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Overcoming Objections: A Formula for Success

By Dominick Miciotta
Vice President, Higher Education Consulting,
EdTek Services, Inc.

The fear of objections keep new sales people up at night and causes stammering and nervous twitches during the day. Naturally gifted sales people make overcoming objections look easy. For the rest of us, it is something we must and can learn.

If you are working in Admissions at an academic institution chances are you don’t really think of yourself as a salesperson. Therefore, it is unlikely that you will focus on the finer points of how to overcome objections. Well, here is some news for you Admissions people: if there is an exchange of money or value that is occurring in the course of your job then a transaction has taken place. That makes you a salesperson.

In addition, if you were successful in concluding that transaction it is very likely that an objection was brought to light and that you either overcame or missed it entirely and still made the sale. While it is great that a sale was made it is also possible that a missed objection can result in higher attrition of students once they start the program and your college may suffer from poorer retention and graduation rates.

Sales professionals from all industries including: automotive, retail, medical, consulting and training services utilize a people-centric consultative sale s approach in one form or another. While some companies have training that specifically involves sales objections, most sales training fails to adequately and succinctly address a formula for overcoming objections that sales people can adopt. In some cases the concept of a sales process is frowned upon. The resulting failure to supply adequate training contributes to the high degree of turnover in sales departments and the ensuing costs of employee turnover damage profitability for companies around the world.

Here is a formula for overcoming objections that may be applied in any situation where a transaction is taking place:

Objection / Qualification = The Opportunity to Close!

The Prep Work

The first step for successful sales management is to monitor and observe your sales people in action. However a sales manager must make sure a few things occur first. A consistent approach to training, coaching and mentoring must be put in writing and incorporated into a process of employee reviews. Employees must have a copy of such documents and be able to explain your companies approach to sales training, coaching and employee evaluation. Here is my personal “Six Steps for the Successful Sales Manager” to follow once the process is thought-out, documented and shared:

1. Implement a tiered lead management system awarding highly converting leads to highly converting representatives and evaluate both weekly.
2. Develop a training and observation schedule that focuses on your weak performers.
3. If monitoring during an actual sales call be a silent observer (THIS IS VERY TOUGH TO DO).
4. Train your sales people to have a command of the key performance metrics that they are evaluated on and in ideal situations they will spot a problem before you.
5. Implement a continuous improvement environment with your team.
6. Keep a daily sales manager journal and document your conversations.

Don’t let anyone put you on the spot with decision making. If the answer is unclear, don’t guess, just say, “I’ll get back to you,” and make sure you do. Be an inspirational leader and find your motivation. Manage up – If you are the sales leader in your organization and your CEO did not come from a sales background, you are the only person who understands your business and recognizing you must manage up and side-ways and get the leadership team behind you will help mitigate headaches.

Keep all Feedback S.M.A.R.T.

What exactly does that mean – to keep all feedback S.M.A.R.T.? Here is my definition.

Specific: Avoid generalizing; use their own words in examples to target the behavior you want to change.

Measurable: Every aspect of coaching must be related to the key performance metrics.

Achievable: Develop an achievable but challenging “ramp up” phase to correct inadequate performance behavior and results.

Related: A good coaching and training process is one that does not contradict itself. Make sure the feedback, coaching and training tools you provide are consistent, impartial and support your ultimate goal which is improved performance improvement.

Timely: Beyond establishing a timeline for performance improvement is the application of consistent and timely performance monitoring. A minor behavior problem during a sales call that impacts performance becomes unmanageable quickly. Keep the feedback consistent and timely or the problem will get worse.

Hearing the Objection

When, as a sales manager, you are observing a sales call and you hear an objection, do you know if your sales professionals also heard it. Do they respond? When making a general assessment of the “will and skill” of your staff the ability to hear an objection is paramount. You can teach them what to do but if they don’t even hear the objection in the first place you may have a bad hire. Try giving them a little coaching on hearing objections and see if that makes a difference. You might start by playing back a recording of several sales calls and working with them to analyze these discussions. We recommend taking an extreme approach by training staff to consider any question by a prospect a potential objection that requires focused attention on their part.

The Overcoming Objections Formula

1. Ask a qualifying question. No matter what the objection you hear is there is a qualifying question you can find that will both buy you time and uncover the deeper objection. If it takes follow up to your qualifying questions to get to the “real” objection then go for it!
   
2. Restate their deeper objection and present features you can offer that address the matter at hand.
   
3. Follow-up the features with a “third-party” testimonial phrased as a benefit statement “My customers tell me…” etc. And you will proceed to relate a story of real people you have met who had the same objection and found a positive outcome based on the features you just presented.
   
4. Force them to process the information by asking them “How do you think this can benefit you?” etc… a trial close such as this will cause the individual to have to think through what was said and re-iterate the benefits for them. In essence, they will be selling themselves.

Any sales process with open ended objections that have gone unaddressed will increasingly result in failure to close and lower conversions all around. One first step to improving an existing sales team’s results is to take a look at how successful they are with identifying and overcoming objections, chances are they don’t have a formula for success.

Good luck out there!

About the Author

Dominick Miciotta is Vice President for Higher Education Consulting with EdTek Services, Inc. His previous experience and projects have been with ITT Technical Institute; ITT/ESI; Career Education Corporation; Corinthian Colleges, Post University, Bay State College and Bryant & Stratton Online. Dominick specializes in the quick turnaround of enrollment marketing departments for non-profit and for-profit institutions. For questions or comments about this article or to inquire about how you can improve your Enrollment Operations feel free to email him directly at dominick@edtekservices.com .

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