Uncovering Hidden Sales Objectives

Salespeople know or quickly learn that the key to any sale is filling their customers' needs...or at least convincing the customer that they can fulfill those needs. In order to get to that point, however, they may have to handle a series of objections, of which price is only one (though perhaps one that comes up more often than others). In order to confront these objections, they must be identified. Needless to say, not every buyer is blithely ready to volunteer the real reasons why he's unwilling to switch vendors (or reveal the magic words that will win his business).

So successful salespeople have developed detailed routines to elicit hidden objections -- the unstated but real obstacles they must overcome to win the account. You must follow their lead. After all, you can't eliminate an objection you don't even know about.