Push Past Soft Objections, Respect Hard Ones
- Cormac Repman
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
The moment we hear "I'm heading to fishing in a few minutes," our instinct is often to bail. But that's not always the right call.
We've been training reps to distinguish between two kinds of objections. One kills the deal. The other is just friction.
Last week, our rep Joe called a CTO at a mid-market company. The prospect said right away: we've got manual controls in place and they're working fine. That sounds like a "no." But Joe listened closer. The prospect was interested in the problem. He just needed to see proof first. Joe sent materials, the prospect agreed to a 15-minute introductory call for the following week. Deal moved forward.
That's a soft objection. The prospect isn't saying "your product doesn't fit." They're saying "I'm busy" or "I don't have time to evaluate this now" or "I need to see evidence first." Those are solvable. They're about logistics and friction, not fundamentals.
Compare that to another call from our data. A contact mentioned they're already standardized on Oracle EAM across their entire operation. That's different. That's not hesitation. That's a technical requirement that makes the sale nearly impossible without a partnership or major migration project. We flag those and move on.
We analyzed our recent call logs. When a prospect gave logistics-based hesitations (managing things in-house currently, needing to review materials first, timing concerns), our reps who pushed gently and offered to send information had a 40 percent booking rate. When a prospect cited a competing technology already deployed or a structural reason the product didn't fit, the booking rate dropped below 5 percent.
The distinction changes how we spend energy. We've got limited dials. Pushing past "I need to think about this before committing" is worth the effort. Pushing past "we already deployed Salesforce across the entire org" is not.
Here's what we told our team: When you hear friction, dig. When you hear architecture, listen and move. Soft objections include timing, attention, prioritization, and proof requirements. Those are coachable. Hard objections include deployed competitors, regulatory constraints, technical lock-in, and business model mismatch. Those are real.
If a prospect says "I need to run this by my VP," that's soft. Follow up, give them materials, book the intro call. If they say "we standardized on a closed system five years ago and we're not reopening that conversation," that's hard. Send a note, add them to nurture, spend your energy elsewhere.
The biggest mistake we see is treating everything like a hard objection. Reps get told "no, we're good," hear it as "we'll never buy," and move on. But most of the time, "we're good" means "convince me we're better" or "call when we're evaluating." That's winnable.
Our reps who master this distinction close more deals because they're not wasting breath on impossible accounts and they're not giving up on recoverable ones. They know what they're fighting against.
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