They said they were the decision maker - but then weren't?

“They Said They Were the Decision Maker… Then They Weren’t. What Do I Do?”

You confirm the decision maker. You build value. You present.

Then suddenly… “I need to run this by someone else.”

Something isn’t adding up.

In today’s Question of the Day, I break down why this situation shouldn’t happen often—and what it may be telling you about the call.

In this episode, we cover:

•  Why blatant dishonesty is rare—but still possible 
•  How a stronger relationship and trust-building process reduces the likelihood of surprises 
•  Why I’d want to ride along and evaluate how value and expertise are being established 
•  How to handle situations involving trusts, boards, co-owners, or hidden decision makers
•  Why these calls often resemble B2B sales cycles with longer timelines and non-present decision makers 
•  Practical ways to position solutions around efficiency, warranties, and long-term ROI

You can’t control everything a customer says—but you can control how strong your process is.

If this scenario is happening too often, this episode will help you diagnose why—and adjust your approach.

Have a Question? - Submit your questions to chrish@nexstarnetwork.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the question of the day. Today's question is from Nicholas in Virginia. And Nicholas asks, he says, pre-report call goes well. Get there and I go over what we're going to accomplish. I ask about decision makers. The person that you're talking to says they're the sole decision maker and that there's nobody else that needs to be involved in this decision. And then you get that confirmed like two or three more times just to make sure. That person goes with you throughout the call. They see everything. You build value, you take your time, you put your energy and effort in with the customer. Then you get to the present step and you go over everything with them. Then at that moment, they say that they'll have to run this by a family trust, a group of individuals that co-own the property, like brothers or sisters, or business partners, or sometimes they even revert back to the spouse. And sometimes I've been lied to directly, and they're the actual renters of the place. Any ideas how to detect this ahead of time? That's a great question. I love that question, and it's a very detailed question as well. So let's dive into this because something funny's going on here. And um I always I my gut says there's something going on here. Now, the thing about the gut is gut is actually experience. I don't solely go on my gut. I like to back it up with data, but usually my gut, my experience, when backed up with data, I don't know, nine times out of ten, I'm right. In the other one time out of ten, you know, whatever. Um, but my gut says there's more going on here because this shouldn't happen very often. Often when I'm talking about solutions or processes or objections, anything like that, I often describe them as they solve the problem 95% of the time. That's what I'm shooting for. I'm shooting for a solution that works 95% of the time. Because there's no solution, there's no solution that works 100% of the time. And if if somebody tells you it works 100% of the time, they're lying to you. But 95% is what we shoot for, knowing that there's gonna be outliers, there's gonna be those 5% problems that come up, and and we'll solve those, we'll figure those out when they happen. But if I have something that works 95% of the time, that's that's what I want to utilize. And so this to me should be like a 5% problem. And and so there's something funny going on there. There's more to it. And so, what I'd love to do, honestly, what I'd love to do, I'd love to ride along. I'd love to witness one, two, three sales calls with my own two eyes and see what's actually going on, what's working, where's the opportunities. That's what I'd love to do. Because something there's more going on here, something. Now, let's let's let's knock this easy one out first. Now, if somebody chooses to lie to you, I mean, there's really nothing you can do about that. Like if they choose to lie, if that's the type of person they are and they choose to lie to you, not much I can do about what they're doing. So, again, this shouldn't happen often, but I've had this happen in my career as well. My first sales job, I was in the automotive industry in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And um, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, they put a lot of salt on the roads. And so cars rust a lot and quickly. And um, because it's not just salt, they like mix in brine and other chemicals. It's it's super corrosive to your vehicles. And so in the automotive industry, rust protection is is a good product to have on your cars, and it's big business in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I I remember asking talking to a customer one time, and he just looked me dead in the eye and he said, he's buying a new car. And he goes, Yeah, I don't care if this thing rusts. What? Like, what why are you why were you buying a$35,000 new car? If you don't care if the thing rusts, I have a rusty car for like nine grand I could sell you. Um, like why don't we buy that one then? Like, he's obviously lying, just blatantly lying to my family. What am I gonna do about that? Guy's not gonna buy rust protection. It's it's just not gonna happen. Okay, nothing I can do about it. I had another instance where I remember this couple came in and um I didn't realize it at the time, but in hindsight, I don't remember seeing them drive in. So I'm pretty sure they walked in. Now, now the dealership I worked at was like very remote. Like you had to intentionally go there. There was it's not like there was a lot of other businesses around it. And so they came in though and they wanted to test drive a car, and so I pulled the car up and we drove it, but it got kind of weird because normally you have like a test drive route. So I would have a route that where where you in the winter you could get stuck in the snow and test out the all-wheel drive and and just gave you a good mix of like in town and in interstate. But they they had a different route they wanted to go. They were like, can we go right? Can we go left? Enough that it was making me feel a little uncomfortable. And then they pulled us into this parking lot here and they said, you know what, we're gonna get out and just walk from here. And at that moment, I realized they were lying to me the whole time. They were never buying a car, they were never looking at a car. They just wanted they were walking and needed a ride somewhere because that dealership was in the middle of nowhere. I don't know how