Dealing with objections is a part of a salesperson’s life. Motivated salespeople can always improve their selling skills to lower the chance of rejection, but the chance will never reach zero. Buyers have an extraordinary talent for finding reasons not to buy from a salesperson. It's interesting that sometimes buyers can't even say why they don't trust a product. It can be just a “gut feeling." In this article, we'll look at the most common psychological reasons why people say no, so that the next time you try to sell something, you'll be able to break it down, analyze it, and hopefully get past the resistance. 

1. Pattern recognition: “You must be another salesperson just like the ones before you.”

Your prospects have already met many unsuccessful salespeople who wasted lots of time. Those salespeople were too pushy and persistent and could not read between the lines of their rejection. Because human brains are wired to categorize and look for patterns, the prospect will have labels and assumptions about you. Labeling isn't a personal bias against you; it's a mental shortcut that helps your prospects save energy by not treating every social interaction as a new one. You do that, too. We all do. What’s your strategy against pattern recognition? You need to find creative ways to break the expected pattern. 

One recent example is that a salesperson from a CRM software company sent me a cold email last week. The email started with “Arthur, I trust that there are many companies trying to sell you CRM software.” My thinking pattern told me that he was about to explain why his solution was better than others. But then it read: “You can add me to the list.”

2. Emotion escalates faster than logic

At least in the first round of objections, there is a good chance that the objection is motivated by unspoken emotions. Only after that will the person seek reasons to justify their emotions. It’s very important for salespeople to be aware of the source of the buyer’s objections. If it comes from an emotional level, the last thing you want to do is reason with the prospect, who will definitely not appreciate being told they are the incorrect one with terrible intuition. The more you push, the more psychological resistance you will build up, and the less likely you will get over the objection.

3. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Humans don’t like changes, even when their current situation is suboptimal. In fact, I would go one step further and argue that most of us feel that we have areas that can be improved, but we simply choose to procrastinate. That is willful blindness. On top of the status quo bias, which plays against salespeople, you also add on the safety bias, which means that people are more aware of the bad things that may be caused by the change than the positive outcomes that the change can bring. This makes saying “no” the most expedient thing to do. To break the habit of saying "no," we need to get the buyers to trust you and make micro-commitments that are considered low-risk and low-effort. In a previous article, we covered how one can build trust in the sales process. 

4. Cognitive dissonance 

Cognitive dissonance happens when we hold two or more contradictory beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is stressful because it requires sense-making and decision-making. Here is a familiar scenario of cognitive dissonance in sales: Three years ago, your prospect convinced his executive team to invest in a CRM platform, backed by perfect reasons. Today, you are trying to convince him that the decision he made three years ago was not good enough. Even if the buyer understands that technologies have improved in the past three years and your solution today is clearly better, you will still have a tough time overcoming the cognitive dissonance of the buyer. At the same time, your prospect also needs to deal with the status quo bias and safety bias we talked about earlier. Will his decision to trust you become a bad decision in three years? 

As you can see, the prospects can have many reasons to say no, many of which are actually on an emotional level, especially in the initial rounds of interactions. Salespeople will do much better if they learn how to spot and break down prospects' emotional defenses. The emotional intelligence aspect of sales is a very broad and important topic (and also a life skill!). Check out more blog posts about emotional intelligence in MyFeedbacker’s sales training resource centre.

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