The LAARC Method
LAARC is a five-step method for handling objections created by Chris Sund: Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond, Confirm.
It slows the exchange down by one beat, so the answer goes to the real concern instead of the sentence on the surface. It works in sales, in recruiting, and in any customer conversation where someone says no and means something more specific than no.
Understand the objection before you answer it.
Most people answer an objection before they have understood it. They hear the first sentence, reach for the answer they already have loaded, and the conversation ends before it ever really starts.
LAARC gives that moment a structure. Five steps, in order, that keep a rep, a recruiter or a manager from skipping straight to the answer. It holds whether the objection comes from a buyer weighing a price, a candidate hesitating over an offer, a client who says to send some information and then goes quiet, or a team member pushing back on a change.
Chris Sund built LAARC from running sales and recruiting teams, not from studying them, and teaches it in his sales keynotes, objection-handling sessions and workshops. The idea underneath it is one line from his writing: nobody wants to be overcome. They want to be understood.
Listen. Acknowledge. Ask. Respond. Confirm.
Each step with a short example from a sales call, a recruiting conversation or a customer conversation.
Listen
Let the person fully express the concern. Not the first sentence of it. All of it, without building the rebuttal while they talk. Pause before responding, long enough to think about what the objection means. When someone is simply allowed to talk, a surprising amount of the objection dissolves before anything has been said back.
A buyer says “Your price is higher than the other proposal.” The untrained move is to defend the price or offer a discount. The LAARC move is to let them finish, because the next sentence is often the one that matters.
Acknowledge
Say back what you heard so they know it landed. Acknowledgement is not agreement. You do not have to agree with someone to make them feel heard, and people do not lower their guard until they feel understood.
A candidate says “I’m not sure about the schedule.” Acknowledge it before selling anything: “That makes sense. The schedule is a real part of this job and it should fit your life.”
Ask
Objections are an onion. The first answer is rarely the real one, and the objection someone leads with is often a socially acceptable version of the actual concern. One good question usually surfaces the thing they were not sure how to say.
A client says “Just send me some information.” Ask before sending: “Happy to. So I send the right thing, what would you need to see to feel good about moving forward?” Chris’s own version is simple: “Sorry, I am genuinely curious, can you explain that a bit more?”
Respond
Now, and only now, respond. Build the answer around what they actually said, not the objection you assumed you were getting. Handle one concern at a time, finish it, and stop talking once it is finished, so the answer does not create a new objection that was not there before.
If asking reveals the schedule concern is really about one evening a week, respond to that evening, not to the schedule in general.
Confirm
The step nearly everybody skips. A conversation is not finished because somebody nodded. Ask a direct question that tells you whether the concern is resolved, and get a yes before moving on. If the answer is no, you are not finished. You are back at Listen.
“Does that answer the question on price, or is there something else we should talk through before we look at next steps?” If it was about money, confirm the value landed. If it was about a specific request, confirm they can get the outcome another way.
The objection a person leads with is usually the outer layer. “It’s too expensive” may really mean “I can’t get this approved.” “I need to think about it” may really mean “I don’t yet believe this will work for me.” Answer the outer layer and the real concern is still sitting there, unspoken.
That is why LAARC puts Ask before Respond. An objection is not a wall. It is the clearest sign the person is still in the conversation. The dangerous one is the objection that never gets said, the person who goes quiet and stops replying. Most ghosting is a concern that never got said out loud.
Cisive’s write-up of Chris’s NAHCR session singled out the onion point alongside the five steps.
Where objection handling goes wrong.
Skipping Confirm
The most common and most expensive habit. The objection gets answered, there is silence, silence is read as agreement, and the person disappears a week later. Nobody knows why.
Listening to reload
Building the rebuttal while the other person is still talking means answering the objection you expected, not the one you heard.
Answering the surface
Responding to the first sentence instead of asking one more question. The stated concern is often not the actual one.
Confusing acknowledgement with agreement
People skip Acknowledge because they think it concedes the point. It does not. It earns the right to respond.
Floodlight instead of spotlight
Answering three concerns at once. Handle the one that matters most, completely, then move to the next.
Talking into a new objection
Filling the silence with more information, and raising a worry the person did not have when the conversation started.
LOCKS diagnoses. LAARC responds.
In sales, LAARC pairs with the LOCKS framework, Chris’s deal framework for cracking the code of the deal: the five conditions that must all be met before a deal closes. LOCKS tells a rep which condition is missing. LAARC is the conversation that follows.
