own personal observation of what problem exists with buying it. When it's a complaint, even sometimes an objection, but when it's a complaint, try to determine and filter out if it's just a complaint. "Man, that's an ugly carpet." "Yeah, I know that's not the best color in the world. So, how should we write up this deal?" Just go right ahead with assuming they're agreeing to buy.

If you don't hear the words no or a concrete reason why the customer can't buy, go ahead and just continue like they've agreed to buy. Here in your head, that they said yes. It's very easy for a professional salesperson to always be hearing no because, no matter what you're selling, you have a closing ratio of probably between five and ten percent, sometimes lower. Some salespeople have closing ratios of one to two percent, depending upon the product or service. So if you're an average salesperson in an average industry, you have a single-digit closing ratio. So, 90-something percent of the time, your customer does not buy. So you get conditioned to hear everything as a no. Again, we're not trying to talk about high-pressure sales. We're talking about a customer who wants to buy something that, believe it or not, somehow, as salespeople, we talk them out of buying because we hear no, and we give up and we surrender. But a complaint is simply them venting their frustration with something about it. "Man, that's a lot of money for that." "Yeah, I know, prices have gone up a lot. So, what name should I put on the order?" Just assume the sale.

If it really is an objection or there's other issues, you'll find that out very quickly. But a lot of times, all the customer wants to do is have the ability to vent their feelings and have somebody hear them, and listen to them, and make them feel like they're heard. Don't ignore it. Address it, acknowledge it, but make them feel heard.

Let's go one level down to a request. What is a request? A request is a specific ask, like "Is there any way you could make that cheaper?" That's a buying question because if the customer didn't want to buy, they wouldn't ask you to make it cheaper. It sounds like it's the same statement as "Man, that's a lot of money," but "Man, that's a lot of money" isn't asking for anything. They're like dangling, leaving it to you to pick up. So, it's a little hard to work if it's a request. And they say, "Is there any way to make that any cheaper?" You can either address it or just keep going with the sale. "Yeah, I wish it could; we did the best we could on the price. Let's go ahead and write it up. What name do you want to put on it?" Right? Or if it's a house, let's say, "Is there any way that this house could have a fence?" Or "Is there any way to have this door be a screen door?" Right? Those are buying questions. That's a request, and dealing with a request is just figuring out how to address it in the context of the sale.

Again, these are very subtle differences, and as a salesperson, the biggest value you add to the process for your boss, for your client, for whoever you're representing, that you're selling for, is listening to the customer. Because if it was just a matter of the customer seeing something they wanted and just buying it, they wouldn't need you. But customers need somebody to listen to them and help them navigate the scary process of making a big commitment or decision. Look, if you're buying a pack of gum at the store, you don't need a salesperson. If you're buying, you know, even something at the electronics store for 100 bucks, you probably don't need a salesperson. Maybe somebody answers some questions, but a salesperson is there to help soothe the process. It's more emotional and psychological than anything else. Again, we're not talking about high-pressuring somebody into buying an item that they don't need to have. This is about identifying the different levels of customer response.

The next one down on the list is intel. That's where the customer is trying to gather more information about how this is all going to happen. So the question is, "Well, what happens after I make the purchase? What's the next step? How does this work? What happens after I do the contract?" Right? That is curiosity about the future. That's not even a request like, "Is there any way to make it cheaper?" It's "What happens next?" That's an example of where the customer wants to buy, but what might be holding them up is really not sure about the process. Like, "Where am I going next?" I'm just blindly going through this door and don't know what's on the other side. That just needs a little more description of what's in it for them, a little more description of what happens next, a little more confidence, so they're not just like with blindfold on trying to go through a room.

