Raise the Objection Before Your Buyer
Your sales team has already heard nearly every objection it will face this quarter.
I tested this in a recent enterprise sales training session. I loaded a list of common buyer objections onto a wheel and had everyone raise a hand. Each time the wheel landed on an objection someone had heard before, that person lowered their hand. After three spins, every hand was down.
If objections are predictable, why do so many sales teams still get ambushed by them? Most salespeople wait for the objection to show up and then try to argue their way past it. That approach costs deals.
🔷 What causes sales objections?
Buyers raise stalls and objections for three reasons:
- A real concern. The product has a genuine gap, or something inside the buyer's business is getting in the way. You need to know about it, even when it means the deal isn't a fit.
- A socially acceptable reason. Budget is tight. They're locked into a contract. "Call me after the holidays." (My response to that one: which holiday?) These are safe to say and easy for a salesperson to accept. Some are true. Some are cover.
- An emotional defense. Something in the conversation made the buyer uncomfortable or feel a loss of control, so they push back to protect themselves.
Objections also grow out of past experience with other vendors, stories from peers, and whatever the industry is buzzing about. In the moment, your job is to figure out which kind you're facing before you respond.
🔷 Why arguing with an objection backfires
I treat objections like opinions. Try to change someone's opinion head-on and they either shut down or dig in for a fight. Neither one gets a contract signed.
Salespeople often respond to an objection in justification mode. They explain why the concern is wrong, walk through features, and pull up a case study, all before learning whether the buyer is even open to hearing it.
The better move is to ask questions that get underneath the objection and find out what's driving it.
🔷 Can you prevent sales objections?
You can prevent a lot of them. The fix feels backwards: raise the objection yourself before the buyer does.
Most sellers hate this idea. When a deal is moving in the right direction, putting a roadblock in front of it feels like sabotage.
One rep in the session did exactly that on a live deal. The prospect needed a capability that was still on the product roadmap. He named the gap and asked, "Would it be okay if, when we do the demonstration, we showed you some things that are on our roadmap?" If that gap was a dealbreaker, he learned it before investing weeks in the opportunity. If it wasn't, he had defused it.
Raising a problem early pays off in several ways:
- You find out whether an issue is fatal while walking away is still cheap.
- You determine how committed the buyer really is.
- You earn trust, because people tell you the truth once you've been vulnerable with them first. When you point out your own gaps, buyers stop feeling sold to.
My rule is, if you feel it, say it. That covers a competitor circling back with a lower price, or an executive arriving at the eleventh hour with questions your champion can't answer. If you can see it coming, put it on the table now.
🔷 Where does real deal urgency come from?
When a deal drifts, the temptation is to manufacture urgency with a discount that expires at month's end. Buyers see that tactic coming.
Lasting urgency comes from pain. That means the problems the buyer wants solved, the risks they want to avoid, and the opportunities they want to capture. Keep steering the conversation back to that pain. When momentum slows, name it: "It sounds like this has moved to the back burner. How important is it to keep this going?" Then set a clear next step with an up-front contract, including what happens if that step falls through.
🔷 4 objection handling techniques that work
1. Reversing
In Sandler terms, a reverse is answering a question with a question. When a buyer raises a concern, acknowledge it first, then ask an open-ended question that gets them explaining what's behind it.
A client of mine was pushing through a price increase, and his customer kept asking for a lower number. After the third request, he said, "I appreciate you raising this. What happens if this is as far as we can go?" The customer said he had to ask at least three times, and if this was the price, send the contract. They signed. Sometimes an objection is just posturing, and a good question lets the buyer finish the dance.
2. Pull, push, pull (the negative reverse)
This one is high-risk and high-reward. You give the buyer permission to say no, twice.
Say your champion won't let you talk to anyone else in the organization. Here's how pull, push, pull sounds:
- Pull: "It sounds like you've decided it would be a waste of time for me to talk with her."
- Push: "With other clients, those conversations surface questions that go beyond using the product, like past experiences, timing, and outcomes no one else had line of sight on."
- Pull: "Sounds like that's not a step you'd want to take, though."
It works because nobody wants to agree with a salesperson. When you take an option off the table, the buyer often argues for it, and then the decision belongs to them.
It carries some risks:
- Frequency. Use it once per call, when there's a real elephant in the room.
- Delivery. I'm from Boston, and I'll admit a negative reverse with a Boston edge can sound sarcastic in a hurry. Tone matters.
- Commitment. You have to accept the answer. If the buyer says, "You're right, it's not worth it," be ready to take the next meeting off the calendar. If they come back with "Well, hold on," you have an opening: "Help me understand."
3. The "not okay" tactic
Use this when something changes without warning. A meeting gets pushed, a prospect goes dark, or a brand-new requirement appears out of nowhere.
Resist the urge to get defensive, and ask the buyer to rescue you: "I'm confused. It feels like something's changed since we last talked. Help me understand what happened."
When you hear you've landed in second place behind a competitor, the same approach applies: "Sounds like we missed the mark somewhere. Where did we go wrong?"
The hard part is slowing down and letting them talk.
4. "My big concern"
This one is a foreshadowing tactic for single-threaded deals and potential no-decisions. You name a problem you see coming and hand it to the buyer to solve.
"My big concern is that if we don't bring your CFO in now, she'll ask for ROI and cost justification later, and we won't have the answers. How should we handle that?"
Adding a third-party story softens it: "We've seen this happen with other clients."
🔷 Put it to work with your team
List the five objections they hear most. For each one, they picked the tactic that fits best (pull, push, pull; not okay; or my big concern) and wrote out exactly what they'd say. Then they practiced until it sounded natural.
That last step matters most. These tactics feel awkward at first, and the pull, push, pull sequence takes real reps to deliver without sounding scripted. Salespeople who practice them handle the moment. Salespeople who don't slide back into justification mode.
Questions every revenue leader should be asking
- How many deals in your pipeline right now depend on a single contact?
- When a prospect goes silent, does your team have a plan beyond another "just checking in" email?
- How many "no decision" losses last year could have surfaced in discovery?
- When your reps hear an objection, do they argue with it or ask about it?
🔷 Frequently asked questions
What is objection handling in sales?
Objection handling is how a salesperson responds when a buyer raises a concern, stall, or reason not to move forward. Effective objection handling uncovers what's driving the concern before trying to resolve it.
What is a negative reverse in Sandler selling?
A negative reverse is a question that gives the buyer permission to say no, often by taking an option away. It lowers the buyer's defenses and frequently prompts them to argue for the option themselves.
Should you bring up objections before the buyer does?
When you can see an objection coming, yes. Raising it early lets you learn whether it's a dealbreaker, test the buyer's commitment, and build trust through transparency.
How do you get past a champion who won't let you talk to other decision makers?
Try pull, push, pull, or "my big concern." Both approaches let the buyer decide whether involving others is worth it, without you pushing hard enough to damage the relationship.
What's the difference between a stall and an objection?
An objection pushes back on the offer itself. A stall delays the decision. Stalls often mean the buyer's internal process hasn't caught up with the sales conversation, or they're buying time to negotiate.
