Lesson 33 - Respond to Objections

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Handling objections effectively can make or break a deal. In this lesson, you’ll learn techniques to respond to objections with confidence and professionalism. Your assignment will involve writing and practicing responses to three common objections you face in your role.

Transcript

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Nicholas, welcome back to the daily quota. I'm your host, Nicholas Hill, and in today's lesson, you're going to learn a simple framework for responding to objections live and in the moment. Now, in our previous lesson, we've talked about objections before, but ultimately we were covering the top 10 objections that you're likely to hear when it comes to tech sales and how to respond to each one. In this lesson, I want to take it a little further and give you the tools to respond to any objection that comes up, especially objections that come up live. So let's say, for example, you're talking to a customer and they say, you know, this all sounds really good, but the cost is just too high for us right now. Now, your immediate reaction might be to say, Oh, well, you know, we can negotiate on price. Or the commercials are, you know, something we can talk about, or you might just start listing off features about why your solution is worth the cost. Or worse, you might give up on the sale entirely and say, you know, I you know this, this isn't worth my time, or they're not interested, and none of these are the right approach. Two things to remember, objections are not rejection. Just because someone raises an objection, it does not mean that they are not wanting to purchase your solution. In fact, I would argue that if someone is raising objections, it means they are actively thinking about purchasing your solution, which is what I said in the last lesson. Because if I was actually not interested at all, I wouldn't be on the call with you. I wouldn't have taken the meeting with you. I would have just found the quickest politic way off the phone, and I would have relegated you to my inbox. So if someone is talking to you, if they're raising objections, that's a good sign. Second thing is, it's way better to know the objections up front, because otherwise they're going to be talking about these internally, and you're not going to be able to respond to them because you don't know about them. So I would argue that you should be doing everything in your power to know what the objections are that you're up against, so that you can actively respond to those objections. Now, once you know them, the framework that I use for responding to objections, this is a framework that I've used at organizations that I've worked at is to diffuse, discover and deliver it's called the Triple D framework, which is, sounds like a monster truck rally, but is actually a very practical framework. The first thing that you're needing to do is to diffuse an objection. So let's say you're talking to a prospect and they say, hey, the cost is too high for us. The first thing I would say is, hey, I completely understand. I hear you. That's actually that's something that other prospects have raised concerns about in the past, and I want to understand more about that, right? So the first thing I do when someone raises an objection is, I stop my pitch. And this is a very common mistake that people make is they try to just kind of steamroll over it. They're like, Oh, well, I'll just, I'll just, you know, we can talk about that later. Or I'll send you some literature on that. Or, you know, let me bring in a technical expert to talk to you about that. You can't get around an objection that way. You cannot ignore an objection, because the second they bring it up, they're going to be thinking about it until it's handled. It'll be in the back of their mind. It'll be what they talk about in every meeting, and you need to be able to actively respond to it before they're going to allow you to move on. So I hear you. I understand your concern. We've heard that from other customers as well. I want to learn more about this that's diffusing an objection, at least a simple way to do it, stay calm, right? Objections are a natural part of sales. After you've diffused it, you're going to discover which means asking clarifying questions to understand more. You want to make sure that you're not addressing just what they say, but like the actual root cause of the problem, right? So when someone says the cost is too high, that could mean a ton of different things. That could mean that they don't have it in their budget at all. It could mean they're not seeing the value. They're not seeing the return on investment. It could mean that a competitor's offering them a better price. It could mean nothing at all. It could just be a negotiation tactic that they're using, right? So you need to be asking follow up questions and digging deeper to understand the root of what they're talking about and get that full context for every objection that comes up. Ask yourself, why does this matter to them? What are they actually? Why are they asking? What are the business implications? Is there an alternative or kind of secret objection behind the surface level of what they've said? And if so, what is it? Peel back the onion. Pay close attention to what they're saying and what they might not be saying directly. And of course, as we talked about when it comes to active listening, make sure that you're summarizing that objection back. To them so that you fully understand, so that they know what you heard, and that they can align on it. And then finally, you're ready to