Let's switch gears and jump to the top of the list—the hardest one is a demand. That's when the customer says, "There's no way that I would buy this at this price. You have to throw in the extra warranty for me to do this." "This house could never work for me to own the way that kitchen is." It's drawing a line in the sand. In reality, some of those could be reallocated as a request if the demand is doable. A lot of times, when the demand is that strong, it's something that may be a deal-breaker. "There's no way that I would do business with a company that didn't have this credential or this license." It might be tough, but the good news about a demand is, at least, it is normally clear. Something you can sink your teeth into and understand. And we'll get back to all these and talk more about details of each one, but I'm just kind of going through the list to give you an example of where the differences are.

The easiest one is a subtle hint. That's where somebody wants to buy or maybe is in the process of buying, and they just want to give you some feedback. "Yeah, this is a pretty good deal. I did see something a little cheaper, but you know what? This is a better place to do business." "You know, this particular car is really what I'm looking for. I kind of wanted a different color, but you know what? This is going to be good enough." That's a subtle hint. That's a hint. Maybe if you could do something to acknowledge what I'm feeling, that'd be good. But, you know what, in reality, I'm already buying this. That's the easiest thing—you just keep that momentum going. But if you do have a subtle hint, you want to make sure that you are aware of the risk of losing the deal if you don't keep that hint compartmentalized. You don't keep that hint turning into a request, a complaint, an objection, or demand. You want to keep it under wraps. You want to keep it isolated. You want to keep it quarantined—let's use a word that is very common in our vernacular these days.

Let's go through them again in ascending order. You have a customer that is buying, they looked at your product, they talked about your service, and they say, "Yeah, this is a great service. This will help my business. This advertising contract you have for my company is really going to help. I'm hoping that I'll have really good customer service once I sign up." That's a hint. "You know, this consulting agreement that we're doing is going to be good for my company because, you know, we're a little short-handed right now with sales and marketing, so you guys coming in and helping us with that is going to really get us a lot of sales. I'd really like to see a 20% increase in sales. That's what I'm shooting for." That's a hint. That's telling them I'm gonna buy, this is why I'm buying, I'm hoping that my wishful thinking is correct.

So those subtle hints can help you make sure that if there's any hiccups come up between that point and the time the deal is done, the ink is dry, you can go back to that and say, "Yeah, you know, I know you're hesitating, but remember what you said about a 20% increase in sales? That's what we're all about, right?" You can use that subtle hint to help you nail down a deal that at first glance was seemingly vague.
A customer is not willing to lose the deal they're invested in as much in the process as you are. That's a good place for you to be; it means you did a great job in matching the client to the service or product, and you did a great job establishing your rapport and all the other road-to-sales steps that are important. Let's elevate it one more to a complaint. A complaint is a little more serious. It's something where there is something about your offering that is painful to them. It could be the price, it could be the ETA: "Man, I wish that I could have this within a week, not a month from now. I wish it didn't take three months to order this car. I wish that this house would have had a shingle roof versus a tile roof." Whatever. It's a complaint; they're telling you something that's not good for them. It's not serious enough for them to not do it, but they're voicing their opinion like, "Yeah, I'm doing this, but you know what? There's something wrong with this deal that I wish was better." It puts you on notice; it's kind of like a warning that you're getting close to the edge of something going wrong.

So really focus. You have a buyer, everything's good, but there's one thing that's maybe painful. I don't recommend trying to solve that problem because if you try to solve that problem as a complaint, the person’s gonna learn, "Well, wait a minute, maybe if I have another complaint, I can get that met too." If it's only a complaint, even trying to solve it could set a precedent that ends up blowing your deal. Stick to your guns. If you have a buyer, acknowledge a complaint. "Yeah, I know, this day and age it's really hard to get houses with tile roofs," whatever. I'm making stuff up, right? Maybe they're buying an airplane but "I wish this airplane had fewer hours on the motor." "Yeah, I agree, this day and age it's hard to find them with low hours, but that's why it's such a good deal." Now, are you going to title it in the name of an LLC or your own name?

