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Sales & Marketing Executives International (SMEI)

Founded 1935 · Nonprofit professional association

For sales professionals

Get Your Free Objection Handling Course and Certificate When You Register Today

Turn "your price is too high" into the best part of the call. A free fifteen-minute course on handling price, timing, competitor and hesitation objections — with questions and evidence instead of pressure. Finish it and download your certificate of completion.

Get Started

The course lists at $9.99. It is free to take right now, you can finish it before your next call starts, and your certificate of completion is ready to download the moment you do.

  • Fifteen minutes
  • Free — normally $9.99
  • From a professional association
  • Downloadable certificate

The offer

Get a Repeatable Method for Overcoming Objections in Sales

Most free sales training is a webinar you have to book or a PDF you never open. Objection to Opportunity is a short, practical course built on realistic buyer dialogue, showing you what to say and how to think when resistance appears.

What the course covers

  • The LACE method, end to end Four steps
  • Why buyers raise objections at all Included
  • Price, timing, competitor and hesitation All four
  • Isolating an objection before answering Included
  • Questions that surface the real concern Included
  • Confirming a concern is actually resolved Included
  • Realistic buyer dialogue throughout Included
  • A downloadable certificate of completion Included

$9.99 Free

The course lists at $9.99 and is currently free. The certificate of completion is included and downloads when you finish. There is no membership requirement, no card, and no upsell inside the course.

Start the Free Course

You create a free SMEI catalogue account to register, which is how your progress is saved and where your certificate of completion is issued for download. SMEI does not guarantee business results from any course, certificate, or membership.

Why take this one

Get Objection Handling Training From the Association That Wrote the Code of Ethics

Most objection handling advice is a list of comebacks from somebody selling a course at the end of it. This is a method, taught by a nonprofit professional association, and it is over in fifteen minutes.

SMEI: a nonprofit association setting the standard since 1935

  • Cited in academic textbooks The SMEI Code of Ethics appears in sales and marketing course texts
  • Nonprofit association Nothing is being sold to you inside the course
  • Certification Governing Board The same body that governs the SCPS and CSE designations
  • Founded 1935, New York Ninety years of defining what professional selling means

The real problem

Don't Lose Another Deal to an Objection You Answered Too Fast

The deal does not usually die at the pitch. It dies in the ten seconds after "we already have a supplier", when you answer too fast and never find out what the buyer actually meant. Afterwards you replay it and know you talked past them. We think professional selling should be about understanding a concern, not winning an argument.

What happens now

"Your price is too high." You defend the price, and the conversation becomes a negotiation you did not choose.

What LACE does instead

Clarify first. Price is rarely the concern by itself — it is price measured against a value the buyer has not seen yet.

What happens now

"I need to think about it." You agree to follow up, and the follow-up never lands.

What LACE does instead

Isolate the objection before answering it, so you learn what is genuinely unresolved while the buyer is still on the call.

What happens now

"We already have a supplier." You start listing what makes you different, and it sounds like every other vendor.

What LACE does instead

Acknowledge the concern first. A buyer who feels understood will tell you what their current supplier is not doing.

What happens now

You have a file of rebuttals and you still freeze, because no script covers the objection you actually got.

What LACE does instead

A repeatable four-step framework works on objections you have never heard before, which a memorised comeback cannot do.

How it works

Three Steps to Handling Objections in Sales Without Pressure

No card, no membership, and no sales call waiting on the other side.

  1. Register

    Create a free SMEI catalogue account. It takes about a minute and saves your progress.

  2. Take the course

    About fifteen minutes of realistic buyer dialogue, working through the LACE method one step at a time, then download your certificate of completion.

  3. Use it on the next call

    Apply the framework to the very next objection you hear — that is the whole reason it is short.

Start the Free Course

The framework

The LACE Method: Four Objection Handling Techniques, in Order

Four moves, always in this order. The order is the method — most objection handling fails because step four happens first.

Listen

Step 1

Let the buyer explain the concern in full, without interrupting to correct it. Most objections change shape when somebody finishes saying them.

  • Do not answer yet
  • The concern is information
View details

Acknowledge

Step 2

Show that you understood what was raised. Acknowledging a concern is not agreeing with it, and it is what stops the conversation turning adversarial.

