Feel, Felt, Found: Proven Method to Handle Every Sales Objection
Working in sales often means dealing with hesitant prospects.
Fortunately, a powerful technique for effectively addressing their questions and concerns is the feel, felt, found method.
Learn more about this dynamic approach to identify customer hesitation and create stronger relationships!
The feel, felt, found method can be quite helpful in this situation.
This blog post will provide helpful examples of applying this approach when tackling common objections such as pricing, timing or interest.
We’ll give specific examples of how to apply this strategy to counter common concerns like pricing, lack of interest, and timing.
What is the feel, felt, found technique?
In sales, a prospect frequently raises concerns about your offering or meeting requests. Whether live during a demo or a cold call, objections are part of sales.
You are responsible as a salesperson to convincingly address those arguments and convince them to buy your goods.
The feel, felt, found method is an effective sales approach for addressing customer objections and helping the customer move closer to making a purchase. This technique can help you quickly empathize with your customers, give them confidence in your product, and build trust with them.
It is a three-step process that involves highlighting shared experiences between yourself and the potential customer (feel), talking through past experiences (felt), and capitalizing on customer feedback (found).
It shows customer empathy. It allows you to align with their thinking that they are not alone in their reservations about making a purchase.
This can make them feel more at ease and understand why it might benefit them to move forward with their purchase.
Why does feel, felt, found work?
The feel, felt, found method is a great way to address common sales objections while keeping your customers engaged.
It’s a simple yet effective method that can respond to almost any objection and has several key benefits.
- Builds rapport: helps you build rapport with the customer as you show understanding and empathy for their position.
- Reframe the objection: allows you to provide an easy solution that reframes the objection in favor of your product.
- Acknowledges pain points: shows that you’re actively listening to your prospect’s pain points.
- Ownership: gives the customer ownership over their decision and shows that you value their opinion.
- Social proof: reassures your prospect that similar customers also had the same reservations and objections.
Here’s how feel, felt, found works
The feel, felt, found method helps put customers at ease by empathizing with their concerns.
Start with a feel statement where you acknowledge and validate the customer’s objections or concerns.
Listen to how your prospect feels and acknowledge that it’s completely acceptable to be concerned. It shows that you understand their concerns and have been in their shoes.
Second, make a bridge to relate by stating how another customer felt similarly about something else at first, too but eventually changed their mind for a good reason.
This is a great way to form social proof because it demonstrates that similar customers felt the same way initially also. It helps the prospect feel as though they are part of the majority. They shouldn’t feel alone. Additionally, it also implies that most customers’ concerns get addressed as well.
Third and lastly, state something found due to trying or implementing the solution or product you are offering. This should give them a sense of relief and hope regarding resolving their underlying issue or problem. Then either ask for the sales or a meeting.
By using this approach consistently when responding to objections, sales professionals can effectively address those issues while building trust, maintaining relationships with existing customers, and creating relationships with potential customers.
Anticipating potential objections
In sales, it’s important to be ready to anticipate any objections that might come your way.
As a sales professional, you don’t want to risk being unprepared when those objections arise. It’s important to properly handle all potential issues you could face.
The feel, felt, found technique is designed to empathize with the customer while addressing their concerns effectively and efficiently.
By understanding their feelings and addressing them confidently yet politely with this approach—which involves acknowledging their feelings (“I understand how you feel…”), connecting with similar situations (“Others have felt just like you…”) and assuring potential solutions (“I found that…”)—you can address their objections in a reassuring yet authoritative way.
When dealing with customers with objections, this method allows you to remain confident and poised while understanding and empathizing with their concerns.
It makes customers feel heard and more likely to accept your solution.
By proactively addressing potential customer concerns before they even arise, sales professionals can leverage the feel, felt, found technique to demonstrate empathy as they handle objections.
How to use feel, felt, found effectively?
Objections are a fact of life in sales, and you will never be able to eliminate them.
Instead, you can learn how to handle them effectively and efficiently. One common objection-handling method is the feel, felt, found technique.
Here are some steps and tips on how to use this method effectively when confronted with an objection from a customer:
Step 1: Acknowledge the objection
The first step when responding to an objection using the feel, felt, found technique is acknowledging that the customer has a legitimate concern.
Validate their feelings by mirroring their sentiment or restating your understanding of their concern.
Step 2: Empathize with their concerns (Feel)
The second step is to empathize with customers’ concerns and validate your understanding of their objection by using phrases like “I understand why you feel that way…” or “I get why you felt like this…”
These validations will help build trust while demonstrating your willingness to address any potential hurdles in making a sale.
