People aren't "objecting" to your product

The problem with most "objection handling" advice is that it treats resistance as rational.

As if consumers are carefully weighing pros and cons, when what's really happening is something far more primal.

People aren't objecting to your product. They're protecting their existing identity.

Last week, I was watching my toddler refuse to wear his new blue shorts. He just wouldn’t put them on.

I couldn’t figure out… why? Why has he chosen to fight this battle today? He hasn’t put them on once. How can he even tell if they’re not comfortable?

My mom, who was watching me lose this battle, reminded me that when I was a kid, I too refused to try any new food, despite having no idea what it tasted like.

Turns out.

It wasn't about the shorts. Or the food.

It was about maintaining control in a world where little humans have almost none.

Your customers aren't so different.

When someone says "it's too expensive," they rarely mean the literal dollars.

They mean: "I don't see myself as the kind of person who prioritizes this enough to spend money here."

When they say "I need to think about it," they usually mean: "Changing feels risky, what if this comes down to bite me in the a**?"

So, how do we get past this deeply rooted resistance?

Not with better arguments. But with better stories.

Stories that allow people to try on new identities without threatening their existing ones.

Here are three frameworks I've been experimenting with that dig beneath the surface. You can use some version of these during customer surveys or interviews, or simply do what I do, that is, feed them to AI (Chat GPT or Claude) and see what comes up.

I’m literally just naming these frameworks, so be kind, alright?

1. The Temporary World

Instead of asking "How would you sell this product?" try this…

"Imagine a world where everyone already believes [new belief]. In this world, what would people find most surprising about how things used to be?"

This creates psychological distance. And that’ll allow you to come up with better stories.

It's not about changing their current beliefs.

It's about temporarily visiting an alternate reality where different beliefs are normal.

Use these stories in your ads and emails to instill new beliefs in your audience!

An example would be how fitness companies stop selling "weight loss" and start showing a world where people measure progress by how they feel, not how they look.

2. The Third Person Projection

Instead of "What objections might you have?" try this…

"Someone like you (same job, same challenges) is hesitating to take the [desired action]. What three questions are running through their mind right now?"

The third-person framing bypasses defensive responses.

This is great for customer interviews btw.

People will tell you truths about "someone like them" that they'd never admit about themselves.

What's fascinating is how often people later adopt the exact beliefs they projected onto this imaginary third person.

3. The Retrospective Why

Instead of "Why haven't you solved this problem yet?" try this…

"Five years from now, looking back, what do you think will have been the real reason this situation didn't change sooner?"

This time-shifting technique is borderline magical.

It creates space for people to acknowledge the emotional and identity-based barriers they usually won't admit to in the present tense.

I watched a B2B company use this approach with executives who had been stalling for months.

The answers revealed that status and fear of looking incompetent were the real barriers, not budget or timing, as they'd been claiming.

What’s really going on is… Identity Protection

The deeper lesson in all this is that resistance isn't something to be "handled" or overcome.

It's valuable information about identity protection that's happening below the surface.

And our job as marketers isn't to push past objections. It's to create safe pathways for people to evolve their identities in ways that feel continuous (rather than threatening).

After all, nobody wants to be sold to.

But everybody is * secretly * hoping to become who they already believe they could be.