Handle a pricing objection
Sales objection handling is an Agent Skill: a written method your AI applies on demand, in Zealos or in any client that reads SKILL.md.
Sales objection handling is an Agent Skill: a written method your AI applies on demand, in Zealos or in any client that reads SKILL.md.
A pricing objection is almost never about price: it is a value problem, a comparison to something cheaper that does less, or an internal conversation the buyer has not told you about yet.
| name | objection-handling |
|---|---|
| description | The objections we get and the responses that work, including what not to say. Use when drafting a reply to a hesitant prospect, preparing for a negotiation, or reviewing a stalled deal. |
| allowed-tools | none — this skill adds judgement, not reach |
| compatibility | Zealos, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and any client that reads SKILL.md |
| license | Free to use and edit |
--- name: objection-handling description: The objections we get and the responses that work, including what not to say. Use when drafting a reply to a hesitant prospect, preparing for a negotiation, or reviewing a stalled deal. --- # Objection handling An objection is information. The instinct to answer it immediately is what turns it into an argument. ## The shape 1. **Repeat it back** in their words, more precisely than they said it. 2. **Ask one question** that finds what is underneath. 3. **Answer the real objection**, which is usually not the stated one. 4. **Confirm** it is resolved before moving on. If you skip this, it returns at procurement. ## Common ones, and what is usually underneath | Stated | Usually means | |---|---| | "Too expensive" | Value is unclear, or they are comparing to a cheaper thing that does less | | "Bad timing" | No trigger, or a competing priority they have not named | | "We built something internally" | Sunk cost, and someone's reputation is attached to it | | "Need to talk to the team" | We have not met the actual decision maker | | "Send me some information" | Polite exit — ask what specifically they need it to answer | ## Never - Answer a price objection with a discount before understanding it. - Say "great question". - Disparage the competitor. Compare on a dimension the buyer already named. - Argue with a feeling. "It feels risky" is not resolved by facts about uptime.
The reflex to concede on price gets replaced by a question, and the deals that were going to close still close — at the number you quoted.
Objection handling stops being tribal knowledge held by your top two reps and becomes something the other six can read.
You stop discovering your own pricing rationale mid-sentence on a call, because you wrote it down once when you were not under pressure.
Either the value is unclear, or they are comparing you to something cheaper that does less. Both are answered by understanding, not by discounting.
No. Pair this with a pricing-guardrails skill that makes any concession require a human, because an anchor you cannot honour costs more than a day's delay.
A battle card is about competitors. This is about the moment a buyer hesitates, which happens far more often and is rarely competitive.
Post-call automation turns a recorded conversation into the three things that outlive it: the commitments each side made, the fields that changed, and the follow-up that has to go out today.
/call-recap-formatA pre-call brief is worth writing only if it changes what you ask: who is in the room, what they are measured on, what happened last time, and the one question you cannot afford to leave without answering.
/discovery-questionsAI email triage is worth having only when it sorts by consequence rather than by recency: what blocks a deal, what someone is waiting on you for, and what can be read at the end of the week.
/email-rulesCRM data hygiene survives AI only if one rule is written down first: a field left blank is a known unknown, while a field filled in by inference is an unknown unknown that will be reported on as fact.
/crm-field-conventionsQualification is a claim about evidence, not a score: a deal is qualified when every criterion has a source you can quote, and unevidenced criteria are named rather than filled in optimistically.
/meddiccA pipeline review is useful in proportion to how uncomfortable it is: the job is to find the deals that are slipping quietly, not to narrate the ones everybody already knows about.
/meddicc