A fantastic way of  pre-empting sales objections is to use stories and metaphors to do the job for you.

These will address the same common sales objections you usually hear and the reasons why they are not valid but instead of you saying it, it will be in the form of stories of past experiences, other clients and other industry news.

When I was starting off in sales, I was selling a commoditised product that was being sold mainly on price in a largely unsophisticated marketplace.  I don’t know about you, but my initial sales training was non existent. I worked in a ‘roll your sleeves up and get on with it’ style business. I did well and soon progressed through the ranks. There were times, however, when I wanted more skills and abilities to sell at higher margins and higher process but I just didn’t have the knowledge.

I bought every book on sales objections and selling available and tried everything. The results were less than average. Don’t get me wrong I was doing OK, but knew there was more available. I tried every sales rebuttal and overcoming sales objection script going but they weren’t helping.

I was down the pub one night with a friend of mine, Jim. Jim left University and went on a year long sales training induction program with a giant US based IT company. He was trained in all aspects of sales and was using principles way ahead of their time. I was explaining my situation to him and he said “Woooahhh, Peter, you have a great lesson to learn here. They trained us in depth on this. Look, I was sceptical at first and I guess you will be too, that’s natural.

Using sales rebuttals Is OK but a more sophisticated way to do it is to bypass the prospects scepticism by using stories. Think of it like peeling an orange. Rebuttals are trying to get to the fruit inside by smashing the orange with a sledge hammer. Sure, every now and again its effective and you might get some fruit but mostly you crush the very thing you are trying to get.

When you become practiced at telling stories about previous clients who faced the same challenges and have benefited then you are delicately peeling away at the top layer of resistance – i.e the skin of the orange. It’s a more subtle approach but will mean you get the fruit every time.” And do you know, Jim was right. I tried his approach and have never looked back. Using stories and metaphors to deal with objections before they arise has been the key to most of the successes in my sales career. I would never develop a sales presentation without doing it now and would never recommend anyone else to do so too.

Did you like my story?

Did you spot the metaphor?

Your Action Points:

1)      Take 1 – 2 hours over the coming 3 days and write out all of your past successes with customers and clients. Write down what value they got from working with you and what results they got.

2)      Go back to your list of common sales objections and see how the successes can be used to provide proof to pre-empt the common sales objections you get.

3)      Spend a few hours crafting the results and testimonials you have, and the objection that they can be used to counter. Craft your story in full sensory detail about:

1. the doubts the clients had
2. how you overcame that doubts
3. why they chose to take action
4. what result the client would have missed out on if they hadn’t taken action or what it would have cost them
5. what  results did they achieve

Your aim is to craft your story in such vivid detail so the other person can imagine that it is them, they can empathise and then they can see that it is logically and emotional right to take that course of action.

Related posts:

1. Stop Objections Before They Happen