Episode #429: Bob Apollo

Salespeople tend to assume that any question a customer asks has the potential to be an objection. But it may simply be a request for clarification or a concern. That being said, Bob Apollo believes that there are four significant categories of objections.

1. The customer doesn’t need what you’re trying to promote 
2. They might need what you’re trying to promote but there’s no urgency to move quickly
3. They’d like to move forward but they can’t afford the cost
4. They haven’t built a relationship of trust with you and aren’t sure they’ll get the outcome they’re looking for

Some level of questions and concerns are natural. If they don’t challenge you, you have to wonder how seriously they’re evaluating it. When objections do arise, how do you handle them? Bob shares his strategy in this episode of Sales Reinvented. 

Outline of This Episode

• [0:46] The most common types of objections
• [2:36] The biggest mistakes people make with objection handling
• [3:36] Bob’s strategy for responding to objections
• [5:15] The role of empathy in handling objections
• [7:06] How to handle objections with confidence
• [10:22] Bob’s top 3 objection handling dos and don’ts
• [12:21] Turning a challenging objection into a successful sale

Bob’s strategy for responding to objections

Bob believes that there are four key steps to objection handling:

1. Clarify not just what the customer said but what they meant: What’s at the heart of their objection? Sometimes the real concern isn’t the one that’s stated. 
2. Explore the nature of the issue with the customer. What triggered it? What’s driving it?
3. It isn’t always up to you to resolve the concern: You have to invite the customer to work with you to find a solution. They rarely object to that.
4. Presenting what you think is the answer or solution isn’t enough. You must confirm that the underlying issues have been addressed. 

The role of empathy in handling objections

A lack of empathy can be the fuel behind objections. Emotional intelligence is an important characteristic of good salespeople. You have to be able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and see things from their perspective. You have to move beyond what the customer said and understand why they said it. You can make sure the prospect feels heard by clarifying what you heard, following Bob’s four-step process. 

How to handle objections with confidence

There is a clear correlation between a salesperson’s willingness to ask tough questions back to the customer and sales success.

You have to collect a list of the frequently asked tough to answer questions that you hear from your customers for every member of the sales force to reference. Ask the most effective members of the sales team to share how they deal with those objections so the learning can be absorbed by everyone. It captures the native intelligence of salespeople who live with these objections.

Having built that collection, you must roleplay how you’ll deal with those questions in a safe environment. Inexperienced salespeople can learn from their more experienced colleagues. 

You can’t imply that salespeople must use the same script for what appears to be the same question. Your list needs to be seen as a framework, not a script. You must address the issue in your own words. 

Turning a challenging objection into a successful sale

Most objections appear to be cost-based. Bob was working with a utility company and believed that they’d communicated they understood what they wanted to accomplish and had a plan to achieve it (that was superior to other options). But procurement got involved and things got stuck.

Bob stepped back—and rather than deal with the pricing objection—they sought to ensure that they’d created the strongest possible case for the value of solving the problem. It allowed them to justify a higher price point—but there was still a gap.

How did Bob bridge the gap? Hear the story in this episode of Sales Reinvented. 

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What was a pivotal moment or experience in your career that fundamentally changed the way you handle objections, and how did it shift your approach?

In my very early career as a salesperson, I worked in a sales culture that misguidedly saw objections as a battle of will between the salesperson and the customer – and believed they could be addressed with crudely templated sales tactics and techniques

When I moved to HP, I found myself in a culture that saw “objections” as indications that the salesperson and the customer might not yet be on the same wavelength, and that needed to be dealt with empathy and good communication.

Can you share a specific technique or framework you’ve used to successfully overcome a tough objection? Please provide a brief example or case study where it worked effectively.

First, we need to determine whether what the customer has just communicated is a genuine “objection” or simply a concern or a request for clarification.

Then, we need to determine whether the issue is primarily related to a lack of need, urgency, trust or money.

Then, we need to clarify the real core issue (which may not be the immediately apparent one), explore the customer’s concerns, seek to find a jointly acceptable resolution, and confirm that the issue has been addressed to the customer’s satisfaction before moving on.

When selling to a major UK utility, we used this approach to address what appeared to be a money-related issue and found a jointly-acceptable solution that traded-off the headline sum paid against the payment timetable and reflected the different cost-of-money between vendor and customer.

Objections can sometimes feel like dead ends in conversations. Can you share a particularly challenging objection you faced and the steps you took to turn it into a win?

Timing-related  objections are often frustrating – because in essence the customer is saying that they want to do business with, but not yet. 

In one particular case, we worked with our champion to highlight the consequences of delay and the relationship between the potential project and the CEO’s top-level initiatives, resulting in a much stronger internal business case that recognised the benefit of timely action.

What are the top three tools, resources, or training programs you recommend for sales professionals who want to improve their objection-handling skills?

1. 1. Get every member of the sales organisation to share the hardest-to-answer questions they hear from customers and how they have managed to address them. Brainstorm the inputs and come up with recommended approaches to dealing with these questions
   2. Create a safe learning environment in which every salesperson gets the chance to practice their responses to common “objections” and can learn from their peers
   3. Implement a training programme that equips, encourages and enables salespeople to understand the root cause of apparent “objections” and coach them on a structured framework (clarify-explore-resolve-confirm) to deal with them in an empathetic way

With evolving buyer behaviours and advancements in AI and technology, how do you see objection handling changing in the coming years, and what advice would you give to salespeople to stay ahead?

Great question. Properly applied, AI has a huge and growing role to play in helping salespeople to anticipate, address and resolve potential “objections”, both in advance of the customer conversation and in real-time coaching.

But – in complex B2B environments at least – we cannot and should not rely on AI to do the salesperson’s job for them, but rather to inform and support the salesperson’s critical thinking and emotional intelligence.