Let’s face it, not very many people love sales calls. And even if you’ve done a great job at guiding the sales conversation, you will still likely have to handle objections before you can close the sale.
How can you get better at handling objections so that you can close more sales in your photography, design, or other creative freelancing business?
Understanding why people make objections in the first place can go a long way to figuring out how to handle those objections.
What kind of objections do you hear most from your leads and why do you think they make them?
Handling money or price objections
The biggest thing that most of my clients are afraid of hearing is… it’s too expensive or I can’t afford it. Sometimes they hear objections about time but most often it is price objections.
There’s all different kinds of ways objections come about. A lot of them have to do with money. That seems to be the one that is the most intimidating, the thing that freaks people out the most when they’re trying to do a sales conversation for creative services.
Why do people make objections around money when it isn’t always the truth that they can’t afford it?
Often when people are making objections and they’re saying things like… “Oh, it’s too expensive.” or “I can’t really afford it.” or “Ooh, that’s a lot more than I was thinking of.”…it’s not necessarily the truth. There could be a whole bunch of other reasons why they’re saying that.
Objections are human nature
One of the reasons why people usually will make an objection is that it’s human nature to want to have some sort of element of control, especially in a sales conversation.
A lot of times, human beings will just say no to the first offer or the first proposal, or they just want to have something to say no to.
Some freelancers even use this as part of their sales strategy… a ‘this or this’ kind of option. It gives people that element of control. It gets them something to say no to while they can still say yes to the service that they actually need.
Sometimes people are objecting just because they want to feel like they have a little bit of control.
No connection to value = automatic objection
The second reason why people might be objecting or saying no to your sales offer is that they don’t connect to the value.
Maybe it just doesn’t make sense to them. Maybe they think, oh, that sounds like a great offer, or a great package, or a great bunch of services… but it’s not really what I need.
I see this a lot for photographers who are offering headshots, and there seems to be a completely diverse range in terms of how much a headshot costs.
Prospects will come into a sales conversation anchored in anywhere between $50 and $2,000 in terms of, in their mindset around what does a headshot cost.
They get into a sales call with you, you tell them your price, and they either think, ooh, that’s really low. There’s no way that person can be giving me any kind of great service.
Or they think, oh gosh, that’s really high, there’s no way I can afford it.
Either way, there is a disconnect for THEM between the price you are asking and the value they expect to receive.
What if they really don’t have the money
The last reason why someone might be objecting to your offer because of price might genuinely be because it is the truth.
It might be that they actually do see the value. They do see that it’s worth it for them. They can see the transformation your service will make for them, but they just really genuinely don’t have the funds right in that moment.
That’s when using the 5 steps for handling objections and closing more sales will really help you (especially the permission piece!).
One last thing before we dive into the five steps for how to handle the objections.
Objections based on fear
Depending on the price point of your services, you might be asking people to make a pretty big investment to work with you. All creative services are promises and it can take a tremendous amount of trust for someone to hire you to deliver on that promise.
Think about the last time you were on a call where somebody was making an offer to you, where they were selling something to you.
It can be scary to say yes to a new and big investment.
There can be a lot of anxiety when people are trying to make a decision, especially when they’re trying to make a decision about something that’s important to them. Their branding designs or their photographs or the tools that they’re going to use to be able to market and sell themselves and run their business… these things are really important to them.
You want to remember that as much as you might be having anxiety, imposter syndrome, and stress around the sales conversation, your counterpart may also be wrapped up in a whole bunch of those emotions of anxiety and worry aabout making the right decision.
It’s a big investment. And how do they really know it’s going to turn out?
There’s no way for them to know in advance, especially since you’re selling a promise and something invisible.
Summary of why people make objections
Whatever the objection is, whether it is they’re just wanting to exert some control, maybe they’re just not quite connected to the value, maybe it’s a real objection and it the truth, or maybe they are just nervous or scared to say yes… one of our jobs is to try to figure out is if it is a real objection or not.
As I share with you the five step process for handling objections effectively, you’re going to see how these five steps help you identify if this is a real objection or is this just a temporary freaking out anxiety objection?
So…with compassion in our hearts, the next blog dives into the five steps for handling objections.
