When we learn to walk, our body instinctively pushes us to continue trying even when our legs object, the floor causes us to slip or when we fall and cut our lip on the edge of the coffee table. To a one year old a busted lip is a big deal, yet, we push on and we stand up and we eventually walk.

Many are born with inconveniences that cause normal childhood growth more difficult for them, yet some push through and overcome those difficulties in their life.

To grow, to become stronger, better prepared and more successful in life we learn to overcome objections. Sometimes those objections seem harder to overcome as we get older.

Some people fear rejection and have much of their life. They can look at relationships and how they’ve handled situations and know very well that they don’t handle rejection very well! The girl he had a crush on at 16 finally got married at 25 and he never told her how he felt; he is afraid of her rejection of him.

This is a particularly difficult situation if you’re in business for yourself or want to be (including being a commission-based employee). If you desire to grow your business, make new friends and earn new patrons you will have to learn now to deal with objections and overcome them!

So, where do you start? How do you go from being afraid of “no” or even just at a loss of what to do once you’ve been told no to overcoming their objection and making the sale?

Just like in marriage and life and business, it’s a process and you can learn to follow it and be successful!

1) You must find out what the true objection is.

Typically when a customer or potential customer says “no” they will say something like “we don’t have the budget for it” or “maybe next quarter”, etc. These are simply stalling tactics even if the customer doesn’t realize that’s why they’re doing it! Rarely will these actually be the reasons the customer said no. It is your job to understand your customer’s needs and the real reason they didn’t buy. You can overcome this objection very easily by being understanding and reassuring (remember: if the customer said ‘no’ it’s partially because they either don’t know you, don’t trust you yet or haven’t been convinced that they need what you have to offer).

You can begin to discover the true objection by offering a way around their current reason to say no. For instance, if they say they don’t have it in their budget, you can show them a similar product that is less expensive or is a little less initial-payment heavy or stretches the payments further. You can show them how, by adding your product, they will increase their revenue beyond the cost of the product or how it will reduce expenses elsewhere (like energy saving appliances and bulbs).

Once you have overcome the initial objection, if money wasn’t the actual issue then you will begin to get to the root of their decision. It’s likely the next statement will be more along the lines of “Well, I just don’t see how this will benefit me or my business” or something like “But you’re new in town. I don’t know if you’re going to be around in 1 year to take care of your warranty.” Valid objections, and now time for you to do your job and make a sale!

2) Overcoming the true objection.

Once you’ve been able to get past the initial pseudo-objections, it’s your time to sell yourself because that’s actually what the customer is buying into or not buying into. They are buying you, your presentation, your relationship, your trustworthiness, your good looks, your hygiene, the whole works! When you make a sale, unless your customer was just desperately needing your product just before you walked in the door (or before they walked in your doors), it is you they are buying so you have to focus on who you are and what you do best, not what the product is and what it does best. You must now focus on your strengths to create a new relationship with this person. This product won’t last forever; you probably won’t even be selling it 20 years from now, but hopefully you will still be around and your customers will still have needs, and you need them to want you to be the one to fill those needs no matter what you’re offering today.

So, at this point, it becomes a game of you showing the customer who you are because you’ve likely already demoed the product; doing so again will often end up without a sale and without a customer. It’s now about you.

3) Sell yourself to your customers

Who are you? Do you know? Have you done a self-evaluation lately? It’s important to know your strengths and weaknesses before you sell yourself to your customers. You likely know some of your strengths if you’re a people person at all, because you know what you do or say and how you act that make your friends laugh and enjoy being around you. Now is the time to relax, not to be stressed, and to be yourself. SMILE and be confident in you and what you’re selling. Your confidence makes all the difference in the world.

If that pitcher throws 92mph and is bigger and meaner looking that you (in your mind) and you walk up to the plate terrified, you’ll likely strikeout. If you love the game of baseball and are thrilled just to be facing Randy Johnson, knowing it’s a challenge but also knowing you have the ability to turn that fastball into 405 foot home run (even if the first pitch was just under your chin) your chances of success are much greater because your mind and your perception of the situation  (your confidence) heavily weighs in the outcome of your success.

So focus on being a person, not a sales-person. Turn the customer’s focus away from the item you sell and onto you as a person. Talk about your family or your past or your dreams for the future. Let them see you as intelligent and confident, but also as a person they can relate to. Once that happens, well, remember? People buy from people they like and people they trust. Once you’ve destroyed the barrier of you vs. potential customer and turned it into you + customer = good relationship (regardless of product) is when the true selling begins.

So how hard is this? Well, just like anything worthwhile in life, it takes practice and persistence. But it shouldn’t be too hard being you, maybe just hard telling yourself to be you in those situations, but you can do it! You have to do it if you want to learn to overcome objections and develop customers that keep doing business with you tomorrow and years from now. That’s how you stay in business; that’s how you compete with big corporate chains; that’s how you make money and build relationships.

~Seth