5 Secrets to Mastering Objections

Hey, welcome back sizzlers. This is Mick Holly and this episode is entitled the five secrets to mastering objections. So why did I pick objections and handling objections for this podcast? I've spent a little bit of time with my coach, Grant Cardone. And the 10X business coach community, and we spent days talking about objections and then how to deal with them.

Now, as a salesperson or anybody in business, you're going to have to get people to buy into your ideas, your product or your service. And if you can't, if you can't handle objections, you're not going to get very far. Because really, in order for them to buy your product or services, number one, they have to know who you are.

So one of the most common objections is I can't get hold of them, they won't pick up the phone, they don't have time to talk to me. You need to be able to handle those objections to be able to get in the door and then start talking about the benefits of your product. And during that whole process of articulating What your product does, you're building value, and ultimately, if the value of your product dwarfs the price, then you've got a pretty good chance of closing that sale.

But if you can't get to talk about the value of your product because the prospect is constantly objecting and you're not dealing with those objections in the right way, you're never going to be able to sell. So. Mastering objections is one of the most critical skills of a salesperson. If you want to make a lot more money, if you want to be successful, you have to master objections and handling objections.

And what do I mean by master? Well, mastery is about committing to your craft, immersing yourself in your craft, paying attention, and every day getting better and better and pursuing excellence. And so it is with objection handling, right? You will hear the same objections over and over again, and they will form a certain pattern.

They'll fall into certain categories, and you need to be able to spot those objections and be able to handle them. effortlessly, particularly if you see them many, many different times. So what I want you to do over the next week or so or two weeks is write down the objections as they arise and so that you can start to see the patterns of those objections so that you can start thinking about how you handle them, how do they come up, how do you deal with them.

Now, there are five secrets to objection handling. Here they are. Number one, and this might be a bit of a shocker, you are the creator of every, every objection and must take full responsibility for it. Let me say that again. You. are the creator of every objection. The prospect doesn't create the objection.

You create the objection. And you must take responsibility. Even if the prospect created the objection, you have to take full responsibility and to deal with it. You need to own it. But often, if you see the same objection, it's probably because you hold that objection in your mind. You've fabricated that as a As a as an objection when it may not be for that particular prospect, and then you communicate that objection subliminally to your prospect, and then the prospect suddenly manifest itself.

And well, no surprise there really, because you know, that's a common objection or a valid objection in your mind. Let me give you an example. The most common one, of course, would be you. Think that your product. is too expensive. You think it's really, really richly priced at the top end of the market. It's more expensive than the competition.

So you think, Oh, no, it's more expensive. It really is expensive. And when you're talking to the prospect, you communicate that subliminally, maybe you're a little reticent about sharing the price, or you even acknowledge. That the price is significant and the prospect, you know, says this way too expensive.

I don't have the budget for that. And because it's an objection that you hold in your mind that you created, you think it's a reasonable for the prospect to say that it's expensive. Do you see what I'm saying is that you're communicating that, um, objection. If, if another one is when, if you often get the prospect saying, I need some time to think about this, I never make a rash decision, never make a decision like this involving significant amount of money, um, on, you know, one call, I need, I need a few days to go and think about that.

And you might think that's probably a reasonable request. And if you look at your own behavior, and you take time to make decisions, and you think that it's reasonable not to make a decision on the spot, and it's, and you tend to prevaricate. You will communicate that that's kind of okay, and that's an objection that's reasonable and valid when in reality, there's no reason why you need to think about it.

The product is perfect. It suits your needs. You need it. It's going to develop value for you. We need to get started today, and you need to just throw that objection you have in your mind out completely. So number one, take responsibility for every objection. Second, Uh, secret is the most dangerous objection is the unspoken objection.

Because a prospect typically won't tell you why, the real reason they don't want to move forward. They'll probably tell you, oh, it's The timing's not right. The price is too high. Uh, we, we, we tend to look at three or four options before we make a decision. Um, I'm just shopping right now. When in reality, their deepest objection will be the unspoken one.

It may be that they don't feel confident in utilizing your product and getting value out of it. And they're not, they, they don't, they're not going to tell you that straight away. So your job is to, is to, is to peel away the objections one by one to try and get to that unspoken objection. The third secret is that most objections are complaints.

They should be handled. as complaints. So we know that a common objection is the price is too high. Price is never an objection. It's always a complaint. The complaint is, I don't have enough money. To buy your product. That's the complaint. Um, because they maybe don't have enough budget in their organization.

They haven't got enough money in their bank. They feel they have a scarcity mindset and not an abundance mindset. Um, and they will say that the price is too high. But we know that people always say the price is too high. And we deal with that as I've talked before. In an earlier episode, which was, um, the magic of agreement.

Let me see which episode. That was episode 23. You should go and listen to that one. The magic of agreement. Always agree with your prospect. Um, yes, I, I get it. Yeah, the price is, the price is very high. Uh, I, I understand it. Uh, yeah. But here's what this Here's what a product can do for you. You know, when would you like to begin?

Alright, it's just a complaint. People are always going to complain. So you need to identify objections rather than complaints. Because if you solve a complaint, there's going to be something else that prevents them from moving forward in terms of the sales. Secret number four. Objections are never a reason not to close or stop the sale.

An objection has energy in it, and you need to turn it into a positive force, rather a bit like jiu jitsu, right? You don't, you don't block the objection, you just flow along with it. And, and and talk about that objection and handle it and that way you can continue to move the sale. You should expect to get objections.

