In sales, there is a universal axiom that sales trainer Brian Tracy calls “The Law of Six." This states: Clients really have no more than six objections to owning your product or using your service.
While you may hear what seems like countless objections to sales during your career, if you categorize them, they normally fall into six basic categories. Let's define these six categories so that you can think about overcoming those objections.
Six objections in the lawn and landscape business
- Price / Risk
- Price, cost, budget, or ROI concerns all fall into this category. Price objections are often really about risk. If the sales representative has justified the cost by building value during the interaction, the customer will be less worried.
- Competition
- We already work with “Competitor.” Your prospects are busy — they don’t want to fix things that aren’t broken. It is your duty to change their mindset and explain why they need the specific value you provide.
- Quality of Service
- If the customer is concerned about the quality of your products or services – e.g., they express doubts about product quality, the training of your personnel, speed or responsiveness of service, or compatibility – these are examples of the quality of service concerns.
- Fear of Change
- This is often related to complacency, having a fear of change can make the decision-making process a difficult one for many business owners.
- Timing / Stall
- Customers sometimes attempt to stall their decision. The closer the sale is to closing, the more pressure the customer feels, and if there is any remaining conflict or anxiety (or no sense of urgency) they may try to stall.
- Trust / Relationship
- The customer might be concerned with the legitimacy or credibility of you or your company. (This indicates that a good relationship has not been established between the salesperson and the client).
Developing answers
After identifying all objections, you receive regularly, you need to develop iron-clad scripted answers to them.
Thus, once you’re armed with airtight answers to these predictable objections, which used to block the sale, your company can set new sales records. The point is you cannot wait until you are involved in the presentation and then try to make up an answer.
It is important that you are proactively preparing. Your job as a professional is to discover for yourself (or with your sales team) the six common objections that you hear consistently.
Once identified, it is a simple process of internalizing and memorizing those potent responses. Then, when the predictable objections do appear, you can answer easily and effortlessly...and automatically move to close.