What An Objection Really Means

Spot The Smoke Screen

Acknowledge With Calm Body Language

Restate Then Isolate The Real Issue

Transition To Value Then Close

When No Objections Is A Problem

Hiatus Plans And Support The Show

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This one is for all of my salespeople, my entrepreneurs, my small business owners, and my solopreneurs. I wanted to do something a little different today because if you listen to my show and if you listen to me for a little while, or if you know me personally, you will know that I've been in sales for well over 20 years. I've been very successful training large groups, large organizations. I've done it for my for my uh own team and I've done it for other companies hired to come on as a trainer. And I wanted to share something very specific with you. I wanted to talk about objection handling. A lot of people go straight for the jugular. You're running a small business, you have your salespeople, and you tell them everything they need to say to negate the customer's point should they hit you with an objection. So if you yourself are in sales, if you have salespeople who work for you, you're gonna want to send them this particular episode and help them understand not just what an objection is, how to handle it gracefully, how to overcome the fear of dealing with these people and pushing your product forward because you're concerned that they might say no. I don't care if you sell life insurance, if you are in skincare, if you're in medical sales, it doesn't matter what you do, especially for those of you who work for yourselves and you have a small thing, you know, side hustle that you're trying to develop into a full-time thing. You know, maybe you do meal prepping, maybe you you have a particular shape butter or some type of thing that's great for beards, and you're trying to present it and you're waiting for someone to tell you that it's great. You have the mindset that hey, if people want it, if they like the product, they'll buy it. That's just lazy. You know, the better mindset to have is if they hesitate, I just haven't helped them yet. I have not helped them decide, and I've not proven that my product or my service can solve whatever problem they're having. Get ready, come on this journey with me. This will be very quick. I'll try and get to the point, we're not gonna spend a whole hour. Definitely take note. If you've ever asked someone to trust you, if you've ever asked someone to pay you, if you've ever asked someone to choose you or your product over something else they were considering, then my friend, you're in sales. Welcome to Manhood Matters. Let's get to it. So the first thing that I wanna again reiterate is the amount of people who are in sales. An example is I was talking to a young lady the other day, and she's starting to do interior design. And with her mindset is well, first of all, she's she's phenomenal. The product looks great, everything she does, the way she imagines certain rooms, and the way the entire house comes together is just magical. The problem is she can't sell herself, and when she runs into objections, she doesn't know how to handle it. So, in her mind, an objection is simply no. So, step one, let's all agree that we're in sales, that you're selling a product or you're selling yourself. Let's focus on that, let's accept it. Again, you might have a team working for you, you might have a very small business, you could have a junk removal company, and you have three or four people working for you. Someone waves down your truck, talks to one of your employees, maybe inquires about your service. The employee gives a price based on the size of the hall, and they come back with it's too much money, or they give an objection and the employee says okay and moves on. Doesn't handle that objection. Maybe they're not incentivized to sell, but that's exactly my point. The idea is if you have a service or a product, you are constantly selling yourself. Even barbers, we've been doing it all our lives. When you ask someone out, you're selling yourself. So now that we're clear on that, you can't exactly exist and have a product and have a service and have a company, big or small, and not think I'm in sales. I want to talk to you about what an objection actually is. In the simplest of terms, an objection is someone hitting you with a reason why they are not moving forward. That is the surface level explanation. You try to close the deal, they go, Well, I think it's too much money. Or something like I need to think about it. Or when they don't really have much to say, they'll say something silly like, I'm not interested at this time, I already have another company that I use, I use another product. So these are all surface level objections. They are somewhat valid, but not really. The reality is what you're getting is some type of a smoke screen. The better way to explain it is that an objection itself is someone asking more questions. An objection, better yet, is a question that has not yet been answered. Okay? So for example, someone says it's too much money, really what they are saying is can you make this any lower or can you do a better job at explaining the value of this product so I can see why it would make sense for me to exchange my harder money for this product. It's a lot for someone to say. So instead they say, Ah, it's expensive. Oh, I can't afford it. It's a lot easier. They're conditioned to say something as basic as I'm not interested. Your job