Objections are signposts to the sale. And the fifth secret is there is only one objection. There's never more than one. Ultimately, there is one objection. Once you've handled the complaints and the minor objections, there's one objection, not two or three, just one. And you need to be able to, um, ferret that objection out.

Now, there are four types of objections. As I've said, you, you, you list, get your notebook and map out those objections you're getting and you'll find they'll fall into four categories. Category number one is the product itself. You know, it might be too much product or too little product or it doesn't meet their needs or it exceeds their needs.

The second is, you know, money. The third is time, right? It's not, the time's not right. We need to start next quarter or any, or I need to, um, It's, it's, it's, it's, it's really not, we, we, we need to wait, then there's, um, uh, time, if you, if you, I need more time to think about this, right, and we, we can't start, uh, just yet, then, As I've talked about earlier, if you get that one a lot, it means you're being reasonable, you're accepting that it's okay for them to take a little bit of time.

No, they have, if you've done your job correctly, they have all of the information to be able to make a decision. They're the decision maker. Right. They can make that decision now. You need to be unreasonable, not reasonable. You need to be assertive at this point. And then the last category are stalls. I can't do this.

I've got to go talk to, you know, my business partner, my, my spouse, uh, before I, uh, before I move forward. There's only one category that really is a real objection, and that is the product, whether it's, it isn't quite fitting what they need, or you haven't articulated it, or you've picked the wrong product or set of products for them.

All the rest are typically complaints. They have enough money. They can do something now. They don't need to talk to somebody else. They are the decision maker. And as I mentioned, you've got to get to the only objection, which is probably, um, unspoken. So you have to, you have to confront them. You have to be, make them, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

You've got to out their objection. So at the end of it, they say, is there any reason we can't proceed today. Let's get started and ask them and force them to tell you what their. unspoken objection is so that you can actually deal with it. Let's consider an example of objection handling. Let's say that your business is pressure washing houses and you charge 1, 500 to pressure washer.

Wash a house and you go over to a house, you knock on the door and the, uh, owner of the house opens up and you say, yeah, well, it's hello, sir, uh, been washing a couple of houses in your neighborhood. You can see the one across the road, your neighbor there. Look how shiny it all looks. Uh, I provide a pressure washing service and I can do your whole house for 1, 500 if we do it today, as I'm in the area.

And the owner would go, that's ridiculous, 1, 500 is way too expensive. Now we know, we know price is never an objection, it's a complaint. And you might say, I, I get it, sir. 1, 500 is, is a lot of money. Uh, you know, many of my customers have the same reaction. But when they see the end product, and they're standing outside of their beautiful house, looking like it was new, they realize it was well worth the investment.

Um, so, you know, can I, can I get started on your house today? Well, 1, 500, I mean, I can, I can go and buy my own pressure washer for 500. I understand, sir. In fact, the machine that I'm going to be using today, you could get down at Home Depot for 500, and you could certainly, uh, do it yourself. Of course, um, you'll also, do you have a 30 foot ladder?

You'll need a 30 foot ladder to, to get up. the side of the house to get to those top parts. Um, and, uh, you know, you need to make sure that you probably got a little bit of insurance. I hope this in case you fall off the ladder, but you know, I'm absolutely confident that you could, uh, you could, you could do it yourself.

But here's the thing, you know, our studies, um, have shown that Uh, people like yourself, the issue is not the fact that they can do it, you're more than capable of doing it, it's just that you don't have the time to do it. And so I can do it for you, in fact I can get it done now if we, uh, if we get started.

Is it okay, is it okay to get started?

And the homeowner saying, well, I still think, you know, might, might be, might be better for me to buy one at 500 and maybe get my son to do it. I said, well, sir, I'm looking and you got in your garage there, you've got two cars in there and there's not much room. Where would you put the pressure washer? Uh, it's just going to be gathering dust.

You're only going to be using it, uh, maybe once. Maybe twice a year and I can do it. But if you like, I can sell you the pressure washer, um, and do the service for you. So I can show you how to do it. So let's say, um, you know, the pressure washer to buy is 500. I'll give it to you for 400 plus the 1500.

We'll do it all for 1900 if we start now. Well, well, you're right. I don't, I don't really want to, I don't really want to buy a pressure washer. I don't know where to store it. Okay, 1, 500. Can we get started now? Okay, let's get going. So you see there, the price really wasn't an objection. And just by pressing, sometimes you've got to be uncomfortable.

You've got to keep pressing because if you don't press, you're never going to close the deal. If you're not unreasonable at times, you're not going to close the deal. You always agree with your customer, but you need to take those objections, find out what the real objection is, keep probing until you find it and then handle it and ask for the close.

So this was a short journey into objections and mastering objections. It is a much longer subject, but here's the homework. that you need to do. Number one, you need to write down all of the objections that you're getting. Number two, you need to put them into the categories that I gave you. Those categories were one of, is it, is it, is it the product that they're, that they're, that they're objecting to?

Is it money? Is it time, or are they bringing up stalls? And just put them into different categories. And then for each one of those objections, write down a succinct, two or three succinct ways in which you would handle that objection. And then, importantly, you must role play with People in your organization, how to handle those objections.

So one of you play the prospect and you play the salesperson and switch it up a little bit so that you become very, um, au fait, very relaxed with dealing with those objections. And then you have to role play every day. So. Objection handling selling is like a muscle, you have to keep doing it in order to keep it sharp.

So practice that role play, master those objections, and you'll have a full pipeline and a lot more sales. Until next week.

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