When the Objection Isn’t the Customer’s

This is our third article on Selling Intangibles. If you missed the first two, I encourage you to go back and read them.

Objections to intangibles are common—and they can be anticipated, avoided, and handled.

Customer objections to intangibles often show up when you ask the sales associate what kept the customer from buying protection, making an appointment, or using financing for the purchase.

Here are some common examples of objections salespeople share for each intangible tool:

Financing: Our customers have the means and don’t need to use financing.
Protection: The customer is already at the top of their budget, and protection is too much for them to spend.
Appointments: My customer didn’t have their calendar with them to schedule a time to return.

I run meetings on all of these that include an opening exercise designed to isolate and identify the objection—both from the customer and from the salesperson.

In the exercise, salespeople check all that apply: how many of these have you heard, said, or thought?

And most of the time, the majority of items checked are objections the salesperson has to the intangible tool—more than actual customer objections.

As sales managers, our greatest gift and role is to manage how our people think about things and to keep an empowering perspective alive in their minds.

Customer objections can be anticipated and avoided—by how the intangible is connected to the customer’s priorities, to one of their pain points, or by how the objection is handled when it’s raised.

As with all objections, they’re best managed by asking more questions to get to the heart of the concern rather than trying to talk the customer out of it and into our solution.

Sometimes, two intangibles can be used together. One of the easiest ways to sell protection on larger orders is by using financing to do it.

Sales managers play a critical role here by being intentional and present with salespeople who underperform in these areas—helping them anticipate and handle customer objections, and coaching them individually in one-on-one meetings on their own objections to using a particular intangible tool.

We have this covered.

Don’t stop now—let’s go.

Action to Take This Week

• Review one recent deal where an intangible wasn’t sold and identify the stated objection.
• Ask: was that objection truly the customer’s—or the salesperson’s?
• Practice connecting one intangible directly to a customer priority or pain point.
• In one-on-ones, coach the belief behind the objection, not just the response to it.