  • Understanding, not agreement
  • Lowers the temperature
View details

Clarify

Step 3

Ask questions until you know what is really unresolved. "Too expensive" and "I cannot justify this internally" need completely different answers.

  • Questions, not rebuttals
  • Isolate before you resolve
View details

Engage With Value

Step 4

Now respond — with relevant value and evidence tied to what the buyer told you in step three, then confirm the concern is actually resolved.

  • Evidence, not pressure
  • Confirm before moving on
View details

Taught inside the free Objection to Opportunity micro-course on the SMEI catalogue.

What you will learn

What You Learn About Common Sales Objections in Fifteen Minutes

Seven things you can use on Monday. Everything below is covered inside the fifteen minutes.

Why buyers object

Recognise what may be happening beneath the surface when a concern is raised.

Slowing the moment down

Avoid answering too quickly, and avoid becoming defensive when the objection feels personal.

Questions that uncover

Use questions to find the buyer's real concern instead of the one they said first.

The four common objections

Handle price, timing, competitor and hesitation objections without pressure.

Isolating the objection

Separate one concern from the rest before you attempt to resolve it.

Connecting to what matters

Tie your solution to the customer's stated priorities and business value.

Confirming resolution

Check that a concern has actually been resolved before moving the conversation forward.

Before you register

What This Free Course Does and Does Not Promise

It is fifteen minutes long and it is free. Here is exactly what that does and does not buy you.

  • It is a method, not a script

    You leave with a four-step framework you can apply to objections nobody has written a comeback for.

  • It is genuinely short

    About fifteen minutes. That is deliberate — a framework you can recall under pressure beats an afternoon you never book.

  • It is genuinely free

    The catalogue lists it at $9.99 and the current price is $0.00. No card is taken and no membership is required.

  • It issues a downloadable certificate of completion

    Finish the fifteen minutes and your certificate of completion is issued in your SMEI catalogue account, ready to download, save, print or add to LinkedIn.

  • The governed designations are separate

    SCPS, CSE, SCPM and CME each carry their own exam and fee. The completion certificate sits below them on the same ladder.

  • CE credits are a separate programme

    SMEI's credit-bearing certificate programmes are listed on their own in the course catalogue.

  • It is not a guarantee of results

    A method helps you have a better conversation. What happens in the deal is still yours to earn.

SMEI does not guarantee income, promotion, or employment outcomes from any course, certificate, or membership. Course pricing verified on the SMEI catalogue, 2026-09-12.

Practicalities

It Costs Nothing, and It Takes Fifteen Minutes

This is free sales training delivered online through the SMEI catalogue, and it can be taken from anywhere, on any device, at any time. There is no cohort, no schedule, and no live session to attend, and your certificate of completion downloads from your catalogue account as soon as you finish.

SMEI has operated as a global professional association since 1935, with United States headquarters and international affiliates.

A global association since 1935

  • United States headquarters
  • International affiliates

If the method works for you

If You Also Want the Credential

None of this is required to take the free course. It is simply what SMEI does for professionals who decide selling is a discipline worth being credentialed in.

  • Executive membership $325 / year
  • 40% off certification exam-prep courses Save $395.60
  • Annual certification renewal fee waived Waived
  • 20% off all other online courses Ongoing
  • Live and on-demand webcasts Included
  • Member forum and document library Included
  • SCPS and CSE sales designations Governed credentials

Stated value of the above

Executive membership $325 / year

If a professional designation is anywhere on your plan, Executive membership saves $395.60 on the first exam-prep course alone — more than the membership costs.

See What Membership Includes

Executive membership is $325 a year, billed annually, and is an individual membership. Certification carries a separate $150 examination fee and an annual renewal.

Fifteen minutes from now

Get a Sales Objection Handling Method You Will Actually Use

Picture the next time a buyer says the price is too high. Instead of reaching for a comeback, you ask one question, and they tell you what the real problem is. The objection stops being the moment the call goes wrong and becomes the moment it gets useful.

Start the Free Course

The course is self-serve on catalogue.smei.org. Questions? Call +1 604 607 5205 or email willis.turner@smei.org.

P.S. The catalogue lists this course at $9.99 and is running it at no charge for now. Even at the list price it would be fifteen minutes and ten dollars against the next deal that stalls on a question you did not ask.