4: Early objections 2

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Early objections 2

In this video, I’ll be dealing with early objections when setting up a meeting or a call at a later date, often you’ll get these objections for your prospect right at the start of the conversation. So these objections are called early objections. The prospect tells you that you’ve called them at the wrong time, you’ll have to get them back later. You’ll probably never reached that person again. Surprisingly, there always seem to be in a meeting every time you call. So the reason your prospect doesn’t want to talk to you is fear. They fear that talking to you would be a waste of their time, or perhaps they fear you’re going to pressurize them into doing something they don’t want to do. Either way, they fear that the conversation with you won’t bring them anything of value. So they try to cut the conversation short.

So when the problem’s fair, your job is to sell trust. And to do that, you need to understand why they’re fearful and what you’re offering them is a value. So, let’s go through the earlier objections you’ll here when trying to set up a call, I’m busy, not interested. Send me an email. Oh, how much is it? No budget. We don’t like your company. It didn’t work that time. It’s not my decision when it really is their decision, I just don’t trust you. The good news is that objections are predictable and therefore you can pre-empt them. However, if you respond to the prospect’s objection like every other sales person does, then the customer will find it really easy to end the call because they know how to handle your response. Let’s go step by step.

So your first job, as I said, is listen carefully. Listen to everything they’re saying. Don’t zone out when you hear the first thing that worries you. So if someone says, thanks, look, I really don’t have time to talk right now. I have this document on widgets to finish for my boss. Then what you have to do is show empathy. Repeat back. There’s a reason they don’t have time to talk or they’re just fearful that you’re going to try to sell them something. So the first thing to put their mind at rest is to say, I understand you have a document to finish for your boss. You’re very busy at the moment. So agree the words with the prospect and literally repeat things back verbatim if you can. This will reduce any confrontation the prospect may have towards you. The reality is it’s very hard to be confrontational with someone who’s agreeing with you.

So let’s take an for example. If a customer says, I’ve got no budget, understand you have no budget. If a customer says, we’ve already bought something, I understand you’ve really bought something. What’s really important is when you say this, you’ve got to say it like the conversation is almost ended, that you’ve agreed with what you can’t say. And if see if you can hear the difference is of customer says, Oh look, I’m not interested. Oh, so you’re not interested. But … so if you kind of hear there’s going to be a, but at the end of your sentence, the customer’s going to get a little bit defensive and then they’re going to want to put the phone down. So it’s really important the way you say it is as important as what you say. So for example, the customer says, I’ve got no budget. You say, Oh, I understand you’ve got no budget and that sounds like I’m going to say I bought again. Whereas you need to say it like this. Oh Understand, oh, you have no budget.

Step two is taking an emotional audit. What you’re really trying to do is understand the customer’s emotional reasons for not wanting to hear your proposal. See at this stage, given the fact you haven’t actually told him anything apart from just wanting a meeting, is the customer’s fearful of wasting their time because they don’t want to think I want to take my time listening to an opportunity. So every time at this stage of the sale, you’re really just trying to tackle the emotional objection head on, which is can I have the opportunity to pitch to you? So whatever they say, if they say, look, I’m not interested, remember, you’ve got to tackle fear of time spending time with you. So they’ll say, I’m not interested. I completely understand. You’re not interested. Look just one small thing. I imagine you get a lot of phone calls a day from salespeople.

Some of them may have stuff that’s good for you, but I imagine you’re concerned that most of the salespeople that speak to you are just going to be a complete waste of your time and you just don’t want to talk to them at all and it’s just going to be a lot, only a waste of your time, a waste of your money as well. Would that be a fair thing to say? And the customer almost inevitably will say yes. So given a fact, you’re now pitching time. The next step would be to sell time in a short burst. I don’t want to spend hours talking to you for something you’re not interested in. Why don’t I do this? Let me explain what I have to say in 30 seconds. If after 30 seconds you think this is great for you, we’ll set up a call at a later stage.

If not, I promise you I’ll never call you again. Is that okay? But there’s a couple of delaying objections which sound like buying signals, which are really just to get you off the phone. One is send me an email. The other one is how much is it now the, how much of it is quite interesting at the beginning because what happened was when I used to sell, um, advertising at Yellow Pages, people would say, how much is it? And I used to tell them and they say, oh, thanks here, but I’ll put the phone down.

So then I experimented and I said, well, it’s a pound. Yeah, listen, not really interested. So I’d experiment sometimes. Say what’s a million pounds? A million pounds. Of course it’s not a million pounds. But let me ask you something. Are you asking the question because you want to understand the value of what I’m selling or is it whether you can afford it?

Well, I don’t know a bit of both. And then I’d say, well, I tell you what I’ll do, why don’t I quickly explain something to you in less than a minute. And if you think it makes good business sense, we’ll set up a meeting. But if it doesn’t, I’ll never call you again. How does that sound? And then they go, okay, that’s fair. You’ve obviously got to practise your pitch in less than a minute. Whatever you say you must do. The other objection is email and you could probably handle this in the same way. Listen, I’m really happy to send you an email. The key thing I want to understand to put in the email is are you more interested in the value of what I’m selling or are you more interested in whether you can afford it? And then they’ll say the same thing and then you’ll come up with the same answer again.

But remember the objective of this stage is to get the meeting. So, everything that you answer must be just enough information to get the meeting. The only last one that may come up once you’ve qualified is, look It’s not me. You want to speak to someone more junior. Now this is a tricky one because a lot of sales people will go, okay, I’ll speak to the junior person. This is going to be a mistake. 99% of the time, you really want to be talking to the decision maker. So the question is, how do I do this without offending the decision maker? So I will say something like, absolutely, I’ll

talk to junior afterwards. Let me run something quickly past you in 30 or 40 seconds to see if it’s worthwhile speaking to you or junior because they make the decision. Is that fair? Great. And then I’ll go on and I’ll try to set up a meeting with them. And that is the end of the session on how to deal with these really early objections to get the appointment