Do not answer it. Clarify first, with one question, every time, even when you are sure you know. The real objection is usually price, sometimes trust. Answering the wrong one tells somebody you were not listening, and that is the quietest way to lose a job you had already earned.
Written by JD Davenport, who still sells for a living. Updated 4 November 2026.
It is the most common thing a customer says at the end of an appointment and it is almost never about thinking. It is a hiding place. There is a real objection underneath and they do not want the discomfort of saying it out loud, usually price, sometimes trust, sometimes something you said earlier that landed wrong and you never knew.
The two instincts are to close harder or to leave politely. Both cost you the job.
Closing harder answers an objection they did not make. If the real issue is price and you respond to timing, you have proved you were not listening, and now there are two problems. Leaving politely is more comfortable and it is the same mistake with better manners: you walk out without knowing what the actual objection was, which means you cannot address it later either, and your follow-up is a guess.
Have the clarifying question ready and say it the same way every time. The point of memorizing one sentence is not the sentence. It is that it buys you the three seconds you need to think, at the exact moment when most people fill the silence with something they regret.
Then stop talking. The answer to a clarifying question is the job. If they name price, you have a price conversation and you know how to have one. If they will not name anything, that itself is the information: something is wrong that they will not say, and pushing at that point confirms whatever they are worried about.
Style is flexible. Nobody is asking anyone to recite a script at a kitchen table. The standard is that the question comes before the answer, every time.
An objection is usually a symptom of something that went wrong earlier in the appointment, and the highest-value coaching available is upstream of the close rather than at it.
Find out who decides, in discovery, not at the close. Ask it on the phone when you book: is this a decision the two of you make together, or is this one yours? If it is joint, book it joint, then, before you go out. "I need to talk to my spouse" is not an objection if you asked in advance.
Look at the whole thing, not the part they called about. Then sit down and walk them through what you found on their own property, in their own photos. A large share of the objections people get are caused by skipping this, because the customer has no idea what you did while you were out there.
Put the payment question in discovery. It is an input to the price, not a reaction to it. Asked at the close it sounds like a rescue.
Ask for the business. Presenting and then waiting is the single most common way a good appointment ends without a decision, and it is invisible to the person doing it.
Nine of these come up often enough to be worth writing down, and every one of them is two or three different objections sharing the same words. "Your price is too high" is sometimes cost and sometimes value, and the answer is completely different depending on which. "I want to get another quote" is almost never about quotes.
The structure that makes them handleable is the same each time: what they actually mean, the one clarifying question, what to say if that does not surface it, and what to do if they still will not name it. Reasoning first, the line to say second, so the person using it can say it like themselves rather than reciting.
There is one, and it is for the discount request rather than for this objection. If somebody pushes for a lower number after you have presented, what you say in the next ten seconds decides whether your price means anything for the rest of the relationship, and this is the one place where improvising costs real money.
All nine, each with its type, its clarifying question, the reasoning and the lines, plus the four upstream fixes, are file 04 in The Appointment Standard. What should happen in the hour before you get there is on this page. More answers on the questions page.