Prepare for the Objection Before It Happens
Most objections are predictable. Advisors hear the same three to five on nearly every sales cycle. What separates the advisors who stall from the ones who advance is preparation, not improvisation.
Dan Dal Degan, a veteran sales leader and board member of Great Gray Group, recommends a plan that takes ten to fifteen minutes before any important meeting, built on three questions:
- Answers: What do we need to learn? Pick two or three questions that qualify the opportunity and surface decision criteria.
- Attitudes: What does the prospect need to feel or believe differently by the end of the meeting
- Actions: What one to three next steps will be proposed?
The actions are the scorecard. If the prospect says yes to the next steps, the deal is moving. If every answer is no, that is just as telling. Without a plan, two people can leave the same meeting and disagree on whether it went well.
Committees raise the stakes. A plan sponsor committee brings finance, HR and operations to the same table, each with different criteria. Strong advisors identify the decision-maker and the key influencers in advance, treat every objection with equal respect, and follow up to confirm each one was resolved. Playing to the loudest voice in the room is a mistake.
Then comes practice. Dan’s approach is to poll the team for its top three to five objections by frequency and difficulty, pair each with a client story, and role-play the responses. A weekly rhythm keeps the skill sharp as new objections emerge, from AI to regulatory change.
In Mastering Objections: How Questions & Empathy Win Clients, Dan walks through the full playbook, including the Feel, Felt, Found framework for responding with empathy.