Overruled!

If you start to notice a pattern among objections, practice your response ahead of time so you'll be better prepared, Bishop suggested. "Write down the questions you want to ask. Think of the information the client needs to change their mind," she said. "No one in the major leagues wins the World Series without practice. No sales professional wins big orders without practice, either."

2. Stop selling the product, start selling the outcome.

It may sound counterintuitive, but take the focus off of the product. Put the attention on prospects, their needs and their desired outcome, Emmer suggested.

"Sales in general take on an adversarial relationship," Emmer said. "You want to sell and the client wants to resist being sold." So instead, help the buyer buy—and help the buyer buy your product. "Nobody wakes up and thinks, 'I want to buy some coffee mugs today,'" Emmer continued. "They may be troubled about employee turnover, customer loyalty or any one of hundreds of other business thoughts. It takes the sales professional to help the client understand how they can reach the objective by working together rather than working against each other."

Determine what the prospect wants, whether it be gaining more customers, improving employee performance or introducing a new service, and show how your product can produce that outcome—how it can become an investment for the future rather than a purchase.

Emmer explained the idea further. "Asking, 'Would you like to see your business do better this year than last year?' normally would get a 'yes' answer. Asking, 'Would increased productivity from your employees be valuable to your business?' might also work," he said. "The point is that you need to sell the outcome, not the product."

You can also sell the outcome by helping to solve a problem. "A prospect that simply says, 'We don't use those things' might get a reply from me, like, 'That's exactly why I'm here—your competitors do [use those things] and they are taking business away from you.'"