You will be able to answer common concerns before the buyer raises them.
Every seller has one objection they can see coming. A software seller expects to be asked about switching systems in the middle of the year. A financial adviser expects a client in their thirties to say they are too young to worry about it. A renovation contractor expects the homeowner to ask what happens if the work overruns. These objections come up meeting after meeting, usually right at the end, when there is the least time to deal with them. If you know an objection is coming, the end of the meeting is not the best place to handle it.
Start by looking back at your recent meetings, or at your objection log once you have built it in Lesson 4.4, Start your objection log. Look for the concern that comes up in most deals. A predictable objection is a concern that comes up in most of your deals. When nearly every buyer raises it, it isn't really an objection from that particular buyer. It is a predictable part of the decision they are making, so you can answer it inside the presentation, at the point where it naturally arises.
Hafiz sells payroll systems to firms. His predictable concern is training. Almost every firm that changes payroll systems worries about whether the people who run payroll will cope. Rachel's director raised it, and so did the last three firms Hafiz met. He no longer waits for the question. He now covers it in the section of his presentation on how working together would start, which is the section you built in Lesson 1.4, Turn discovery notes into a presentation outline.
To raise the concern, name it plainly as something other clients have felt, then say how you handle it. Keep it to two or three sentences: the concern first, then the answer. You don't need drama or a long defence.
Hafiz's line to Rachel goes like this: "Some clients worry whether their payroll team will manage the switch, especially if a past change went badly. Your clerk gets two training sessions before go-live, and we run the old and new systems side by side for one pay cycle, so nothing depends on the new system until she is comfortable with it." The training sessions and the single pay cycle are invented example figures.
Priya does the books for small business owners and gives each of them a weekly till report. Her predictable concern is that owners worry handing over their books means losing sight of their numbers. She raises it straight after she shows the weekly till report, because that is where the worry tends to form. Her line is: "Some owners worry that if someone else does the books, they will lose track of what is happening in their own business. That is partly why the weekly report exists: you see each outlet's numbers every Monday, in one page." (The Monday report is an invented example.)
Raising a concern before the buyer does can feel risky, but in practice it helps. When you raise it first, the buyer learns two things: you understand their situation well enough to know what worries people in it, and you are not hiding anything. This takes the sting out of the concern. If the buyer only discovers it after the meeting, it tends to grow in their mind, and they start to wonder why you didn't mention it and what else you left out. When you raise the same concern calmly and give your answer, it becomes one more fact about the decision. Being open about the hard parts of your offer does more for your credibility than another success story, as Sales foundations lesson 2.3, Credibility without bragging, explains.
Only raise the concerns that come up in most of your deals, plus any that the discovery notes suggest this buyer might share. Don't list every possible worry, and don't raise concerns that don't apply. A concern the buyer doesn't have can plant a worry in their mind. Read your discovery notes before you decide what goes in.
Suppose Joel, Priya's prospect, owns more than one outlet and has already told her he wants to stop looking at the books altogether. If she used her "losing track" line, she would be suggesting a worry he doesn't have, so she should leave it out. The buyer's situation can also make a concern less relevant without removing it. For a firm that has just changed payroll systems smoothly, Hafiz can shrink his training line to one sentence.
As a rule of thumb, one or two pre-empted concerns in a twenty-minute presentation is about right. Any more and the presentation starts to sound defensive, as if you expect the buyer to say no.
Raising an objection yourself doesn't mean the buyer agrees with your answer, so keep the confirm step from Lesson 4.2, Listen, clarify, respond, confirm. Once you have named and answered the concern, check it with the buyer. For example, you could ask whether it is a concern for them or something they had already thought through. They may tell you it isn't a worry at all, in which case you move on. Or they may say it is exactly what they were going to ask, and then you can go a little further into how you handle it.
Before the activity below, pick the objection you hear most often and find the place in your presentation outline where it would naturally come up.
Pick the objection you hear most. Write two sentences that answer it, to use in your presentation.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).