You will produce a log that records objections, your responses and what happened next.
Ask most sellers which objection costs them the most deals and they will answer confidently, usually "price." Ask them how they know and the answer is less clear. It is the one they remember best, because it is the one that stings. Whether it actually loses the most deals is a different question, and memory is a poor way to answer it.
An objection log answers it with evidence. This exercise walks you through setting one up and filling it with your recent history. Hafiz's log is the worked example. Allow about forty minutes for the first pass, most of it spent remembering.
Use a spreadsheet, a table in your notes app, or a page in your CRM if it lets you add fields. Keep it to the columns you will actually fill in after every meeting:
Date, buyer and stage of the deal The objection in the buyer's words, as close as you can remember The real concern, what you found when you clarified, or your best guess if you did not ask Your response, in a sentence The outcome: what happened next, such as a next step agreed, a follow-up meeting, a decision, or silence
The gap between the second and third columns is where the learning happens. "It's too expensive" in the buyer's words might sit next to "budget set before the night shift" as the real concern. Over time you will see which surface phrases hide which concerns.
Go back through your calendar, your CRM notes, your emails and your WhatsApp threads for the last three months. For each meeting or proposal, write down every objection you can remember.
Be honest in the real concern column. If you never clarified the objection, write "did not ask" and your best guess in brackets. Those rows are useful too. They show how often you answered before you understood.
Hafiz's first pass produced fourteen rows. A few of them:
Rachel's firm, proposal stage: "Our clerk will never learn a new system." Real concern: a past software change went badly. Response: two training sessions and one parallel pay run. Outcome: next meeting agreed with Kelvin.
A retail chain, demo stage: "It's more than we're paying now." Real concern: did not ask. Response: explained the features again. Outcome: no reply to two follow-ups.
A cleaning company, proposal stage: "We need to check with our accountant." Real concern: the accountant runs payroll today and might lose the work. Response: offered to meet the accountant together. Outcome: lost, accountant kept the work.
Aim for at least ten rows. If three months will not give you ten, reach further back. Make a note, too, that your memory of objections was thinner than you expected, because the log in Step 4 exists to fix exactly that.
Go down the outcome column and mark each row. A simple mark is enough: yes if the response led to a next step, such as another meeting, a proposal or a decision, and no if it led to silence or a loss.
Then look for patterns. Hafiz found three things in his fourteen rows. Every row where he wrote "did not ask" in the real concern column ended in a no. Price objections were common, but when he had asked, most turned out to be about when the budget was set. And the objection that cost him the most deals was not price at all. It was "we need to check with someone else," which ended in a no four times out of five, because he had never met the other person.
Your patterns will be different. The point of the log is to show you yours.
A log built from memory is a starting point. A log you update after every proposal meeting for a month is far more accurate, because you are writing down the exact words while they are fresh.
Set a reminder for the end of each day you have a proposal meeting. Five minutes is enough to add the rows. At the end of the month, repeat Step 3 with the new rows included and see whether the pattern holds.
The log also feeds the next module. When you build your objection playbook in lesson 5.6, Build your objection playbook, the real wording from these rows will make it far more useful than invented examples.
A finished first version has at least ten rows, each with the objection in the buyer's words, the real concern or "did not ask," your response and the outcome, marked yes or no for a next step. Under the table you have one sentence naming the objection that costs you the most deals, based on the rows rather than your memory. And there is a reminder in your calendar to update it after every proposal meeting this month.
Hafiz's sentence: "Someone-else objections cost me the most, because I rarely meet the other person."
Open your calendar for the last three months, set up the columns, and start the activity below.
Set up the log, enter at least ten past objections, and write one sentence on which objection costs you the most deals.
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