They aren't explicit rejections: they are polite objections, almost kind ones. And that's exactly why they do so much damage.
Anyone who sells knows them all, because they hear them repeated deal after deal.
The good news is that these phrases don't come out of nowhere: they are the effect of something that was missing earlier, in preparing or conducting the negotiation. And anything that has a cause can be prevented.
This isn't a comforting hypothesis: it's Neil Rackham's thesis on complex sales, according to which the most effective salespeople receive fewer objections than others, because they prevent them upstream instead of merely countering them [1].
This article presents the 5 phrases that kill a sale (plus a sixth, so common it would be wrong to leave it out), explains why they arise and what to do so you stop hearing them.
And it shows, at the end, why when these phrases keep coming back the problem is almost never the individual salesperson.
Phrase no. 1 — "Too good to be true"
The customer who thinks or says this phrase has already taken the next mental step: if it's too good, there's a catch.
It's one of the paradoxes of selling: a very attractive offer, instead of drawing people in, makes them suspicious.
The point is that an offer, before it can be irresistible, has to be credible.
A price that is too low relative to the value promised upsets the balance between what the customer gives and what they receive: and when the balance breaks, distrust takes the place of enthusiasm.
What to do to prevent it:
1- give a rational justification for every discount: a price reduction needs a stated reason (for example, a discount in exchange for a referral or a testimonial)
2- increase the value instead of lowering the price, adding bonuses that can't be purchased separately
3- limit the availability of the offer in time or quantity, explaining the reason for the limit
4- describe the concrete process that leads to the promised result: the more detailed the path, the more credible the promise becomes.
Phrase no. 2 — "If you give me a good price, I'll buy it"
It looks like a buying signal. In reality it's a diagnosis: the perceived value of the offer is lower than the price asked.
A sale closes when, in the customer's mind, perceived value exceeds the price. If the customer asks for a discount, that condition hasn't been met yet.
The most common mistake at this point is to lower the price.
It's a double mistake: it reduces the margin and, in the customer's eyes, confirms that the initial price was inflated.
The right path is to raise perceived value:
1- use social proof, one of the six principles of persuasion documented by Robert Cialdini [2]: existing customers, testimonials, results achieved by people who have already bought
2- create real, justified scarcity: limited availability, terms valid until a specific date
3- state who the product or service is not suited for: those who select their customers communicate value, those who sell to anyone communicate need
4- add exclusive elements, such as personalized support or reserved bonuses.
Phrase no. 3 — "I'll talk it over with my partners (my husband, my wife) and get back to you"
This phrase shuts the salesperson out of the most important moment: the one in which the decision is really made.
The customer will present the offer to their partners in their own way: a reduced, imprecise version delivered without conviction, to people who didn't take part in the negotiation.
If the salesperson has no method for selling, the customer will use their own method for not buying.
The mistake, however, happens upstream: not having identified who decides before presenting the offer.
What to do to prevent it:
1- ask early, and without embarrassment, who has decision-making power and what the maximum time frame for deciding is
2- check whether the proposal responds to a real need or to mere curiosity
3- avoid discussing financial terms with someone who doesn't decide
4- if the discussion with the partners is unavoidable, offer to attend the decisive meeting, justifying your presence with additional information only the salesperson can provide.
Phrase no. 4 — "That's quite a sum, but honestly I was expecting to spend less"
A customer never judges a price in absolute terms: they compare it with the price expectation they have built up.
If the price communicated exceeds that expectation, the figure will seem high, whatever it is.
And the decisive point is this: the price expectation is built (or not built) by the salesperson, during the negotiation.
What to do to prevent it:
1- create price anchors early, citing reference figures before getting to the proposal: the first number encountered guides the evaluation of all those that follow, according to the anchoring effect described by Tversky and Kahneman [3]
2- build the price step by step, component by component, instead of announcing it all of a sudden
3- compare the offer with the more expensive alternatives the customer would have to put in place to achieve the same result by other means
4- never communicate the final price until the customer's expectation has been brought to the right level.
Phrase no. 5 — "What guarantee do I have that what you're saying is true?"
This phrase reveals the deepest problem of all: a lack of trust.
Distrust is one of the main reasons people don't buy: often the customer who doesn't buy isn't rejecting the product, they are refusing to trust the person offering it.
Responding with more promises is pointless: promises are exactly what the customer is doubting.
What's needed is proof and shared risk:
1- reverse the risk with a clear guarantee, such as a money-back guarantee
2- provide verifiable testimonials from similar customers, with the concrete possibility of contacting them
3- present real case studies, close to the customer's situation
4- where the service allows it, tie part of your fee to results: those who share the risk show that they believe in what they sell.
The bonus phrase — "I'll get some other quotes and then get back to you"
The title promises five, but a sixth phrase is so widespread that it deserves a place on the list.
When the customer multiplies quotes, they are saying something specific: they perceive the salesperson as interchangeable.
Studies on choice overload show that the more options increase, the more the ability to decide decreases. In Iyengar and Lepper's famous jam experiment, the tasting booth with 24 varieties attracted more visitors, but only 3% bought; faced with 6 varieties, about 30% bought [4].
The customer who collects quotes isn't looking for the best product, they are looking for the salesperson they can trust most.
