“We are not interested in your product.”

“We don’t have the budget right now.”

“I am busy right now, can I call you back later?”

Do these statements ring a bell? Well, why wouldn’t they! Sales objections are every salesperson’s nightmare.

60% of customers say no four times before saying yes. To get as many yeses as you can and host more “closed-won” flags, you need to use the right techniques to tackle those nos a.k.a. sales objections. 

Not surprisingly enough, the tricks to battle these obstacles are present in plain sight, yet hidden in the ocean of uncountable sales calls. What you need is a buddy who could throw in a hand and fetch just the crucial data you need to handle sales objections. And conversation intelligence does just the same!

With conversation intelligence in your arsenal, you can unlock data-driven ways to tackle sales objections as they come. Powered by natural language processing, conversation intelligence doesn’t only give you rich insights to analyze calls for handling objections, but it also provides live assistance while you are on call. Now, how does it do that exactly? Let’s find out.

Supercharge objection handling with conversation intelligence

#1 Leverage on-call cues for active listening

“Salespersons don’t understand what we want!” This is what 87% of prospects say. 

Ouch. 

Reason? Salespeople really talk a lot! Well, to be fair, it's your job to go in there and talk endlessly about your product features or service standards. How are you supposed to tell someone about your product or service without talking? 

You’re right. That’s not possible. However, the key points that you should remember are: 

• You need to deliver your pitch. But it's about finding a balance, a sweet spot where the prospect gets the information they need but also gets to convey their requirements and pain points. 

• The more you pay attention to what the prospect says, the more your chance of understanding their needs and objections, and the greater your probability of handling objections.

Picture this: you are on a call and you ramble on without even knowing how much time you have been speaking or whether what you’re saying means anything to them. Before you know it, the customer loses interest and hangs up. 

Oh no! There goes another sales opportunity. 

Using conversation intelligence platforms (like Wingman) can save you from this misery. 

Conversation intelligence software to the rescue!

Conversation intelligence gives you important sales metrics, such as the talk to listen ratio. Salespeople should endeavor to improve their talk to listen ratio to increase their win rate. Conversation intelligence helps you achieve this by giving you live alerts as to when you need to stop talking, take a pause, and listen. This way, you are instantly reminded to actively listen on calls, rather than just conveying what you have to say.

Moreover, being pre-prepared always helps! It seems like you’re in need for proven objection techniques to combat objections on your sales calls. Here is a comprehensive, data-driven guide to overcoming these little nightmares.

#2 Delve into your prospect’s mind using artificial intelligence

An admirable quality in a sales rep is the ability to understand the customer’s feelings. But you are not a psychic. So how are you supposed to get this insight? With conversation intelligence software, you can comprehend your prospect’s buying behavior and handle common sales objections.

But before we get into how conversation intelligence can help you understand your prospect’s mindset, let’s acknowledge some facts that we already know: 

• First, the prospect may not be saying everything that is on their mind. Sometimes, even though the prospects might be interested, they may have doubts. 
• Second: The prospect’s objections are the pathway for you to delve deeper into their minds and become acquainted with their issues or concerns. In other words, when they tell you their objections, you are better placed to sell. 

Remember that the objection handling process requires a thorough understanding and empathy towards your prospect’s needs. If your prospect raises a concern, you should ideally ask further questions to get to the bottom of the cause behind the concern. 

“I don’t understand how your product will help me...” Sounds like an objection? No, this is actually an opening for you to provide more information to the prospects regarding your product. And also, to obtain more information from them! Use open-ended queries, dig more deeper, try all the possible ways from your sales playbook to evaluate their needs.

Be the sales-psychic you always wanted to be!

With conversation intelligence tools, you can get data-driven insights and the commonest sales objections from your existing call recordings. Using this information, you can develop the perfect script to answer all the objections and achieve better customer success. You can also refer to the call recordings of the top performer in your sales team to collate your own cheat sheet for handling common objections.

#3 Handle competitor mentions like a pro

The prospect may mention your competitor in the midst of the sales call.

“We are already working with your competitor....”

“Your rival software has better features/pricing...”

This should not throw you off-guard. And this is where conversation intelligence chips in.

The best conversation intelligence platforms will offer battle cards that can be used by sales reps in real time. Battle cards are live, contextual cues that help a salesperson navigate tricky situations and hit the jackpot in every call. Your software will typically throw up a live cue card related to a specific word as soon as it appears during the sales conversation. Also, conversation intelligence software automatically generates call transcripts and tags your recorded calls. So, you only need to perform a simple search to find competitor mentions, and you get the ways to handle them. Really easy, isn’t it?

#4 Coach sales reps on handling sales objections

The biggest benefit of conversation intelligence is that you, as a sales manager, can coach your sales team in real-time. With automated call transcriptions on your conversation intelligence platform, you can access scannable records of each sales conversation with your potential/existing customers. It gives you critical actionable insights such as talk:listen ratio, how a rep is handling objections, and an overview of the sales performance of your team.

Evidently, you don‘t have the time to sit through and monitor each call of your sales team. Using conversation intelligence tools, you get critical highlights of hundreds of calls made by your sales team within minimal time investment. This way, you can gain information regarding how well your sales team members are handling objections and can coach them in a personalized way.

#5 Leverage AI-powered, automated note-taking 

Conversation intelligence tools will usually pack in note-taking software that automates note-taking so that you can focus on handling objections and building rapport. Post your sales call, you can revisit your automated transcripts and notes to analyze your performance, look for easy-to-miss signals, and further improve your objection handling game. Moreover, conversation intelligence platforms directly leverage your notes to provide you cues, tips, and battlecards when you are struggling with your prospect’s objections on calls. 

Particularly, if your sales process is quite long, this automated note-taking feature would come in really handy!

By now, you probably agree that conversation intelligence is an amazing tool to battle sales objections. Powered by artificial intelligence, Wingman does the same for you, and more. Being a data-driven sales intelligence platform, Wingman helps you win the “battle of objections” in these quick ways:

Sales analysis: It enables you to access all your (and your team’s) call recordings in the form of insight-driven call transcripts. You can use them to evaluate yourself or take cues to up your sales game in the short- and long-run.   

Live assistance: While you are on a call, Wingman gives you contextual cues, or basically the answer to “what do I say to that” in real-time. 

Asynchronous sales coaching: Wingman lets you, a sales manager, create “power sales playlists” for your reps to refer to and further drill-down a do’s and don'ts list for themselves. You and your reps can tag each other and leave comments on specific instances of the call that you want the other to have a look at or have a doubt about. 

Wingman gives you crucial sales metrics and insights that simply let you mould yourself into a more suave sales executive. And best of all, you get to try it before you buy it. Book a demo today to see for yourself how Wingman can help you up your sales game. 

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