is to uncover these objections. Now once you understand what it is, in fact, I have a friend who used to say the best objections are the ones you can see coming. Just think about this for a second. If you have a product or service, you should know exactly what someone is going to say and how they are going to react negatively when you're trying to close a sale. There should be nothing new there. You're not reinventing the wheel. They're basically going to tell you the same thing the last 15, 20, 100 customers have already told you. So be prepared because it makes sense. You're going to run into the same issues. So the best objection is the one you know is coming because you're ready for it. So now that we've covered two things. One, you are in sales. Maybe stop saying shit like, I don't like salespeople, oh, I'm not a pushy salesperson, as if that makes you sound noble. You are in sales. You are selling your product. Every company is in sales, otherwise, they would not make a profit. You also understand what an objection is. Your job is to do a much better job at answering the question for the customer, but also ensuring that you are demonstrating how the value of your service or product exceeds what they're willing to pay for it. Now that you understand that, let's talk about how to handle an objection. I want you to really focus on how it's done. There's an acronym. ART. Handling an objection is an art. The way it's done, distastefully, is someone throws you an objection and you fight them immediately. There's conflict. Someone says, for example, I'm not interested, and your immediate response is, Well, that doesn't make sense. Why aren't you interested? This clearly is going to be something that's gonna be good for you, or this or that, or whatever it may be. Someone says it's too expensive. You take offense. What do you mean too expensive? Have you seen what I'm trying to show you? If you compare my product to X, Y, Z product, you will see that we offer all these benefits and these features and what you're comparing us to, and you're just going down the rabbit hole. Someone says that they need more time, and immediately you go to, well, the longer you wait, the more it's gonna cost you because there's a price of doing nothing. Or you hit them with what the uh the usual, well, what's gonna change between now and next week? You need more time, what's gonna change? So instead of any of that, doesn't matter again what you do for a living or what your side hustle is. If you're trying to grow, you need to use objection handling as an art form. First, A. Start with acknowledging what they're saying. A stands for acknowledge. All you're really saying is I empathize, I hear you. This makes sense. Show them you heard them, show them you understand, make it feel normal. This is not unique to you, Mr. Customer. This is not unique to you, this is not awkward in any kind of way. This is just something that I hear all the time. And your body language, again, I don't have enough time through this quick 30-minute conversation to go through it all, but we could spend hours just on body language alone. If your face tenses up when you get an objection, if you had a smile the entire time and now your smile is turned into a stern face or some kind of a frown, and you're struggling to keep it together because you're a little upset, it's gonna show. Most of what we're saying, the way we communicate is body language, it's in your eyes, it's in your smile. So change nothing. It's start by having the mindset of not being attached to the results. Say to yourself, I'm going to be okay regardless of what happens during this one transaction. I'm going to sell my products no matter what. I'm going to sell a certain amount per month, per year, and this one transaction is not going to change anything. Therefore, I'm going to give it my best and approach it that way. I'm not attached to the results. So make sure that you empathize in a very genuine and honest way. An objection is friction. People are making decisions. In decision making, there's often friction. So give them grace. The psychology here is that you are removing tension, you are building trust, you're keeping them engaged instead of defensive. Because if you go straight for handling the objection, they get defensive. Now it's I'm going to prove you wrong, I'm going to prove you wrong, and it goes back and forth. No one's going to admit that you're besting them, that you're have a better argument. No one's going to admit that. So you need to focus on the fact that there's empathy. You normalize it. An example will be something as simple as shrug a little bit, body language, and go, Yeah. Hey Robert, actually, you're not the only person I've heard that from. That's a valid concern. I actually I'm surprised you didn't bring it up a little earlier. As I was talking, I was waiting for you to bring that up. And then they're realizing, oh, okay, this is normal. This is not, I'm not the only one. They might even hit you up with, you know, hit you with the well, yeah, exactly. You know what I'm saying? No, no, absolutely. This makes sense. And you allow them to sit in that for a moment and show them that you're not against them. That's acknowledging it. Pro tip, ask more questions. If they feel they've been heard, they'll keep talking. So as they open up and keep talking, ask layered questions. If they say something, even if it's extremely obvious what they mean, ask them anyway. What exactly do you mean by that? It could be the