The Science of Marketing

In marketing, we hear the word "positioning" tossed around liberally. Some days it is used to describe that fuzzy concept of making a product sound more like a pal. On other occasions, it is confused with differentiation or interchanged with branding. But rarely do we hear positioning mentioned in the same breath with objection management. Why would we? After all, positioning is positive – the good stuff that makes our company or product the right solution for a problem. But what happens when our solution is the problem? Enter objection management: the other positioning.

Objection management is the flip side of positioning. Whether it is handled proactively or reactively, objection management provides a strategy to help overcome the inevitable tough questions from potential customers, partners, investors or any stakeholder who sees risk in your pitch.

Typical objections fall into three main categories of risk.

• Technology
  • The company’s solution is not in line with industry trends.
• Solution
  • There is too much risk in adopting a new and untested product.
  • The operational expenses of changing the present mode of operation are too high.
• Vendor
  • The company will not be in existence in a year.
  • The company cannot scale to support large deployments.

Technology is arguably the toughest risk to manage since it is ever changing and there tend to be many different approaches to solving market needs. The best way to approach technology risk is to condition the market with an aggressive thought leadership program, framing the debate on terms that are advantageous to your technology. Even with a strong market conditioning campaign, however, you are bound to encounter objections that stem from lack of awareness and competitive FUD. To be prepared, make sure that your market conditioning messages roll into objection management collateral (e.g., FAQs for the sales force or Q&As for a launch briefing). You should also be prepared to address alternative technologies, either dismissing them by discussing their weaknesses, or embracing them as validation of your technology.

In managing solution objections, your best defense is often a good offense. This means assembling a bulletproof ROI story to ensure that the benefits of implementing a new technology outweigh the risks and expenses associated with doing so. In order to further reduce the perception of solution risk, it is important to align your company with the organizations that play a role in the customer’s present mode of operation, such as international standards bodies and heavyweight solution partners. Finally, reference customers can go a long way in easing a prospect’s worries about deploying a new product by demonstrating not only that another company is using the product, but has improved their business because of it.

Emerging vendors are often vulnerable when it comes to objections about viability, longevity and support, especially when competing with large, established companies. In order to overcome these vendor objections, a startup must first be able to concisely articulate that its management team has a proven track record of success and its investors are in it for the long haul. But management bios and investor logos will only get you so far. In order to avoid the label of a fly-by-night, it is critical for young companies to demonstrate their alignment with world-class OEM and solutions partners that can lend their credibility to the sales and service efforts, and take vendor objections off the table.

In an insightful post, Charles Green recommends using objections as an opportunity to connect with customers. That’s good advice, but it is also important to have a process in place for identifying and responding to objections – before they can sour a relationship. Objection management is a continuing process of gathering objections and neutralizing them with messages, programs and tools that diffuse potential deal breakers before they cost you business.

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