27Turning Around Objections
No pressure, no diamonds.
—Thomas Carlyle
You're at the end of the sales process. After advancing through a series of micro-commitments, you've delivered a masterful presentation and walked the buyer through the proposal. He agrees that your recommendations to solve his problems will work. It feels like everything is a go. You ask confidently for his business. Then…
“Well, I'm going to need to think about it.”
Ugh! What do you have to do to get this guy to act? You fantasize about reaching across the table, grabbing him by his collar and screaming, “Sign the damn contract!”
Instead you present a feeble rebuttal and walk away with a sliver of hope and vague promise from the stakeholder to “call you sometime next week.”
Objections suck.
Seriously, think about how much better life would be in sales if, when closing, buyers just smiled and said, “Your proposal sounds great! Where do I sign?”
But that doesn't happen. Instead you get hard questions, pushback, negotiation, and objections, which trigger a flood of disruptive emotions.
These emotions hit you like a ton of bricks the moment you get an objection. You feel like you've been punched in the gut. Your brain turns off and you stumble over your words. You feel embarrassed, small, and out of control. Sometimes you freeze like a deer in the headlights, paralyzed, unable to formulate any move at all.
Yet, it's here, at this very inflection point of rejection and emotion, that the rubber meets the road ...
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