How to pre-handle every sales objection before it kills your deal

You know that feeling at the end of a call when it is just objection after objection after objection. I need to talk to the wife. I need to think about it. I don't have the money. That feeling is avoidable. You just have to stop waiting until the end to deal with it.

I've closed $9M+ in sales myself, and I've trained hundreds of closers to hit 20, 30, 40, 50k a month in commissions consistently. This is how I pre-handle objections before they ever show up at the close.

Why pre-handling even matters

Here is the thing about human behavior. The longer a belief goes unchallenged, the more confident someone gets in it.

So if you spot a limiting belief early in the call and just let it ride because you'd rather "deal with it at the end," two bad things happen. One, they get more confident in that belief every minute you let it sit there. Two, by the time you've dropped your price and made your pitch, there's a lot more going on in their head and less trust built up to push back with.

That means you're fighting on two fronts at the end instead of one in the middle.

If you address the limiting belief early and get them to agree that it's not serving them, they're going to want to stay consistent with what they already admitted. That makes the close way easier. Sometimes the objection never even shows up again.

"You get objection is close. High fives all around and you can really cut down your call time significantly."

The one question that runs the whole show

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So the entire pre-handle game comes down to one question:

"Before talking today, what have you done about actually solving your problem?"

This question is the crux of the conversation. If you know what they've tried, or what's stopped them from trying anything, you can reframe that belief and get them to make a different decision.

But before any of this works, you need leverage. If you haven't opened them up and found their pain, none of this lands. You can't push back on someone's thinking if you don't know what matters to them and you haven't earned the right to challenge it.

The three answers you'll always get

Ask that question and you'll only get three types of responses.

• They tried something before
• They're talking to other companies right now
• They've done nothing

If they tried something and got burned, don't dive into the story. Use a reframe. I use either the girlfriend reframe or the restaurant reframe depending on who I'm talking to. Older guy, I'll lean girlfriend. Not sure if they're married, restaurant is safer.

"Have you ever gone to a restaurant and you didn't have a good meal, or you even got food poisoning? Does that mean you stop going out to restaurants altogether? No, of course not. That just means you stop going to that restaurant."

The point is to boost their confidence in their own decision making, because a bad past experience chips away at that confidence, and a prospect who doesn't trust their own decisions won't make a new one on your call.

After that, hit the elephant in the room. Ask if they're going to let that old company burn them twice. Once when it didn't work out, and now again if they let fear stop them from fixing the problem. Then ask, "do you want to give them that power?" When they say no, push back and ask why not. Anytime someone takes a step in your direction, make them defend it. That locks the belief in deeper.

If they're talking to other companies, ask what they're hoping to get out of those conversations. If the offers are basically the same on price and features, ask how they'd make the decision then. This does two things. It gives you leeway on price, and it tells you exactly how to build your presentation to win.

If they've done nothing, and they try to dress it up with "I've been watching YouTube" or "I've been researching," don't treat it like a real answer. Sideswipe it.

"If YouTube worked, we'd all have nine figure businesses."

Push past the fake action until you get them to admit they've done nothing real. That admission is where the actual work starts.

Find the real belief, not the excuse

Once someone admits they've done nothing, you're hunting for a belief. A belief is a mindset in their control that's holding them back. Not a priority. Complacent. Scared. Think they can do it alone.

Most people won't hand you the belief straight away. They'll hand you an excuse first. The four that show up constantly are:

• Time, or something external
• Money
• "I didn't know it was a thing"
• "I've just been researching"

For time, I use a comparative frame.

"We have people who are doctors and lawyers working 16 hours a day with a wife and kids who are able to make the time. What do you feel like allows them to do that?"

That gets them to say something like "they make it a priority," which lets you ask what's prevented them from doing the same. Now it's on them, not on the clock.

For money, I bring up Tony Robbins.

"Your biggest superpower is your ability to be resourceful."

Then I ask what's prevented them from getting resourceful in the timeframe we already identified.

For "I didn't know it was a thing," I ask whose responsibility it was to go look for a solution if they've been in pain for years. For "I've been researching," I ask how long, then point out you can't get clarity without action, same as you can't know the weather at the beach until you're standing on it.

Every one of these routes ends the same way. You strip the excuse and get the real belief underneath it.

Turn the belief into a cost

Once you've got the belief, this is where it gets fun. Ask something like:

"Can you see how being a bit complacent has caused you to stay where you're at? Are you okay with me saying that?"

That softer tag question, "are you okay with me saying that," makes it easy for them to agree, because they're really just answering the second, easier question.

From there, attach a number to it. If you're selling an ROI offer, calculate what the belief has actually cost them.

"Do you mind if we do the math?"

I've never had anyone say no to that. If they've been leaving $5,000 a month on the table for two years, that's $120,000 gone. Get them to do the math themselves or confirm the number out loud. It has to be their number, not yours.

If it's not an ROI offer, calculate the cost in time, missed moments with their kids, their health, whatever applies. Same idea, different currency.

Then ask if that belief is worth keeping if they actually want to change. When they say no, ask why not and make them defend it. Then hit the consequence of holding onto it.

The identity frame closes the gap

The numbers gap shows them what the belief cost them financially. The identity frame goes deeper. It's about the person they are right now versus the person they need to become.

I stretch that gap hard. The bigger the gap between who they are and who they should be, the harder it is for them to hold onto the old belief by the time we get to the close. That's what kills objections before they ever show up.

The bottom line

Stop saving objections for the end of the call. Find the belief early with one question: what have you done before to solve this? Push past excuses like time, money, and research until you get the real belief. Attach a real cost to it, get their buy in on the number, then widen the identity gap. Do this right and you won't be overcoming objections at the close. You'll be closing a deal that's already decided.