“Do you have any 2’s?”

When I first started in this industry, I HATED objections! Every time a business owner showed any resistance, I folded up shop, ran away, hid in the corner, and cried like a little girl…… Well, maybe I’m being a little dramatic.  Most of the time I didn’t actually cry….

The reason objections had such control over me was that I didn’t understand that objections were my friend.  For lots of reasons! On today’s podcast (The Five Set Sales) I broke down the difference between a stall, an objection, and a condition. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to listen yet here’s a quick recap:

Stall – A prospect uses a stall when they are too polite (or too chicken) to say no. They don’t want to hurt your feelings, so they would rather politely lie to you. Maybe these sound familiar?

• Oh, I’d love to meet with you but I am soooo busy right now. Give me a call me back in a couple of weeks.
• I didn’t get a chance to talk to my husband yet.
• We have a broker that handles all of that for us.
• I’d be happy to put together a list of referrals for you. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll email it over to you.
• That sounds interesting, could you send me some information or email me some information.

Objection – An objection is actually a buying sign. By giving you an objection the prospect is really saying, “I’m interested, but I need just a little more information before I can tell you yes.” To the untrained salesperson, objections sound like conditions.  Too often the salesperson either A) Accepts the objection and walks away too easily or B) Becomes argumentative and pushy.  Either way, they are going down in flames.  Here are some common objections you might hear:

• My employees can’t afford it.
• You don’t know my guys. There is no way they are going to want to have anything come out of their check.
• I don’t know how we would get everybody together for a meeting.
• Before I’d let you get in front of my employees, I’d want to see your rates.
• Let me ask around/poll my employees and see if anyone is interested. (This is better know as “The Kiss of Death.”)
• This looks great to me but I have to run it past my partner/the owner/the Doctor/my accountant/(insert higher authority here).

Condition – A condition is a real problem, that is going to prevent you from doing business together, that you can’t solve.  As I said before, sometimes we have a challenge distinguishing the difference between an objection (solvable) and a condition (unsolvable).  Below are some obvious conditions. Most of the time they won’t be quite this clear:

• I’m not sure we are going to be in business much longer. In fact, I just met with my lawyer to discuss bankruptcy.
• We are in our busiest season of the year. I’m already paying my people overtime every week right now. There is no way I am paying them additional overtime to meet with you.
• Our HR director is out on maternity leave for the next 8 weeks.
• My brother-in-law works for your largest competitor and is our agent. If I want to stay married, there is no way I can kick him out and bring you in.

Do you know what each of the above statements has in common? I have heard them all, verbatim, multiple times in my career. If you stick around for any length of time, you will too. So you might want to learn to identify which type of sales resistance you just experienced. Was it a stall, an objection or a condition?

1. If it’s truly a condition, that’s easy: There’s not much you can do for them.
2. You also need to know you can’t “overcome” stalls. You just have to plow through them by developing trust. Trust that is earned by bringing a clearcut value proposition that captures their imagination.
3. Objections, on the other hand, are fun and exciting! I want to stress to you how important it is to get ALL of their objections on the table. The reality is, you can’t overcome something you don’t know exists. Quite frankly it’s not the prospect’s job to tell you about all of their objections. It’s your job to discover them.

Whenever you are experiencing a true objection from a prospect, I want you to think “Go Fish”. Do you remember playing the card game as a child?  Part of the object of the game is to get the cards you need from your opponents. You do this by asking them, for example, “Do you have any 2’s?”   If that person has 2’s, they have to give them to you.  If you don’t ask them for the 2’s, they’re not going to just hand them to you.  It’s not their job.  You, after all, are the one that needs those 2’s to win.

It’s much the same for us when we are meeting with our potential client.  As long as they are holding on to those 2’s (their objections) you can’t win.  So how are we going to discover their true objection(s)?  We have to ask them.  One of my favorite phrases for this is to ask them this, “Other than that, is there any reason you can think of that we shouldn’t move forward?”  Often times they are going to confirm that there really is only one remaining concern. Sometimes though, they will raise other concerns as well. Believe it or not, this is great news!  They have just done you a HUGE favor.  They have just admitted that they are interested in your product or service. Interested enough to give you the feedback you need to close the sale.  In other words, they just handed you their 2’s.  Now it’s your job to take those 2’s and put together your winning hand.

On Saturday we will take a deep dive into what I call “Tim’s Super Spectacular Objection Handling Formula.”  We will break down exactly what to say and when to say it.  With this formula, you will be able to overcome 95% of the objections you are ever going to get.

The only way to receive my Saturday content is to subscribe to my newsletter.  It is where I share my absolute best thinking and the secrets that have helped me hire and train over 2,000 voluntary benefits specialists over the last 16+ years. I promise you that you will not want to miss an issue.  Did I mention it’s free?  And I promise to never sell your information to anyone….EVER!

Recap: If you didn’t get any objections during your sales process, you didn’t sell ANYTHING. You just took their order. (Tweetable)

Question: Do you have a formula for handling objections? Or do you just double down on trying to convince why they should do business with you?

Leave me your thoughts down below.  I promise to respond to every single one!