simplest of things. Someone says something as, well, I just gotta give it a little thought. After you acknowledge and they keep talking, say, Well, when you say you have to give it a little thought, what exactly do you mean by that? It sounds obvious, but it's obvious to you and everybody's different. Simply by asking that, they might just tell you that it's not just that they have to think about it, they may need to run it by someone else. And now you're uncovering that they were never the decision maker in the first place. Psychologists and therapists, they do it to us all the time. You'll say something and they say, What do you mean by that? Or they are very favorite. Tell me more about that. Keep them talking. The more they speak, the more they feel in control, even though you're the one in control. Hopefully that's something that's resonating with you and it makes sense. Just think of yourself if you go into a situation where someone's trying to sell you something, whether it be maybe you weren't thinking about going to get a new car, but you're you're having conversations about it, you're at the dealership and you used to pay$400 a month, and now this new car is looking more like eight. You're going to double your your monthly payment. It's something to think about, but is it really? It's not so much as you need to think about it. What you're trying to figure out is whether or not, number one, does the value exceed the price so that you can justify doing it? And number two, can you actually afford to do it? And you want someone to understand where you're coming from. So when you hit them with this might be a little bit more than I anticipated, and I need to think about it, you're not really saying I need to think about it. And the reason you're not saying that, and let me just be clear on this no one in the history of selling or buying shit has ever gone, sat around, pulled a goddamn graph, and put pen to paper to think about it. No one ever said ever said, Oh, remember that guy who was selling the car or the windows or the roof or whatever it was. No, hey honey, let's sit, let's think about this. Or if you're the sole decision maker, you don't go, hmm, it's Tuesday. I talked to this guy last Friday. Perhaps I should think about this today. No, you're not doing that shit. It's not true. You're not thinking about it. You might spend a few minutes and look at your numbers and just go, and you're not really thinking. Again, all you're doing is you're trying to see whether or not you could afford it. So it's not a matter of it's a philosophy thing or it's just, you know, I really need to see whether or not there's a need for this. You just need to make sure that you can afford it, and that's more of a condition than an objection. And at the end of the day, if it was free, you'd freaking get it. Whether it's a car, whether it's a vacation package for six grand, whether it's new windows because your house is older and the windows are drafty, and now you need to spend a lot of money, whatever it may be, if it was free, you just do it. You wouldn't think about it. So what you're really always saying is this is a little tough. I may need help seeing the value in what is being offered so that it makes sense to me. And the one thing you will always appreciate as a consumer, as a buyer, is someone who's on the other side of the table saying, Yep, that makes sense. I understand. If I were in your shoes, I'd feel the exact same way. That person is listening, and that matters. Okay? So we have acknowledge. The next one is restate. And I don't mean to repeat the objection. You're not saying, Oh, so you said X, Y, and Z, right? No. Basically, you're trying to get to the real objection, not the surface one. So you briefly summarize what they said. You want to keep it tight, don't amplify the objection. In other words, don't make it a bigger deal than it is. Just because I said to restate it and I said to acknowledge it, I'm not saying for you to say something like, I understand why you don't want to move forward and this is a big problem for a lot of people. Don't make it a bigger deal than it is. You want to keep it tight, do not amplify the objection. Then you want to isolate the objection. What I mean by that is you do not want to go and handle an objection. You do everything right. And when you get to the close again to where you're asking for the business, they come back and say something else. Now you realize that the entire time you were fighting ghosts. Because you were fighting an objection, you had no clue even existed because you thought you were just handling one objection, but they had another and another. So you want to isolate the objection. The entire sequence may sound something like this. So it sounds like your main concern is the investment, right? They go, Yeah, yeah, it's just a little bit more than I anticipated. Okay. You could acknowledge it again by empathizing. Look, I I totally understand. A lot of people initially, when they first look at this on the surface, they feel the same way. That's you're restating the objection with some empathy. And as you restate, you want to isolate it by using the next two sentences in sequence, something like this. Hey Bob, look, if I could make the numbers make sense, would you feel comfortable moving forward? Because now you're talking about investment, and now you come back with, well, if I can make the numbers make sense, would you feel comfortable moving forward? If you've done your job building the value of