What to do to prevent it:
1- build and state your uniqueness: how your proposal differs from all the alternatives for that specific problem
2- ask diagnostic questions before showing any solution: how the purchase will be used, what tastes and needs the buyer has
3- propose a single targeted solution, chosen on the basis of the answers, instead of showing the whole catalog
4- explain transparently, and without disparaging anyone, the differences from competitors: those who know and state their differences don't fear other people's quotes.
If these phrases keep coming back, the problem isn't the salesperson
Looking back over the list, one fact emerges: each of these phrases is the effect of something missing upstream.
An offer not made credible, value not built, a decision-maker not identified, a price expectation never managed, trust never demonstrated, uniqueness never stated.
When a salesperson hears one of these phrases now and then, it's the normal physiology of selling.
When every salesperson in a company hears them, every week, it's an organizational symptom: the company hasn't standardized its sales communication.
Everyone sells as best they can, with whatever words come to them, and results depend on individual talent. Killer phrases thrive exactly there: where there is no shared preparation, no reference scripts for negotiations, and training is left to personal initiative.
It's the same difference that separates relying on individual skills from building a business process, explored in the comparison between sales techniques and a sales system.
The sales playbook: one voice toward the customer
The first step to eliminating killer phrases for good is to put in writing how the company talks to customers.
The tool is a sales playbook: a shared document that collects the best of what the company has learned by selling.
It contains:
1- proven answers to recurring objections, starting with the six phrases in this article
2- the qualifying questions to ask at the start of a negotiation: who decides, on what timeline, for what need
3- the way the offer is presented and the price is built: anchors, sequence, terms
4- the proof to use to build trust: testimonials, case studies, guarantees, active referrals.
You don't need a perfect document on the first try.
You start from what your best salespeople already do, often without being fully aware of it, and turn it into written operating procedures that become the guaranteed minimum standard for anyone who sells in the company.
One frequent objection deserves an answer: the playbook doesn't straitjacket the salesperson or turn them into someone reading a script. It sets the minimum below which you don't go and frees up energy for the truly human part of selling: listening and the relationship.
Coaching and feedback on negotiations
A document, on its own, doesn't change behavior.
For the playbook to make its way into real negotiations, you need coaching and discussion: negotiations observed together, calls listened to again, cases discussed with a cool head.
The delicate moment is giving feedback: feedback on a negotiation works when it talks about specific facts ("at that point the price came before the expectation was set") and not about judgments of the person, following the principles that apply to giving feedback to team members in any area of the company.
Coaching, moreover, works both ways.
People who sell every day encounter new objections, changing customers, answers that stop working: regular discussion is the channel through which this information comes back to the company, instead of remaining the personal experience of whoever lived it.
Regularly reviewing how you talk to customers
The last element is a fixed review cadence, monthly or quarterly, in which the company looks at its sales communication as it would at any other process.
The questions are simple: which objections are coming up most? Which playbook answers work and which don't? What needs to be updated, added, removed?
From this perspective, killer phrases stop being a nuisance and become an indicator: if one of them starts rising again, something upstream has broken, and the regular review is the place to notice it early.
The six phrases in this article will continue to exist: no salesperson, however well prepared, is immune to them forever.
What makes the difference is the company that stops treating them as an individual's bad luck and starts treating them as a system problem: with shared preparation, constant discussion and a regular review of how it talks to customers.
Because a thousand phrases may run through the customer's mind, but the company's job is to make just one of them feel natural: the one with which they decide to buy.
FAQ
Why does the customer ask for a discount even when the offer is good?
Because the discount request is a diagnosis, not a whim: it signals that the perceived value of the offer is still lower than the price asked. Lowering the price confirms the suspicion that it was inflated and reduces the margin. The right path is to raise perceived value with social proof, exclusive elements and a stated selection of the customers the offer is suited for.
Should sales objections be handled or prevented?
According to Rackham, the most effective salespeople receive fewer objections because they prevent them [1]: they qualify the decision-maker early, build the price expectation, provide proof of trustworthiness before doubt emerges. Handling objections remains useful, but it comes in when part of the damage is already done: prevention acts on the cause, handling on the effect.
What does a sales playbook contain?
A sales playbook collects in a shared document the best of what the company has learned by selling: proven answers to recurring objections, the qualifying questions to ask at the start of a negotiation, the way the offer is presented and the price is built, the proof to use to build trust. It becomes the guaranteed minimum standard for anyone who sells in the company.
When do killer phrases signal an organizational problem?
When they aren't isolated episodes but recurring patterns: if every salesperson in a company hears the same objections every week, the cause isn't the individual, but the absence of standardized sales communication. In that case you need a shared playbook, coaching with feedback on negotiations and a regular review of how the company talks to customers.
Sources and references
- Rackham, N. (1988). SPIN Selling. McGraw-Hill. — Practitioner sales nonfiction. It sets out the author's proprietary research, never published in a peer-reviewed venue and not verifiable at the primary source: cited for the arguments made in it, not as a source of data.
- Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. William Morrow (Italian translation: Le armi della persuasione, Giunti). — foundational reference
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131. — foundational reference
- Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995–1006. — foundational reference