I heard something recently that made me stop and think. I was speaking at a company sales meeting, and one sales manager confidently stated to everyone, “You’re always going to have an objection from a customer.” After reflecting on this for a moment, I realized how fundamentally wrong this statement is. In my career, I’ve made countless sales without facing a single objection, and so have many salespeople I’ve trained and coached. You probably have, too, whether we’ve worked together or not.
The problem with this “objections are inevitable” mindset is that it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It sets up an adversarial relationship with your prospect before you’ve even begun the conversation. This approach tends to come from salespeople who practice what I call a “back-loaded” sales process – and it’s costing them deals (and you, if you’re selling that way).
The Problem with Back-Loaded Selling
Back-loaded selling is common. Heck, it’s the way I was taught to sell, way back when I started my career in the car business. Back-loaded selling follows a predictable pattern: ask a few cursory questions, launch into your pre-planned pitch, then put all your energy into closing techniques and handling the inevitable objections. The emphasis is placed on the end of the process – hence “back-loaded.”
This approach creates several problems:
- It makes the Buyer’s Journey unnecessarily tense and unpleasant
- It positions the salesperson and buyer as opponents rather than collaborators
- It creates fear and apprehension in both parties
- It dramatically reduces closing ratios and increases sales cycle length
When salespeople expect objections, they often create them through their own approach. They’re essentially manufacturing the very resistance they claim is inevitable. After my first few months in the car business, I learned (all too gradually) that, the more questions I asked of my customers, the more cars I sold – and the higher prices they paid. Since higher prices meant higher gross profit, which meant higher commissions, you want to believe that I learned this lesson well!
The Better Alternative: Front-Loaded Selling
What’s the alternative? I train salespeople to use a “front-loaded” process that respects the Buyer’s Journey – and I recommend that you do, too, even if you’ve never worked with me. This approach puts the heavy lifting at the beginning of the sales conversation through thorough discovery and relationship building.
Front-loaded selling means:
- Asking substantially more questions up front, particularly “big picture” questions that help you understand the entire landscape of the buyer’s organization
- Truly understanding your buyer’s needs, challenges, and desired outcomes
- Tailoring your presentation specifically to address those discovered needs
- Proactively addressing potential concerns before they become objections
With this approach, by the time you present your solution, you’ve already answered the questions and concerns that typically become objections. You’ve built credibility through your questioning process and demonstrated that you genuinely understand their situation. If you care about your buyer, your buyer will care about you.
How to Smoke Out Potential Objections Early
One of the most powerful techniques in front-loaded selling is what I call “objection prevention” – identifying and addressing potential objections before they ever surface.
For example, if I anticipate a price objection might arise later, I’ll ask early in my discovery process: “Why do your customers buy from you instead of your competitors?” Almost invariably, they’ll talk about quality, service, expertise – rarely will they mention being the cheapest option. This gives me a perfect opportunity to establish common ground: “It sounds like we have similar philosophies – we also focus on providing exceptional value rather than competing on price alone.”
Another example: if I sense they might have concerns about implementation time, I might ask, “What timeline would you ideally want for getting this solution in place?” Their answer allows me to either confirm our ability to meet that timeline or manage expectations early in the process, preventing it from becoming an objection later.
Here’s what a front-loaded approach does for you: By the time you reach your presentation, you have already woven in responses to the typical objections this buyer might have raised. The result? Many anticipated objections simply never materialize.
The Natural Flow of Objection-Free Selling
When you approach sales conversations expecting them to flow naturally, without the preconceived notion that objections are inevitable, something remarkable happens: your dialogue becomes more comfortable and productive for both parties. You’ll have more fun selling, and your buyer will have more fun buying.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be prepared for objections if they arise. Having thoughtful responses ready is still part of good preparation. But there’s a world of difference between being prepared for something and expecting it to happen every time.
The front-loaded approach creates a collaborative atmosphere where you and your prospect are working together toward a mutual goal. Instead of trying to “overcome” objections, you’re preventing them through thorough understanding and alignment (the classic “win-win solution” that salespeople talk about, but achieve all too often).
The most successful salespeople I know don’t count the objections they’ve overcome – they measure their effectiveness by how few objections they encounter in the first place.
How to Get In Front
If you’re accustomed to a back-loaded approach, shifting to front-loaded selling requires discipline and practice. You’ll need to:
- Develop a robust set of discovery questions that uncover true needs
- Learn to listen more deeply and follow up on what you hear – having a prewritten set of questions helps with this, because you’re not using the time the customer is talking to figure out what you’ll ask next
- Practice tailoring your presentation to directly address discovered needs
- Trust that addressing concerns early will lead to fewer objections later
Making this shift isn’t always easy, but the results are worth it. Not only will you close more sales, but you’ll create a more enjoyable experience for both yourself and your customers.
Remember, objections aren’t inevitable – they’re often the result of an incomplete discovery process. Master the front-loaded approach, and you’ll find yourself handling fewer objections and closing more sales.