your product or service up to this point, the answer should be yes, because you clearly said earlier that it was an investment issue. Now you want to isolate it. This is where it is critical that you do this because if you do not, you're going to run yourself ragged trying to come back, handle objection after objection after objection. This is when you want to get everything out of them. Go ahead and hit me with it right now. Okay. So your next question would be So, aside from that, is there anything else holding you back? Because you want to hear something like, nah, man, that's it. I mean, I'm just concerned about the price. So if you're selling life insurance, for example, and you tell someone that there's a policy, and this policy would protect, give them peace of mind in case anything were to happen to them, and they hit you with, hey, it's too much money. You're at$300 a month. I can't, I can't see myself spending that kind of money right now. I have a lot of other bills. Hey, Bob, Tolley, listen. I so it sounds like your main concern is the investment, am I right? Yes, yes, it is. Okay, so if I can make the numbers make sense, would you feel comfortable moving forward? Well, yeah, if you can make make it make sense, but you're at$300. Now, mind you, I'm not handling the objection. I'm just restating it, and then I want to isolate the objection. And the way I do that is by saying, all right, perfect. Aside from that, is there anything holding you back? It's really smooth, it's really simple, it's really quick. And the reason this matters is 80% of objections are smoke screens. That's the number that it shows in all sales studies. I personally think it's a lot higher than that. And you don't want to be solving the wrong problem. Do not handle the objection that is presented to you until you're absolutely sure that's the right objection. Now you want to transition, you want to solve the problem, and then you want to close. And the goal here is you want to bridge their concern directly to your value, then you want to move forward. So there's two lanes to use. You want to solve a current problem and you want to prevent a future loss. Most people are more concerned about losing something that they currently have than being excited about gaining something they don't yet have. Simple example. Someone is not as excited to win a hundred dollars as they are freaking terrified to lose a hundred dollars. So the way you would transition is something called social proofing. There's many, many ways of transitioning. I don't know what your particular product or service is. Obviously, I'm not training to a particular industry. I'm giving extremely general knowledge here. But an example would be when someone says there's nothing else stopping them and they're ready to move forward. If you can solve that one issue, you can come back with that's exactly why most people go with this particular option. It actually saves you money over time because X, Y, and Z, and you go through that. You need to sit with your own objections, the one you get the most, come up with the art formula by acknowledging it, being comfortable with that with body language, come up with the way you restate that objection and isolate the objection, showing empathy, and come up with your transition. What is it specifically that your product or your service is solving and how is it solving it? And being that people have a huge loss aversion, lean on that. This is how much you're going to lose over time if you don't pick this particular solution right now. Another example you can use is something like Robert gives you his objection. And you're at the transition phase of the objection handling, and you say, Look, what you're trying to avoid is exactly what this is designed to do. See how powerful that is? Look, what you're trying to avoid is exactly what this is designed to solve. Another sentence you could use would be something like, um, look, the risk of waiting is actually greater because, and you go X, Y, and Z. And I can think of a number of industries that this is true for. If you're in the home renovation industry, everything pre-COVID was a certain price. Now it has doubled and in some industries tripled in just a couple of years. Once you handle that by simply using those transitional phrases I just gave you, then don't linger, move forward. You have to go for the close again. Because typically at this point, you're asking for the business. So if they give you an objection, you use art, but when you get to T for transition, you have to go right back to closing. So something like so, based on that, let's just go ahead and get you started. People like to use something as simple as, does that sound fair? That sounds good, but fair has a much bigger impact. Or people like to lock in certain benefits, especially when there's a time restriction. So instead of saying, Let me lock you in, say something like, Well, let me lock this promotion in for you, so you can start seeing the benefits right away. They're not locked in, the promotion is locked in. Once you handle the objection, ask for the decision. Don't just educate and sit there. They're not gonna listen to you, absorb what you're saying, ponder, and go, you know what? Yeah, that's not gonna happen. And I've talked to countless people who have pretty much said, hey, look, if only he or she would have asked me for my business, I would have moved forward. I couldn't make a decision. Sometimes people are indecisive, and their indecision is cause for