Add This One Question When Handling Objections

I was over at Barnes and Nobles bookstore the other day thumbing through books on the process of selling. One point I saw in almost every book that I picked up concerned what to do after you have “handled an objection”. 

To give a little background, as you know, it’s not unusual for a potential client to have “objections” to buying your services.

The objection could be anything: “I don’t have time to do this”, “it costs too much”, “I’ll have to do to much prep work before you can get started”, “this is more than I want to do right now” or almost anything else.

Handling objections can be difficult if you don’t anticipate them and have responses prepared.  But even if you do, you could still be missing an important step, which brings me back to the books I was thumbing through.  Almost every one of them added this step:

Confirm that your response answers their objection.

After you have handled the objection, take a moment to ask an additional question:  “That addresses your concern, doesn’t it?” or something of that nature (notice that the question is phrased to assume a positive answer).  This gives the prospective client the opportunity to agree, in which case you can proceed and the objection will not likely be raised again – they’ve agreed that it’s no longer an issue.

If your response does not fully address the client’s needs, you know it. Now you have the opportunity explore the issue more deeply, to tease out the real objection, and respond to it.

Adding this one question will avoid a surprise at the end when your client brings up something you thought was resolved.