Hi everyone, David Siekman here from Agency Performance Partners. I sat down today to shoot a video about overcoming objections, but I realize that one of the things we really teach is avoiding objection. Now I’m not talking about avoiding objections like when you get an objection and trying to dodge it. We actually teach you to attack that directly head on. I think in another video I’ll talk a little bit more about how we train on that technique.
I do think that there are ways that you can avoid the objection, and I do think there’s really two things that you can do to prevent an objection from even being raised. The first is right at the beginning of the call, and throughout the rest of the call, is making sure that you build a good relationship and building rapport with the prospect or the client. I think what this does is that most objections are really about trust and the person wanting to take a minute, wanting to test you, wanting to think about what they’re about to do before they just jump in and do it.
So by having that relationship and building the trust with the person, they’re not even going to question whether they should do business with you. They, in fact, want to do business with you. So when you get to the point when you’re presenting the quote and asking for the business, it’s really a formality at that point. They’re really just waiting to sign the application. So I think if you build the trust and you build the relationship, that’s one way you can avoid having an objection come up later on. I think the other way that you can do it is by asking specific questions. So, for example, one of the things that I always ask is regarding other decision makers in the process. So that when I get to the end, when I’m presenting the quote or for me when I’m doing the proposal, I’m not blindsided with, “Oh, I have to talk to my spouse or my business partner about this.” I already know that going in.
So that does a couple of things. One, it allows me to respond to that earlier in the process so that I don’t get blindsided later on with that and two, it takes that off the table in terms of an objection because a lot of times that objection is not really an objection. They’re just trying to say pause, hold, not right now or something along those lines. They don’t necessarily have to check with the other person, they’re just telling you that to avoid making a decision. So I think if you ask them up front about other decision makers, that’s one way to avoid that objection. And I think there are questions that you can ask on every objection you potentially could get. You can ask about price, you can ask why they’re shopping, you can ask different questions early on in the process that are all aimed at avoiding your top five to ten objections later on.
So we always suggest that you have all of your objections listed out and you have your responses to those objections. I would add that what you should do is add a question that comes way earlier in the process that will help you avoid the objection. So you have a question to avoid the objection, the objection itself, and then your response if you do get the objection. These are part of the techniques that we teach here at Agency Performance Partners as part of our APPX sales program. If you are interested in learning more about that then please contact me either using the contact link or reach me at david@performancepartners.com or 401-332-8904. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