If you are a contractor and you're doing, let's say, an electrical install on a commercial property, and they say, "I wish that this could be three-phase instead of two-phase," you can acknowledge it: "Yeah, I know, but we already went through your need for only two phases. At some point later, you might add a three-phase, but at least for now, we can get this started. The service install is going to be here on the north wall, correct?" Keep it going, right? And again, the examples I'm bringing up might not be practical. I'm just giving you verbal examples of how to deal with it.

Take the complaint for what it's worth; it's them venting. If the complaint really is an objection, you will find out soon enough when you go for the deal. Go for the close. If that complaint really is an objection, they're going to say, "Hey, wait a minute, I told you that I wanted it to be three-phase." "Oh, I just thought you wished that it was." And then you can deal with it as an objection.

So if it is an objection, which is the next level up of seriousness of a problem with a deal, the objection is: "Gee, I don't even know if I could deal with just a two-phase install and this electrical. I don't even know; I might need three-phase." Well, then you can isolate that first. Make sure it's the only objection. If you start solving and handling objections one at a time without isolating them, they're just going to be a never-ending, unlimited list of objections. "Gee, okay, well, I thought we talked about two-phase. I understand you might want three-phase, but let's just start. Let's look at it another way. What would you need the three-phase for?"

"Well, we might be adding some lifts—hydraulic lifts—in this service department of this dealership. We might need three-phase for that." "Well, how sure are you? Do you need the three-phase?" "Well, it's in our expansion plans." "Well, is it worth spending the money now to have three-phase?" Like, turn it around on them if they want to make the decision to do that. "Well, it's not worth spending any more money than this, but we might need it." Now, they're drawing a line in the sand. They're saying that it's almost borderline on a demand at this point.

What about if you're selling a service and the objection is: "Well, gee, I don't even know if we have enough people to support the administration of this service you're offering. I don't even know if we have enough staff that can do this training for this service you're offering." "Well, is that really the only problem you're seeing right now—the staffing?" This also helps them focus on that one thing. Maybe they're confusing more than one objection, but if you focus them on that objection: "Is that the only problem? Is the staff?" "Yeah, I think it's the only problem."

"So, if you did have enough staff, if we could look at it and you had enough staff to cover this, is that the only thing standing between you and getting this set up?" "Yeah, I think that's it." "Okay, good." Then you can go through to represent your product. Do the product presentation again. Reevaluate. Maybe you need to go back to the fact-finding and qualifying step of the sales process to make sure that you're meeting their objection. Maybe through that process, you might find that the objection disappears by itself. If it doesn't, you can determine if you can overcome it by maybe having less demand on the customer, less cost, restructuring the offering, or negotiating to overcome the objection and closing the deal.

If it's a demand, it's harder, but it's simpler. If the customer says, "There's no way I could buy this if it only covers one of our locations. We have to have this service at all five of our locations," and if your product, let’s say, has pricing per location, you can say, "Well, let me ask you this: the pricing is per location, so what you're saying is if we just did it five different contracts, you wouldn't want to do that?" "No, that would be too much."

Okay, with a demand, what we like to do first is put it back on the customer and ask them to really look at it and tell you, "Is it fill or kill?" So, if we can't do it that way and it's only one location, and the price is what it is, are you saying you don't want to go ahead with it? "No, I don't want to go ahead with it."

Okay, well, at least now you know where you stand. You have the answer to what the customer's exact requirements are for the proposal. If you can meet them, great. If you can't, then you don't have a deal. You can isolate that too: "Well, I don't know if we can, but if we could do something that would meet that, are you saying you do want to go ahead?" The difference between not wanting to go ahead if it can't and wanting to go ahead if you can—because if you jump through hoops and solve their demand and then they still don't buy, you did all that for nothing. So isolate that and commit them.

It's not so much isolating it. It's now as you're committing them to saying, "If I go through the trouble of seeing if this could be done, are you gonna do it?" Because they gave you a demand, now you can give them a demand back. Your wording, phrasing, personality—you can put all that into it how you want. You don’t have to be harsh about it, but at least you can do it in a way that's very specific. They were specific; you can be specific.