some type of paralysis, they end up doing nothing. The next person comes along with a similar product or even a lesser product, and they close the sale simply because they ask for it. They are moving forward, they're a bit more not aggressive, but they're a bit more assertive, not in a rude way, but they can just say, hey, look, let's go ahead and get this started for you. I know this is going to impact you and your family in a very positive way based on X, Y, and Z that I've explained earlier. Let's go ahead and get these benefits started for you right now. If you're going through a sales process and you don't get objections, it means one of three things. Either you are sales Jesus and you are so good that no one has any hesitation and they move forward. Or two, they are such nice people, they are afraid to say no, but as soon as the process is over, when you leave, they will develop the courage to cancel that transaction. Once they do, you can no longer get in touch with them, they will ghost you. Or three, it means they simply don't understand what's happening. And if you're not getting objections early enough, when you're going for the close, you're going to meet all of the objections at once. It's better that you get the objections along the way and you handle the objections using the art method. Acknowledge, restate, transition, and don't forget there are subcategories, right? The worst thing a prospect can say to you is not no, it's nothing. It's when they say nothing and you're going through your process and you think you're good and they're not saying anything, and you're you think you're cruising, you think everything's great because they are not giving you any objections. You're doing trial closes, you're trying to see gauge their temperature, and every time you do it as trial close, they acknowledge it, they go, Yeah, yeah, sure, that sounds good, and they keep moving on. You're moving on, and you're not uncovering their issues, and you get to the end, you're gonna get hit with a simple, yeah, I need to sit and think about it, because you have not uncovered their true pain. Confusion kills deals, clarity closes them. As long as you're talking, you're still in the game. So encourage them and maybe bring the objections out of them as early as you can. When you get to closing and you're about to ask for the business, you handle the objection with art. It's an art form. You acknowledge it, subcategory is to show empathy, normalize it, but don't make it a big deal. Restate it again, showing empathy, focus on your body language and isolate the objection and finally transition by handling the objection, creating a bit of urgency, and then asking for the business all over again without lingering where you were. I hope this helped, and I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors. May your side hustle become your main hustle. Keep pushing, keep moving forward, keep handling those objections with grace, and don't be afraid of the early no's. As long as they're talking, you're good to go. Now, before I take my leave, I need to share something that's very important. I'm going to be taking a couple of weeks off. I am simply exhausted. Um, as I've mentioned before on previous episodes, there's not a major production team. There's a lot of editing that goes into this podcast because quality matters, and I have gotten used to hyper professional quality, and I believe that's what my audience deserves. I'm not gonna cut corners, I'm gonna make sure everything sounds good. I'm going to make sure the editing is tight and it takes a lot of time. Pre-production, post-production, etc. We're going to go on a very brief hiatus and come back with a banger of an episode on Monday, April 27th. On that day, I will be interviewing a writer, a popular podcast host, someone who's been educating the masses for a long time, Mr. Tim Ross, who's recently written a book called The Missing Piece, P-E-A-C-E. And it was such a pleasure interviewing him. Really, really excited. The release of that episode is going to coincide with the release of his book. So, I can't wait to have you back. Just so you know, in that particular episode, I revealed something that is extremely personal to me. He reveals a lot as well. And um, yeah, it was not an easy conversation to have, but it needed to be had. And um I can't wait to meet back with you on Monday, April 27th. As you know, we are always bringing you these amazing conversations where we focus on things that matter to us all. Sometimes we're afraid to speak about them, sometimes we're uncomfortable and it's awkward. But here at the Manhood Matters Podcast, we face these things head on. We can no longer choke on our own pain and our own issues and our own trauma. Becoming free, becoming who we're meant to be is speaking about the things that matter, the things that we face on a daily basis. If you're not supporting the show, please do me a favor. This is gonna help us keep going. Not only would I love for you to share the episode with at least one person, ask them to follow these conversations, but also in the show notes, there is the phrase support the show. And if you click on that link, it will take you to a donation link to where you can donate as little as three dollars a month all the way up to ten dollars a month. And if you find any value in what we bring you on a weekly basis, then we need your help. Again, I appreciate you. I can't wait to join you guys back with this killer episode with Tim Ross on April 27th. Peace.