BOOSTING YOUR BUSINESS
Mastering the Art of Overcoming Sales Objections
By Jill Odom
OBJECTIONS ARE SOMETHING YOUR SALES TEAM WILL FACE ON A REGULAR basis as landscape projects call for a significant investment. However, these can turn into lost sales if your sales staff doesn’t know how to address these common objections from customers properly.
“According to data, 44% of salespeople
give up after a single rejection, and con- sidering that large-scale outdoor projects often involve multiple touchpoints, over- coming objections could recover up to 20-30% of lost sales,” says Kenneth Deemer, co-founder of Local Roots Landscaping, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Deemer says that sales objections are an opportunity to uncover the client’s true priorities and adjust your solution to meet their needs better. Objections can come in many forms, including disagreeing with the pricing, scope of work, or the value the work will provide the client. Brook Haygood, national director of sales for Visterra Landscape Group, based in Park Ridge, Illinois, says the ability to overcome sales objections often depends on a salesperson’s experience. “I would say with some of these junior salespeople who don’t really understand our industry, it’s probably 30-40% (lost sales),” Haygood says. “They don’t under- stand when a property manager says
certain things. They don’t understand how to navigate around those things or they’re not picking up on hints.”
SKILLS NEEDED TO HANDLE SALES OBJECTIONS Manny Gonzalez, CEO of Ethoscapes, based in Houston, Texas, agrees experience is critical for your sales team. “It’s the training of the salesperson
before engaging with the customer and understanding the property,” Gonzalez says. “First, ride-alongs are provided with more experienced sales folks on how one would handle those kinds of situations. Also, we provide lots of tools to counter some of these objections.”
Haygood says more seasoned salespeo- ple can get creative if a property manager says something won’t fit their budget. “It takes experience and understanding the game and also it takes a lot of under- standing that specific property manager,” Haygood says. “That’s what makes our industry very challenging is that you do have to invest a lot of your time on a one- on-one basis with each property manager to really understand what their pain points are.” For the less experienced salespeople,
Haygood recommends sending them out with a branch manager who has a lot of technical knowledge. “It does immediately elevate your junior salesperson when both those people are on site, because they’re like, ‘Well, I don’t know, but here’s the guy that does know,’” Haygood says. “I behoove our junior sales- people to lean on operations to come in
Photos: Ethoscapes 28 The Edge //January/February 2025
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