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Why Most Objection Handling Training Is Backwards (And Why That's Actually Perfect)
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Most objection handling training is designed to turn you into a verbal bulldozer.
I've been watching businesses train their teams for the better part of two decades, and I've got a confession: I used to teach the traditional "overcome every objection" approach myself. You know the one - the rapid-fire comeback techniques, the slick responses that supposedly disarm any customer concern, the whole "objections are just buying signals in disguise" rubbish.
Complete bollocks.
Here's what nobody wants to admit about objection handling: the best salespeople I know actually agree with most objections. They validate them. They even expand on them sometimes. And guess what? They close more deals than the objection-crushing robots we've been training for years.
The Great Objection Handling Myth
Traditional objection handling training operates on this bizarre premise that customers are essentially adversaries trying to escape your perfectly logical sales pitch. So we arm our teams with verbal weapons:
"I understand you're concerned about price, but have you considered the cost of doing nothing?"
"I hear you saying you need to think about it, but what specifically are you unsure about?"
"Budget is always a concern, but this investment will pay for itself within six months."
Sound familiar? I bet you've either said these things or had them said to you. They're terrible. They make customers feel manipulated, unheard, and frankly, a bit stupid.
The problem isn't that these responses are wrong - it's that they're treating symptoms instead of the disease. We're so focused on handling objections that we've forgotten to ask why they're coming up in the first place.
What Sydney Taught Me About Real Objections
I was running a training session in Sydney last year (pre-lockdown, when we could still breathe on each other), and this sales manager from a major telecommunications company raised her hand.
"Look," she said, "I've got a rep who gets the same three objections every single day: price is too high, need approval from head office, and happy with current provider. He's got perfect responses for all of them. Customer satisfaction scores are decent. But his close rate is garbage."
I asked her to role-play one of his typical interactions. Within thirty seconds, I knew exactly what was happening. This rep was so prepared for objections that he was actually causing them. He'd present his solution, then immediately start addressing concerns the customer hadn't even raised yet.
"Now, I know you're probably thinking this seems expensive..."
"You might be wondering about getting approval from your boss..."
"I'm sure you're happy with your current setup, but..."
He was creating objections by bringing them up first. Then heroically solving problems that might never have existed.
That's when it clicked for me. The obsession with objection handling had turned him into a solution looking for a problem.
The 73% Rule (And Why It Changes Everything)
Here's a statistic that'll probably annoy you: 73% of the objections you think you're "handling" brilliantly are actually just polite ways for customers to tell you that you haven't understood what they actually need.
When someone says "It's too expensive," they're rarely talking about price. They're usually saying one of these things:
- I don't see enough value in what you're offering
- You haven't shown me how this solves my actual problem
- I don't trust that this will work
- I'm scared of making the wrong decision
- I don't have authority to make this purchase
- I'm just not ready to buy anything right now
But instead of exploring what they really mean, we launch into our prepared price-objection-response-number-four. We miss the real conversation entirely.
Now, here's where this gets interesting. Companies like Canva and Atlassian have built their entire sales approaches around understanding customer needs so well that traditional objections rarely come up. They're not better at handling objections - they're better at making them irrelevant.
The Backwards Approach That Actually Works
So what does good objection handling look like? It starts with accepting that objections are almost always valid concerns that deserve exploration, not weapons to be disarmed.
When a customer says "It's too expensive," try this instead:
"That's fair. Help me understand - what would need to be different about the value you're getting for the investment to make sense?"
Notice what's happening here? Instead of defending your price, you're exploring their value equation. Instead of overcoming their concern, you're understanding it. Sometimes you'll discover that your solution genuinely isn't a good fit. And that's okay.
Actually, that's brilliant.
Because when you're genuinely willing to walk away from deals that aren't right, something magical happens: customers start trusting you. They open up about their real concerns. They tell you what they actually need. And when you do find the right fit, closing becomes natural instead of combative.
Why This Terrifies Most Sales Managers
The biggest pushback I get on this approach is always the same: "But what if we lose deals?"
Yes, you'll lose some deals. Specifically, you'll lose the deals you were never going to win anyway - the ones where you were just prolonging the inevitable rejection with clever objection handling.
But you'll win more of the deals that actually matter. The ones where your solution genuinely helps. The ones that turn into long-term relationships instead of one-off transactions.
I worked with a Brisbane software company that completely overhauled their approach using these principles. Their close rate went from 23% to 41% in six months. But more importantly, their customer retention improved dramatically because they were only closing deals that made sense for both parties.
The Melbourne Incident (And Why Context Matters)
Of course, there are still times when traditional objection handling techniques work perfectly. I learned this the hard way during a training session in Melbourne.
I was so convinced that my "explore don't overcome" approach was universally superior that I taught it to a team selling emergency backup generators to hospitals. Big mistake.
When someone's trying to keep life support systems running during a power outage, "Help me understand what would need to be different about our value proposition" isn't particularly helpful. Sometimes you really do need to overcome price objections quickly and move on to implementation.
Context matters. If you're selling something where the need is urgent and obvious, traditional objection handling can be exactly what's required. But for most of us, most of the time, the backwards approach works better.
The Real Secret (That Nobody Talks About)
Here's the thing about objection handling that no one mentions in training sessions: the goal isn't to get everyone to say yes. The goal is to get to the right answer faster.
Sometimes the right answer is "yes, this is perfect for us." Sometimes it's "no, this isn't what we need." Both answers are valuable. What's wasteful is spending weeks nurturing leads that were never going to convert, or pushing through sales that end up in cancellations and complaints.
The backwards approach to objection handling - where you validate concerns instead of overcoming them - gets you to the right answer faster. Which means you spend more time with qualified prospects and less time on dead ends.
What This Means For Your Training
If you're responsible for sales training in your organisation, here's what I'd suggest:
Stop teaching response techniques. Start teaching exploration questions.
Instead of "How to overcome the price objection," teach "How to understand what's really behind price concerns."
Instead of "Handling the 'need to think about it' objection," teach "How to explore decision-making processes before they become issues."
The irony is that when you stop trying to handle objections, most of them stop appearing in the first place. Customers don't object to things they genuinely want and can see clear value in.
The Bottom Line
Most objection handling training creates objection-handling addicts - people who are so prepared for pushback that they forget to check whether they're offering something worth buying in the first place.
The backwards approach - where you validate concerns, explore underlying issues, and sometimes agree that your solution isn't right - feels risky. But it builds trust faster than any clever comeback ever could.
And in a world where customers can research everything online and have endless options, trust is the only sustainable competitive advantage.
Your customers' objections aren't barriers to overcome. They're information to explore. The sooner we start training people to see them that way, the sooner we'll have sales conversations that actually serve everyone involved.
Sometimes the best way to handle an objection is to agree with it completely.
Try it. You might be surprised by what happens next.
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