Advice
Why Your Objection Handling Stinks (And It's Not Your Fault)
Related Training Resources: Negotiation Skills Training Adelaide | Managing Difficult Conversations
Most sales trainers are teaching you the equivalent of sword fighting in a gunfight.
I watched a "guru" last month in Brisbane tell a room of 150 salespeople to respond to price objections with: "Mr Jones, if price is your only concern..." Honestly, I wanted to walk out. It's 2025, not 1995. People don't talk like that anymore, and treating objections like verbal tennis matches is precisely why 64% of prospects never return your calls.
After eighteen years in sales training and watching thousands of interactions go sideways, I'll tell you something controversial: most objections aren't actually objections. They're invitations to have a proper conversation. But we've been conditioned to treat them like attacks to defend against rather than puzzles to solve together.
Here's what nobody talks about in those glossy sales manuals.
The Authenticity Revolution Nobody Saw Coming
The game changed when buyers got smarter than sellers. Your prospects have access to more information about your product, your competitors, and your pricing than you probably realise. When someone says "I need to think about it," they're not stalling for the sake of it.
Most traditional objection handling sounds like you're reading from a script because you probably are. "I understand your concern, but have you considered..." Stop. Just stop.
Real objection handling starts with genuine curiosity, not clever rebuttals. When a client tells me they're worried about implementation costs, I don't launch into feature-benefit mode. I ask what happened last time they tried something similar. Usually, there's a story there. A project that went over budget. A vendor who disappeared mid-implementation. An executive who got burned and is now gun-shy.
That's your real objection. Not price. Not timing. Fear based on past experience.
The Melbourne Method That Actually Works
I stumbled onto this approach completely by accident during a difficult conversation training session I was running for a construction company in Melbourne. The site foreman kept pushing back on safety protocols with increasingly creative excuses. Instead of addressing his stated concerns, I asked him to tell me about the worst accident he'd witnessed.
Twenty minutes later, we discovered his real issue: he was terrified of being the manager who got someone hurt because he enforced rules they didn't understand. Once we addressed that underlying fear, the surface-level objections evaporated.
The parallel to sales was obvious. But here's what surprised me.
When you stop treating objections as obstacles and start treating them as intelligence gathering, everything shifts. The client feels heard instead of manipulated. You uncover the real issues instead of dancing around symptoms. And paradoxically, you close more deals by trying less hard to close them.
Most sales training focuses on what to say. I'm suggesting you focus on what to ask.
Three Questions That Cut Through Everything
Forget fancy frameworks and acronyms. These three questions will handle 80% of objections better than any script:
"What's making you feel that way?" Not "why do you think that" or "what makes you say that." Feelings drive decisions more than logic ever will.
"What would need to be different for this to feel right?" This bypasses the urge to argue and moves straight to problem-solving mode.
"What's the worst that could happen if we got this wrong?" Surface the real fears hiding behind rational-sounding objections.
I learned this the hard way after losing a $180,000 training contract because I kept addressing the procurement manager's budget concerns when her real issue was political. She was terrified of recommending an unknown vendor and having it backfire on her career. By the time I figured that out, she'd already signed with someone else.
The tragedy is that we had programs specifically designed for conservative rollouts. Perfect solution, wrong conversation.
Why "Overcoming" Objections Is Dead
The language we use shapes how we think. "Overcoming objections" suggests clients are adversaries to defeat rather than problems to solve. It's combative when it should be collaborative.
I prefer "exploring concerns" or "understanding resistance." Same skills, completely different mindset.
This isn't just semantic nitpicking. When you shift from overcoming to understanding, your entire approach changes. Your tone softens. Your questions get better. Your clients stop feeling like they're being sold to and start feeling like they're being helped.
But let me be clear about something: this doesn't mean rolling over every time someone pushes back. Strong objection handling requires backbone. The difference is channeling that strength into understanding rather than arguing.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Price Objections
Price is almost never about price. It's about value, trust, timing, or authority. Sometimes all four.
When someone says your training is too expensive, they might mean:
- They don't trust you'll deliver results (trust)
- They can't see how it connects to their problems (value)
- Other priorities are screaming louder right now (timing)
- They're not the real decision maker (authority)
The lazy response is to offer a discount. The professional response is to figure out which of these four issues you're really dealing with.
I watched a colleague lose a major contract last year because he immediately dropped his price by 15% when the client mentioned budget constraints. What he didn't know: they had the budget. They just weren't convinced he was the right choice. His willingness to negotiate made him look desperate and actually strengthened their concerns about his credibility.
Ouch.
The Technology Factor Nobody Talks About
Here's something that'll make you uncomfortable: your prospects are researching you while you're talking to them. They're checking reviews, comparing prices, and messaging colleagues on WhatsApp.
This changes everything about objection handling. The days of controlling information flow are over. Your job now is to be the most helpful, honest, and useful person in their decision-making process.
When someone raises a concern they obviously researched online, acknowledge it. "I see you've done your homework. What specifically worried you about what you read?" This shows you respect their intelligence instead of pretending they don't have access to the same information you do.
The companies that thrive in this environment treat transparency as a competitive advantage. The ones that struggle are still trying to manage perceptions instead of earning trust.
Building Anti-Fragile Sales Conversations
Rather than trying to prevent objections, what if you deliberately invited them early? "What are your biggest concerns about moving forward with something like this?"
Most salespeople avoid this question because they're afraid of what they'll hear. But surfacing concerns early gives you room to address them properly instead of scrambling at the end when someone suddenly develops cold feet.
I've started ending discovery calls with: "What didn't I ask that I should have?" The responses are consistently more valuable than anything else in the conversation.
This approach requires confidence. You need to believe your solution is genuinely helpful and that informed prospects make better clients than uninformed ones. If you're not there yet, fix your product before you fix your objection handling.
The Brisbane Bank That Got It Right
Macquarie Bank's business development team in Brisbane has mastered this beautifully. Instead of pitching products, they lead with problems. "What keeps you awake at night about cash flow?" Then they listen. Really listen.
When objections surface, they respond with more questions instead of prepared answers. The result? They've become the preferred banking partner for mid-market companies who are tired of being sold to.
Their secret isn't sophisticated objection handling techniques. It's treating every concern as legitimate and every client as intelligent. Revolutionary, right?
This matters more than most businesses realise. In an economy where trust is scarce and attention is expensive, the companies that win are the ones that make buying feel like a collaboration rather than a conquest.
What Actually Works in 2025
Stop memorising responses. Start getting curious about people. The best objection handling happens when you forget you're handling objections and focus on understanding problems.
Train your team to ask better questions instead of giving better answers. Teach them to explore resistance instead of overcoming it. Show them how to surface concerns early instead of hoping they don't arise.
Most importantly, remember that every objection is feedback about your sales process. If you're getting the same pushback repeatedly, the problem isn't your responses—it's your approach.
The goal isn't to win arguments. It's to earn trust, solve problems, and make it easy for qualified prospects to say yes.
Everything else is just noise.
What objection handling challenges are you facing in your business? Sometimes an outside perspective can help identify patterns you're too close to see.