Step 3: Share relevant third-party examples (Felt)
The third step involves sharing relevant third-party examples of when someone else may have had similar objections but still went ahead with the purchase.
For example, “We had another customer who felt exactly like you did at first, but after they took some time to think about it, they found it was very beneficial for them.”
This helps provide additional assurance that customers can trust what you’re telling them about your product or service without feeling pressured into buying something they don’t want.
Step 4: Offer clarifying evidence (Found)
The last part involves offering evidence via facts that further back up any claims made during the sales process.
You want customers to leave feeling sure of themselves and assured in their purchasing decisions – so offer any relevant stats, facts or studies that can confirm what being said about your product is true.
Once customers have been presented with all the benefits offered by your product/service and relevant information, most objections tend to get resolved on their own or can be easily answered through conversation.
Use a sales call planner or script to handle objections in a structured and prepared way.
Reframing objections
Reframing objections is a technique that helps you handle customer concerns and objections more efficiently. Using this approach, you can reassure the customer that their concerns are valid and provide an alternate solution or suggestion.
The ‘feel, felt, found’ method puts forth three statements and effectively reframes how the customer perceives the situation.
The ‘feel, felt, found’ goes like this: “I understand how you feel [feel], others have felt the same way [felt], but here’s what they have found [found].” This approach shows customers that they are not alone in their feelings of doubt or disagreement while providing an alternate solution or outcome.
For example, if a customer objects to a price increase for a subscription service and says it is too expensive: “I understand how you feel [feel], others have felt the same way [felt], but here’s what they have found[found]: The new price includes free shipping across all orders as well as extra features like product discounts, priority support, and more benefits. So your subscription not only offers convenience but also provides a great value.”
Examples of effective feel, felt, found responses
Identifying common sales objections is integral to engaging prospects and closing deals.
Knowing and understanding the most common objections can help you prepare for any potential conversations with customers so that you can address their concerns effectively.
In sales, some of the most common objections you may hear include the following:
Lack of budget
Prospect: “ I don’t have a budget for your solution.”
Seller: “I understand how you feel and that many companies are tightening their budget this year. I recently worked with several customers who felt the same about budget restraints. However, most of them changed their mind after realizing they could achieve a 3X ROI within the first year. It sounded like you saw value in our solution, where can we progress on the budget?”
Lack of time
Prospect: “ I don’t have time to see a demo.”
Seller: “I understand how you feel since we’re all busy with meetings and work. Other customers have felt the same way when I call as well. However, most of them changed their mind after they found out how our solution could improve their productivity. Since I already have you on the phone, would it make sense to schedule just 30 minutes for a demo call?”
Lack of interest
Prospect: “ I am not interested in your solution right now.”
Seller: “I understand how you feel since you likely get called all of the time. Other customers have felt the same way when I call as well. However, most of them changed their mind after they found out how our solution helps them solve [pain point]. Would solving [pain point] be something you’re keen on?”
Uncertainty about your product’s ability to meet their needs
Prospect: “I’m not confident your solution can help solve our needs.”
Seller: “I understand how you feel that you might not be fully confident right now. I’ve worked with many customers who have been there and felt the same way. We found that, with our [functionality], you can address [pain point] while saving 10 hours per week. Is that a challenge you were looking to solve?”
Preference for a different company’s product or service
Prospect: “I’m already using a competitor’s solution.”
Seller: “I understand how you feel about using [competitor]’s product. I’ve worked with many customers who originally felt the same way. They then migrated to our solution and found that we could solve their challenges within half the time and cost. Is that something you would be interested in learning more about?”
While each of these objections presents its challenge, the “Feel Felt Found” method is one way you can effectively handle them.
When using this technique, first acknowledge your customer’s feelings or objections (Feel).
An upgrade for feel, felt, found
Switch up the words feel, felt, found, and use different vocabulary so that it sounds less rehearsed. Here are some examples of different words to use.
Feel – different words to use:
- I completely understand…
- I get what you’re saying…
- I see where you’re coming from…
Felt – different words to use:
- Many customers said the same thing when we first spoke with them…
- Many customers were in the same position….
- Many customers dealt with the same challenges…
Found – different words to use:
- What they realized was that…
- What they discovered was that…
- The reason they decided to use us was that…
How do you feel about this sales method?
The feel, felt, found sales technique is a great way to handle customers’ objections.
It allows you to provide solutions to customer concerns in an empathetic way. Additionally, it creates trust and rapport with prospects.
By addressing customer objections, salespeople can gain important insight into customers’ needs and show that they understand their value proposition. This tried-and-true method can successfully convert prospects into customers.
With practice, the feel, felt, found method will become second nature and open up business opportunities for salespeople everywhere!
