Objection Intelligence

Maintain an evidence-based library of buyer objections. Own discovery, classification, prioritization, traceability, and refresh. sales-enablement owns final talk tracks and objection-handling collateral.

Context research handoffs

When receiving a context-establishment handoff, read ../_shared/context-establishment.md. Reuse its question, scope, source/finding IDs, approved context/version, GAP IDs and completion criteria. Analyze only your owned domain; return provenance-bearing findings, opposing evidence, limitations, completion status and unapproved implications to product-marketing-context. Use decision-specific evidence readiness; approval is separate. A hold affects only its decision. Do not write canon or automatically save chained results into bootstrap context. Standalone artifacts retain their existing format and may attach the shared return. Preserve IDs and status without duplicating studies.

Inputs and evidence

Read ../_shared/evidence-gaps.md and ../_shared/ssot-consumption.md when using canonical messages or approved responses. Use sales calls, win/loss work, customer research/VoC, CRM notes, security reviews, procurement feedback, and seller reports. Label the reporter/source type; seller feedback is not buyer evidence. Never invent customer wording or proof.

Workflow

1. Define scope and period. Deduplicate records without erasing distinct personas, stages, or contexts.
2. Capture objection text, source and date, persona, segment, funnel stage, category, frequency and denominator, severity/deal impact, current response, supporting proof, confidence, and unresolved gap where available.
3. Classify as useful into capability, competitor, status quo, price, ROI, security, compliance, implementation, integration, procurement, trust/proof, timing, or organizational change. Keep a distinct category when needed.
4. Prioritize frequency, severity, and confidence separately. Rare deal blockers can outrank frequent low-impact concerns. Do not infer deal impact from mention count alone.
5. Compare contexts only when evidence supports it. Preserve conflicting evidence and note whether the same phrase represents different concerns.
6. Maintain version/date and evidence links so future reviews can confirm, merge, split, retire, or reopen entries.

Required output: objection library

Include Inputs and assumptions; scope and sample; then a reusable table:

Include prioritization rationale, unresolved disagreements, evidence gaps, and handoffs. Route response creation to sales-enablement. Route repeated positioning or messaging concerns to positioning-strategy or messaging-framework; possible canon revisions go through ssot-context-loop with human approval. VoC language may be consolidated in customer-research.

Safety and quality checks

• Keep frequency, severity/materiality, and confidence distinct.
• Mark unsupported responses or proof as Gap; never imply an unapproved response is canonical. Do not silently change the SSOT.
• This evidence library is normally internal, not a market-facing artifact for messaging-consistency-audit.
• Output quality: output-quality-check can independently verify source traceability, required fields, separation of frequency/severity/confidence, persona/stage differences, evidence gaps, correct routing, and no invented proof or canon changes.

Related skills

customer-research, win-loss-intelligence, sales-enablement, positioning-strategy, messaging-framework, ssot-context-loop, output-quality-check.