You will be able to address common concerns before the buyer raises them.
Every seller has one objection they can see coming. A software seller knows someone will ask about switching systems in the middle of the year. A financial adviser knows a client in their thirties will say they are too young to worry about it. A renovation contractor knows the homeowner will ask what happens if the work overruns. The objection arrives, meeting after meeting, usually right at the end, when there is least time to deal with it.
If you know it is coming, there is a better place for it than the end of the meeting.
Look at your recent meetings, or at your objection log once you have built it in lesson 4.4, Start your objection log. If a concern comes up in most of your deals, it is not really an objection to this particular buyer. It is a predictable part of the decision. Treat it that way and answer it inside the presentation, at the point where it naturally arises.
For Hafiz, the 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. So did the last three firms Hafiz met. Rather than waiting for it, Hafiz now covers it in the section of his presentation on how working together would start, the section you built in lesson 1.4, Turn discovery notes into a presentation outline.
Priya's predictable concern is different. Small business owners often worry about handing over their books and losing sight of the numbers. She now addresses it straight after showing the weekly till report, which is where the worry tends to form.
The way to raise a concern is to name it plainly, as something other clients have felt, and then say how you handle it.
Hafiz's version: "Some clients worry about whether their payroll team will manage the switch, especially if a past change went badly. Here's how we handle it. 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's comfortable with it."
Priya's: "Some owners worry that if someone else does the books, they'll lose track of what's happening in their own business. That's partly why the weekly report exists. You'll see each outlet's numbers every Monday, in one page."
Each one is two or three sentences. Name the concern, then the answer. No drama and no long defence.
It may feel risky to bring up a worry the buyer has not mentioned. In practice it works the other way. When you raise a concern 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.
It also takes the sting out. A concern the buyer discovers on their own, after the meeting, grows in their mind. They wonder why you did not mention it and what else you left out. The same concern raised by you, calmly, with an answer, is just a fact about the decision.
This links back to Sales foundations lesson 2.3, Credibility without bragging. Being open about the hard parts of your offer does more for your credibility than another success story.
There is a limit. Raise the concerns that come up in most of your deals, and the ones the discovery notes suggest this buyer might share. Do not list every possible worry, and do not raise concerns that do not apply.
If Joel had already told Priya that he wants to stop looking at the books altogether, her line about losing track would plant a worry he does not have. If a firm has just changed payroll systems smoothly, Hafiz's training line can shrink to one sentence.
Read the discovery notes before you decide. One or two pre-empted concerns in a twenty-minute presentation is about right. More than that and the presentation starts to sound defensive, as if you expect the buyer to say no.
Raising an objection yourself does not mean the buyer agrees with your answer. After you name it and respond, check it, just as you would in lesson 4.2, Listen, clarify, respond, confirm: "Is that a concern for you, or is it something you'd already thought through?" Sometimes the buyer says it is not a worry at all. Sometimes they say, "Actually, that's exactly what I was going to ask," and you can go a little further.
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 and write the two-sentence passage that answers it inside your presentation.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).