they got out there, they were in the middle of nowhere somehow, and they needed a ride somewhere, and that was a quick and easy way to get a ride and totally wasted an hour of my time. I could have been doing something more productive, so that was kind of frustrating. But what are you gonna do about it, right? Like, you can't help it if somebody lies to you. So, so if somebody chooses to lie to you, I mean, not much you can do about it. Maybe I would like to look at the process, though. Again, get my eyes on it ride along, because I would like to see are we building a relationship with the customer? I do think building a relationship would limit the lying. Because typically you don't lie in a relationship. You don't lie to people you care about or you feel a bond with, right? So so I do think if our process is building a strong relationship with the customer, it'd be less likely that they would lie to us. Um, that process, the value we're building, should be focused on helping the customer. That's the kind of relationship I want to build. I don't want to be pushing a fix on them. I don't want to be pushing to sell them something. I want to be looking to help them. That establishes me as a trusted expert. That's that's the kind of relationship I want to build with my customers. And even in this scenario, you're still going to encounter people that lie to you, but it shouldn't it shouldn't happen that often. So the process itself should also have some opportunities to suss this out ahead of time. And so some of the things I would look at, are we doing to suss this out? would be looking at whoever's booking the call. There's probably some specific questions they could be asking when they're booking the call to suss some of these out. Questions like, are you the owner of the home? How long have you owned the home? Uh, will all the decision makers be there? This call will take about 90 minutes. What it what those kinds of questions and statements would suss a lot of these out because it would um you know, it would ask, is there other parties that are involved here? So so that would be the first line of defense. The second line of defense would be when you actually get to the home and you lay out what you're going to accomplish. So you set your agenda and it should also suss out how long the call is going to take. It should ask the question is there any other decision makers that need to be involved here? Um that it should suss that out. So if we're not doing those two things, those might be some opportunities to suss that out if I'm not working with the sole end user here. Uh I ran a call in Oregon and um actually I was running it with the owner. The owner ran a call, um, and I was riding along with him, and he ran this call and he was doing a great job. I mean he's the owner, right? And it was this older gentleman, and and uh he had talked on the call about how his wife had passed away and he was just living in the house by himself. And you could still see like the wife's things, like you saw her clothes in the closet and stuff still hanging there. So this was this was kind of fresh. And so it seems like this guy is the sole decision maker, but we never actually asked. We never asked if there was any decision makers. And we get to we get to the end, and the owner starts presenting and then asks for the sale, and that was when the guy goes, Oh, oh no, no, no, no, my my daughter owns this house, I just live here, but so she's gonna be the one making this decision. I was just getting the quotes for her. So had we asked early on, we would have identified it. Um, but because we didn't ask at the beginning of the call, we got blindsided by it. So, but again, this should be a 5% problem. So if we're doing these things, this shouldn't happen very often. So, what I would do is I would have somebody ride along with me, you know, somebody that's somebody that's a leader, sales leader in my company. I would have them ride along and and I would have them looking for things that I don't see, look for blind spots, right? Because obviously I'm looking at what's working and not working, right? You're you're doing that already, but I need I need a leader, a sales leader to be riding along and and and seeing what I don't see, seeing the blind spots and using a scorecard. Like we have a process and and we have a scorecard, like go down that scorecard and score your call to see where the opportunities are at. I think if you do those things, that should suss out a lot of these and it should be a 5% problem. Or we're gonna find out where our opportunities are at, and then we can fix them and make it a 5% problem. So, so those are some of the things that I would do to identify this early on. But let's let's get a little more specific now because you also talked about um like a board or a trust or other decision makers, renters, stuff like that. Let's let's talk about those specific scenarios a little bit too. So, what do you do with those calls? What happens if you're on the call and then you find out that it's there's a board that's involved here, or it's in a trust, or there's other decision makers that co-own the property and they're not there, or I find out they are the renter or something like that. So I think there's a couple different things we could do here. Um, first, let's let's separate out the co-owners. So if there's co-owners, I would treat this just like a spouse objection, right? So we I we call it the spouse objection all the time, but really it's a third-party objection. Is there somebody else, a mom, a dad, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a friend, like like is there somebody else that's that decision maker or co-owner of the property? Then I would I would treat it just like a spouse objection. And the spouse objection, you have to get them, you have to get them involved somehow. You have to get them to be part of this. Because I I don't know, I don't know anybody, honestly, that would make this big of a financial decision without their their spouse or that trusted person in their life. And so if they have that other person that has a say in this, we we have to get them involved just like we do with a spouse objection. And I mean, there's a lot of ways to do that. You can get them to join the call, you can get them to join on a FaceTime call, uh, you can come back for a second visit when they're both available. To do all that, you have to establish your trusted expert. Um, Jeffrey Gittimer writes in his book, The Little Red Book of Selling, that uh when there is another party involved, you have to be a trusted expert because they will gladly have you back for that second visit. But if they just see you as a salesperson, then they're gonna sell it for