I did a fun exercise in our Facebook Group recently, where I asked the members to give me an objection they've heard so I can handle it live.
This is a recording of that live stream.
“In 6 Months, I Want To Make $2,000 Per Month”
This usually comes up during discovery, when you ask the prospect what their goals are.
And if you hear something like, “I want to make $2k/month in 6 months,” it's going to be a problem for you when you get to the offer presentation.
Especially if you sell high-ticket. ‘Cause why would they pay $5k-$10k to get in your program, just to make $2k/month?
Here's how I would handle it:
“Have you heard the saying that, ‘if you set your goals low enough, you'll reach them?'”
“Wha…No…what do you mean?”
“Dude, come on. $2,000 a month? You can do that inside of a week. I don't know why you'd wait 6 months to be able to do that. Is there a reason why you want to wait 6 months?”
“Oh, well, uh…I just thought that's how long it would take.”
“Walk me through your plan. What's the plan you have in your head that takes 6 months to get to $2,000 a month.”
“I was thinking that the first month I'd go through the training. The second month, I'd do a website. The third month, I'd get my business set up. The fourth month, I'd go to networking events. The fifth month, I'd potentially start talking to people. And in the sixth month, I'd get a sale.”
“Okay, cool. Let me ask you something. If you didn't have to have a realistic goal – something you thought you can achieve – what would be your ‘dream come true' goal? The type of thing that's life-changing for you. Like, ‘holy s*** I can't believe this just happened. What's that number for you?”
Now, I'm going to get them to suspend their disbelief and get them into the reality of what's possible. And I'll finish that conversation and at around the mid-point of the call, I'd say:
“Okay, I have some thoughts. I want to break some things down for you before we get into any specific questions you have and talk about whether this is a good fit for us. ‘Cause I have one concern.”
“Okay, what's that?”
“My concern is that you only want to be at $2k per month 6 months from now. That's my concern. So, I guess, what I'm wondering is…is it that you just don't have the right concept of what's possible? OR is that really all you want?”
“Umm, well that's really all I want.”
“Alright, that's okay. Normally, our clients, when they're a good fit, they'll want to get to $10-$20k per month inside of 60 days. So I'd have to say it's probably not the best fit for now. Maybe you should continue to hang out in our group for now. Consume more of our content, see what other people are able to achieve, and from there, if things change for you, maybe we can have another conversation down the line. Because based on what I've heard from you on this call…you're smart, you can talk well…it's just going to take you 30 days to get your first client. And you can get them in at $3k per month. So you're already well-past your goal in 30 days. So your goal just doesn't make sense to me. And I know, 'cause the first client's always the hardest, if you stuck with it we could easily get you to that $9k-$12k range (which is only 3-4 clients) inside of 60 days. What do you feel about that?”
Typically, I would turn this person down and make them go back into our marketing ecosystem to expand their vision. And then maybe later, they'll be a good fit.
If you've got a good ecosystem for indoctrinating prospects, you're in a good position to turn people away. And when you do that, they think, “holy crap, this guy didn't take my money. This must be serious.”
They'll stew in those thoughts and it'll mess them up mentally. They won't be able to sleep at night, thinking about why you turned them away.
First thing they think about when they wake up will be you and that phone call. Last thing they think about before going to bed, you and that conversation. They'll literally have dreams about you.
And if you're in this position with a prospect, the sale's gonna happen. It's just a matter of the next trigger event making them act.
“Can You Send Over A Proposal So I can Take A Look At It? I'd Rather Do That Than Pay Over The Phone”
“Yeah, okay. So, what we do, it's a little counterintuitive. We're big nerds on time-analysis. And we did an analysis of our time and we found we were spending a ton of time sending proposals, following up, trying to get it moved along etc. So, instead, we just decided we're not going to do them anymore. After doing an 80/20 analysis we realized it just wasn't worth our time. And that our time is better spent actually working with clients inside of our program. So, that's what we do. And if you're not comfortable moving forward right now, that's totally fine. I'd probably say that you need to check us out for a little longer until it's a better fit. BUT if it's just a case of, ‘Hey, I want to get going but I just have some last-minute questions,' that's another conversation. OR if you have to run it by your team, that's another conversation. So it really depends on what your situation is on that spectrum.”
So, we took not having a proposal and turned it into a benefit for them. We're not going to spend our time on the sales process, we're going to spend our time on the client fulfillment/client success process.
We want to spend our time doing meaningful work. And we found that proposals got in the way of us doing meaningful work.
Therefore, if you want people whose sole focus is doing meaningful work, then you're going to work with us. And if you don't, that's cool.
It's the same if they want to shop around.
Yeah, we can guarantee that we're not the cheapest option. So, we encourage you to shop around if that's what you want. And you can even go with the cheaper option. And if they don't do a good job – which happens with a lot of our clients – you can come back and we're happy to do the job right.
So, you see how the attitude is so non-needy? Our sh*t's good, take it or leave it – that's the mentality.
Here's another way to handle the proposal objection. This works great when you're talking to agencies or consulting firms (any business where sending proposals is the norm):
“Yeah, that's something a lot of clients ask for. Are you sending a lot of proposals to your clients as well? Yeah? Okay, now how many of those people go non-responsive and you spend all this time chasing them, and you feel like they're ghosting you? Quite a lot, right? So what we do in our program is we teach you how to get sales without sending proposals, without having to chase people around, and get people to give you their credit card on the phone. And the best way to teach you how to do that is by demonstrating it. So, the way I handled this situation right now, is the we'll teach you how to handle it. So, from here the process is this. If you feel good about it…(and if you don't feel good, you should not move forward)…and it all makes sense, here's what we'll do. We'll take down your payment info and process your payment – we use Stripe so it's all secure and you have all the benefits of consumer protection. That'll trigger an automation. So you'll get an onboarding email from us, our team will schedule a call with you, we'll plug you into our system, and you'll hit the ground running. So, it just depends on whether or not you're comfortable. And to be honest, if you're not a 9 or 10 out of 10, I'd tell you to not do this. Unless you're just feeling nervous. Because that's normal. It's a big change, and you should feel a little nervous excitement. Like you're skydiving.”
See how even the process of refusing them I'm saying, “if it's this that's a different conversation.” So, when they tell me something, I'm labeling all the possible scenarios it could be under the surface.
‘Cause someone can ask you for a proposal for a bunch of reasons like:
- They want to shop around,
- They want to share it with their team,
- They don't trust you,
- It's a habit and their normal system, and so they think you should follow their system as well.
All of these will need a different approach to handle what is essentially the same objection.
Conclusion
Here's the essence of objection handling:
Whatever they tell you, don't handle the apparent or surface-level objection. Dig in to find what's really giving them pause.
As you get more experienced you'll hear the same objections over and over. And in handling them you'll identify the different reasons why people will bring up the same objection.
The same objection can occur for different reasons. And it's your job to identify the reason so that you can handle the real objection.
What are some objections you hear on sales calls that you have trouble dealing with?
Let me know in the comments and I'll show you how to handle them.
I may even record another objection handling Q & A and include yours.
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