deliver, which is to deliver facts, evidence, testimonials, and a fully thought out response to that objection now that you've aligned on it. So that could mean that most likely means educating and informing the customer with evidence against their objection, or presenting counter evidence, which could be data, case studies, third party reports, Customer Quotes, any factual evidence that's going to help to eliminate or minimize that objection. You should also offer workarounds, right? If there are solutions or workarounds that other prospects of yours have discovered in the past that will help you to reposition the objection in a new light, which will align with the benefits of your product or service. And then finally, you should always check back with the customer to make sure their objection has been fully handled. Don't just say, Yeah, you know, I fully hear you. That's what people have said before. I'm going to ask you questions to understand this more, then I'm going to give you some evidence. Now back to our sales pitch, right? Because then you're making an assumption that you've handled it, but in their head, they might be like, wait, I'm still confused, or, wait, I'm still not fully convinced, so make sure you ask them. You know, hey, is, is have I? Have I handled every part of your concern? If I have, I addressed everything that you were, that you and your team were worried about, right? I probably wouldn't use the word handled. Have I addressed your concern fully? Cool, all right. You'll diffuse it by acknowledging it without defensiveness. You'll discover more by asking clarifying questions. You will deliver evidence against the objection, educating and informing the customer, and then you'll ensure that you've addressed all of their concerns. Let's look at an example of this. Let's not use Sprout Social for once, right? Let's say that we're working for perplexity AI. AI has been something that creates a lot of objections in clients because they're not sure how their data is being used to train models. So it's a natural example to use for objections. Let's say I'm a salesperson for perplexity, AI and I walk into a meeting and I'm preparing for the following objection. The customer says, we are concerned about data privacy, how our data will be used and whether or not it will be used to train AI models. Okay, the first thing that I'm going to do is diffuse the objection. So I'm going to say, Well, really, the first thing that I'm going to do is I need to understand our stance on data privacy and AI training, right? If I have no idea how to respond to the objection, then the best structure in the world isn't going to help me. You need to know the facts about your product so that you can confidently and intelligently speak to it. So I would need to understand perplexity stance on data privacy and AI model training, and I'm going to do some active listening. I hear your concerns about data privacy and the use of your data for training AI models. Let me tell you that ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of your data is a priority for us as well. I want to assure you that we take these concerns very seriously. We have policies in place to protect your data against this then, so that's diffusing. That's basically just telling them that I've heard you from there I'm going to discover so I might say, could you tell me a little bit more about what specific aspects of data privacy are the most important to your organization, are there specific compliance frameworks that you're looking to comply with? You know, ask them any follow up questions related to the concern, and then for deliver, I might say, to address your concerns. I want to highlight that the input data submitted through perplexity AI is used solely to generate a response from the AI model and provide that response back to you. This input data is not used for model training. Furthermore, our privacy policy clearly outlines how content and usage data are handled, ensuring your data is not shared with third parties or used to train AI models without your permission. Now, before I finish, I need to follow up and confirm. So I would say I'd be happy to provide you with our white paper, which covers privacy, data security and an overview of AI perplexity. Would that be helpful for you? Have I addressed all of your concerns regarding data privacy and the use of data for AI model training, or is there something more you'd like to discuss on the topic? So notice what I've done here. I followed every step of the framework, and again, maybe I sounded a little robotic there. You would humanize it a little more, but ultimately, I've diffused. I've discovered more. I've delivered against it. I've asked follow up questions. I've offered to follow up. I've confirmed that I've handled their objection, and now I can confidently move on to the rest of my value conversation. All right, now it's your turn. Your assignment for today's lesson is to take the top objection that you typically hear in response to pitching your solution, something that is specific to your solution when you're pitching to prospective customers. I want you to write out a sample response to this objection using the Triple D framework. You're going to submit this sample response to your manager, mentor or new hire buddy for feedback, we've covered the top objections that prospects usually raise in a previous lesson. So you're welcome to use some of those as examples if you're struggling with where to start. Your study guide will walk you through all of this, and that's it for today's lesson on the daily quota. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. Bye. You.