Shanli Liu, CPA, CTP, breaks down the AAA framework for handling sales objections: Acknowledge the prospect's concern, Associate it with positive customer behavior, then Ask a follow-up question. The method keeps conversations moving without confronting resistance head-on.
It's something I haven't talked about in the gazillions of stuff I've talked about sales. I just trained my team on over the weekend. When someone says something back, I need to think about it, I need to talk to my spouse, I need to talk to decision maker, whatever it is that's not yes, we have to acknowledge. So this first A is you acknowledge what the person said, and that's usually repeating back to them. So it sounds like you want to talk to your partner. Cool. Second A, you want to associate them saying that thing with a purchasing behavior or at least a positive trait. I think that's super smart. It's actually what a lot of the best customers we have do. And then third A, ask the next question, which then leads you into whatever your obstacle to overcome is, or like, if they said no, what would you do then? And so rather than someone says, I have to talk to my spouse, and I'm like, well, if they say no, what did you do? It softens it a lot and allows us to maintain a little bit of space between what they said and me directly smashing it.
