Diversions—Objections, Pretexts and Their Treatment

I do not agree that objections—and I mean objections, not pretexts—are due to a customer’s need for further information. Even though this is a commonly held opinion among colleagues. Objections are also part of the customer’s verbal repertoire to test the salesperson’s knowledge and credibility, or to make his own position clear. Objections are not simply brushed aside by the salesperson. They are serious statements that correspond to the truth in many cases. So some cannot be refuted in their truthfulness, but by there significance to the further sales conversation. There are hardly more than a handful of real objections that need to be handled. However, many salespeople virtually “shit their pants” when it comes to objection handling, as if a new objection is mentioned in every customer conversation. Objection handling is the simplest process in the entire sales cycle because objections do not change. They don’t become more. There are many exciting objection-handling techniques from which you can learn your individual favourite techniques. Compare the difficulty of objection handling with that of simple arithmetic. This chapter deals with different treatment techniques for numerous objections and answers the question of how to immediately expose a pretext and “put it in the corner”.