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My 24 year old daughter who is two years into the beginning of a successful sales and marketing career called me yesterday. She said, “Dad, I used one of the sales techniques you taught me and it worked!” I was so dumbfounded that I didn’t know how to respond. Not because the technique worked, but that she actually listened to some advice from her father.

I asked her what happened. She told me that she has been working for some time to close a large deal. She was in a meeting and the key decision maker kept throwing objection after objection at her to the point where it almost turned into a whining session. After about an hour of responding to these objections she realized things weren’t going anywhere, in fact, she may have even been losing ground with the customer. And then she remembered what I told her about ignoring objections.

Ignoring objections is very powerful yet most salespersons don’t use this tool. It’s not used very often because it seems somewhat scary. Here are some key points in using this technique:

1. Studies have shown that the first objection that a customer or prospect throws at you is typically just a knee jerk response and carries little real importance to them. The first objection is a good objection to ignore.
2. If you have fielded one objection after another and see no end in sight, this technique can help end the barrage. If you keep responding to a stream of objections, the customer or prospect sometimes sees no need to stop. Remember, it takes two to tango. This is exactly the point that my daughter stopped responding to the customer’s objections.
3. No need to feel anxiety about using this technique. Why? If the objection is really important to the customer or prospect, they’ll bring it back up and you can handle it head on at that time.
4. So how do I ignore an objection? You acknowledge that you heard the objection and then just continue. It’s really very easy.

Customer: “Your price is too high.”
Salesperson: “Oh (or uh huh)…(pause)…did I tell you that we provide service on everything we sell?”

5. So what is the message to the customer? It’s the following metamessage, “I’m not going to do any more bending for you Mr. Customer and now it’s your move.”

When I was a salesperson I was hesitant to use this technique until I saw it used successfully by a standout salesperson at the company where I was working at the time. Once you start to use this technique and get proficient with it you’ll get addicted like I did. Not only does it help you deal with the objection at hand, but it demonstrates how empty and meaningless most objections are that we get from customers and prospects.

Tags: objections

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