LOCKS · Diagnose
Love the Product, Own Belief, Confidence in You, Kickoff Plan, Stakes. Where is the deal actually stuck?
LAARC · Respond
Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond, Confirm. How to work through the objection once you know which condition it came from.
Sales kickoffs, conferences and business rooms.
- LeadingAge Illinois printed the method and its learning objectives in the official program of its annual conference. Program PDF
- Cisive published a conference write-up walking through all five steps, by Bryan Barajas, who also serves as Communications Director for NAHCR. Read it
- NAHCR programmed it at the 50th anniversary annual conference, co-presented with the association’s Education Director. View the event
From the rooms where it was taught.
Chris not only presented a very informative session at the NAHCR 2025 conference, but was incredibly flexible and moved his last presentation up due to unforeseen circumstances. I highly recommend Sund as a speaker for your event — I even wrote an article sharing takeaways from his presentation on hiring objections.
Having started a brand new role in Business Development recently, the timing was perfect. Chris is a great story teller and shared how he was persistent and determined to get what he wanted in his career. I found the focus on “the pause” and how we speak resonated and caused me to pause. Tone, words and even our body language while listening all lead us to the next conversation.
Ways to bring LAARC in.
LAARC runs as a keynote, a breakout or a working session, shaped around the objections your team actually hears.
Sales Kickoff Keynote
Open the year with LAARC and LOCKS in front of the whole team.
Sales Training Workshop
Half-day or full-day role plays on real objections from your own pipeline.
Handle Objections
The objections keynote for sales, recruiting, leadership and customer teams.
You Are Capable of More: Sales
The sales keynote that teaches both LOCKS and LAARC.
The LOCKS Framework
The five conditions of a closed deal. Diagnose with LOCKS, respond with LAARC.
Handling Hiring Objections
LAARC for recruiters and hiring managers.
You Are Capable of More.
You Are Capable of More is Chris’s bestselling book, with ten principles for closing the gap between who you are right now and who you are capable of becoming. The sales sessions that teach LAARC are drawn from it.
Teams that want the ideas to stick often pair a session with copies for every rep. Bulk pricing and signed editions are available.
Winner, How-To Category2026 Paris Book FestivalQuestions about LAARC.
What does LAARC stand for?
LAARC stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond, Confirm. It is a five-step method for handling objections created by Chris Sund. The steps run in order: hear the whole concern, show it landed, ask to find the real concern underneath, respond to that, then confirm it is resolved before moving on.
Who created the LAARC method?
Chris Sund, a keynote speaker, author of You Are Capable of More, and President and COO of Uniti Med and GQR Healthcare and COO of Nebula. He teaches it in sales kickoffs, objection-handling keynotes and workshops. LeadingAge Illinois printed it in its annual conference program and Cisive published a write-up of all five steps.
How is LAARC different from LAER or feel-felt-found?
Feel-felt-found is a scripted line. LAER (Listen, Acknowledge, Explore, Respond) is closer in structure. LAARC differs in two ways. The Ask step is aimed squarely at the real objection underneath the stated one, because objections are an onion. And it ends with Confirm, an explicit check that the concern is resolved, which is the step most people skip and the reason many deals and candidates go quiet a week later. LAARC is not a script. It is a sequence that works in any conversation.
Can LAARC be used in recruiting?
Yes. LAARC works the same way when a candidate is weighing an offer as when a buyer is weighing a price. Chris has taught it to recruiters at the NAHCR 2025 Annual Conference and to senior living leaders at LeadingAge Illinois in a session called How to Handle Hiring Objections to Recruit the Best Talent. See the recruiting session.
How long is the LAARC session?
It scales to the agenda. Chris has delivered it as a 15 to 20 minute featured talk, as a 45 to 90 minute keynote or breakout in Handle Objections, and as part of a half-day or full-day sales training workshop where it is paired with LOCKS and practiced in role plays.
What is the most common mistake when handling objections?
Skipping Confirm. The objection gets answered, the other person goes quiet, and the silence is taken as agreement. Asking one direct question to confirm the concern is resolved is the difference between a conversation that moves forward and a person who stops replying.
Bring LAARC to Your TeamTeach your team the pause.
Tell Chris which objections your team hears most and where conversations stall. He will tell you which format fits, from a kickoff keynote to a full-day workshop.