If you are going to ask for a commitment, the old "If I could do this, would you buy it?" wording, make sure you put some skepticism into it. Because if you make it seem like, "Hey, if I could do this, would you buy it?" they're going to ask for more. You have to make it seem like it's the hardest thing in the world. "Gee, I don't even know if we could do this. This doesn't even make any sense what you're saying. I've never seen anything like this be done before, but if there's some way we can arrange for this—some kind of way—don't hold me to it, I'm not saying we can, I'm just saying I'll try. If there's some kind of way to do it, are you going to go ahead with it?"

Put a lot of skepticism in it, even if you know it could be done. Before you go ahead and solve their problem, meet their demand, you want to put skepticism. Otherwise, just like objections, you're going to have a never-ending list of demands. "I want this, I want that," it's going to keep adding up.

So those are the six different levels of customer communication. It's important to identify which one you're hearing because if you think you're hearing a demand or an objection, really, it's just a request, you're going to try to solve a customer problem that really doesn't exist. And all that might happen is you might talk them out of a sale because really all they wanted to do was be heard. Or you might train the customer to ask for more things, and at some point, they might not be doable anymore. You're going to train them to be demanding or objectionable instead of just a requester or an information gatherer.

So identify the communications of your customer. That is the most important skill of a really good salesperson—to identify what the customer is trying to tell you. You have to read through the lines. You have to translate customer talk to actual talk. What are they trying to say? And the customer is not trying to mislead you. They're not trying to play games; it's just a method of dealing with buyer's remorse ahead of time. They're trying to avoid making a mistake. They're trying to neutralize the risk of a potential misleading salesperson. It's not like a salesperson is not known to make stuff up and to mislead a buyer—not that you would do that, but other salespeople might.

This is their way of inoculating themselves against making a bad purchase decision. So they're going to communicate to you in certain ways. If you're very astute, have good emotional intelligence, and recognize these things, you will go a long way in being able to close more deals because you're identifying really what the customer is trying to accomplish, and you're not confusing things. You're not making it more complicated than it is or more serious than it is, but you're also not downplaying it.

You also don't want to blow off a demand and make it sound like it's a subtle hint or a request. A demand is what it is; you have to deal with it. You have to bow up and knuckle down and make it go away. But if it's only an intel-gathering question, then don't overdo it, and don't make it seem like it's a big deal.

It's kind of like when you deal with kids. If you know your kid's riding their bike down the street, a five-year-old kid, six-year-old kid, and they tip over and crash their bike and skin their knee, they're gonna look at you to see how you react. If you freak out and make it seem like it's the end of the world, they're going to start crying. If you go over to them and give them some recognition, "Are you okay? I saw that, that was a pretty scary thing, it looks like you did a good job," give them some support, they're going to look at it like it was an adventure and appreciate your interest.

The reaction of another person is based upon how you lead them to react. You could take a subtle hint or an intel-gathering and turn it into a demand if you're not careful. You can also take a demand and downplay it to maybe a request if you're clever. Your role is to make things get closer to the sale because remember, the customer wants to buy something. Otherwise, they would not be talking to you unless it was a pure cold call. Then that's a whole different deal, and we don't like cold calls anyways.

If they're talking to you, they want to buy something. They just need help navigating the process and the product. It's going to be hard, but that's why you get paid the big bucks. They're looking to you for leadership in that process. Identifying one of these steps or one of these levels of what the customer is communicating will help you.

Now, this is just one segment of the entire sales process, but even within that segment, the response to your ask, the response to your buying question—within that one narrow segment, there's five different things that can happen. Six different things are going to happen. How you respond to those is key.

So you've identified the level. Let me leave you with this final note, make sure that your next conversation with a customer—just one simple conversation—recognize whether it's a request, whether it's a complaint, whether it's an objection, or whether it's a demand. One of those four will happen in every conversation.