you and you will lose the war without firing a single bullet, is what he writes. So you have to be that trusted expert for that to work. So that's that's co-owners, other other owners. Um, I would treat it like a like a spouse objection. But now some of these other ones, like it's it's in a trust or there's a board involved, something like that. This turns it more into like a B2B type of call or like commercial, um, B2B being uh business to business sales, because there's two types of sales. There's the B2C, which is the uh business to a customer, right? And and that usually has a very short sales cycle. You can do a one trip because you're working with the one decision maker, one or two decision makers on the end. But then B2B is a business selling to a business, and that's usually a longer sales cycle. I mean, it can take weeks, months, or even years in a sales cycle, and there's other decision makers that you're not even meeting face to face, and there's different things that are considered as well. So price becomes much more contentious in a B2B scenario because they never met you, they don't know the value, they're just looking at that bottom line price and making a business decision. Now, my recommendation would be don't do these calls. If you if you can suss these out early, don't do these calls. These aren't your customer because of this. But if you find yourself in this situation, here's a couple of things to do. Um, anticipate it's gonna be a longer sales cycle. This probably won't be in one trip. And so you can gear up, you can still get there, it's gonna take longer, but but it's not gonna be a one-trip close in these scenarios, right? Um, know that you're not working with the decision maker either. There's other decision makers here, and so we got to do anything we can to get in front of those other decision makers. And sometimes this is easier if they're local, sometimes it's very difficult if they're a long ways away. But I I've seen salespeople use tools like Zoom and FaceTime to really bring us together. So um, and so here's another thing. So, anything we can do to get in front of the decision makers, let's talk about that a bit. So, you're gonna schedule a second visit. This is gonna be that longer sales cycle. If they are local, this is where you would try to get those other decision makers involved. And so try to schedule a second visit or do something to get them involved on that second visit. Um, if it's a board, it might be going to the board as a product knowledge expert to explain it to that board so they can make their decision. You might have to do something like that. Um, you can try to get them on the phone. So instead of just that one person taking it to the board and just showing them the number on a piece of paper, I might try to get them on the phone and chat with them, especially if they're not local. And one of the things I do is um, well, first you got to figure out who these people are. So the person you've been working with, that's who you want to work with to figure out who's on this board. Um, you might have to do a little research outside of the call to figure out who's on this board, but I would try to get on the phone and then have a reason to be calling them. So some kind of new information, some kind of added value. And one one trick I do when I need to get somebody on the phone is I'll just call twice. Because most people don't answer if they don't know the number, right? So if I call, they're probably not gonna answer. It's gonna go to voicemail. What I'll do is I won't leave a voicemail, I'll just dial it a second time so it calls again. Most people, when they see a number call twice, they get curious enough that they'll actually answer. And and so if I'm trying to get somebody on the phone, I might call twice like that to get them on the phone. So those are some things I would do to try to get in front of those other decision makers, like a board. Um, if it's like a trust situation, you may have to let it play out because there's some legalities there that are gonna have to play out before you can move forward. But best thing you can do there is just keep serving those people and be there so that when they get through this and they want to get through it too, uh, you're the person that that helped them navigate through it and it ends up being a sale. So not ideal, but but you'd have to stick with them. Now, if it's more of like a business kind of arrangement, that more B2B kind of um sale, I would also focus on long-term ROI. So B2B is much more price conscious because they're thinking of it as a long-term investment, and I have to help them frame that long-term investment because you're not gonna be the cheapest one on paper. They're gonna have five other quotes there, they're all gonna be numbers on paper, they're not gonna know anything about these companies, they're just gonna be looking at that number on paper, and your number isn't gonna be the cheapest number. So, so I have to explain that long-term value. So I might ask questions like who's covering the utilities? Because if if if it's like a landlord or a board, if if they're responsible for utilities, efficiency is gonna be a much bigger deal. So my option might be more expensive, but it's also more efficient. And when you play that out over the next 10 years, my option might actually be cheaper. And so I might highlight efficiency and be asking who covers the utilities. The other thing I would really highlight is the warranties, the long-term warranties that you have, because that equals long-term savings. So if this is like a business decision, and let's say I have a 10-year warranty, a not a dime warranty over the next 10 years, well, they know my costs are capped for the next 10 years. I will not spend more than this in the next 10 years. Versus this one's cheaper up front, but if I have repairs, etc., it may end up being more expensive. As a business owner, as a board, you don't want to enter into something that you don't know what the costs are gonna be. So it's a lot safer bet, even if I'm spending a little bit more, it's a lot safer bet to enter into something where I know over the next 10 years this is what it's gonna cost me, versus I'm saving a little bit now, but there's always that chance it's gonna hit me down the road over the next 10 years. So warranties is another area you really want to focus in on, and then get in contact with you know whoever those decision makers are. So there's a big opportunity here. I don't know what that opportunity is yet because this shouldn't happen very often, but you're gonna you're you're you're gonna get a sales leader to ride along with you. You're gonna utilize a scorecard, you're gonna look at those blind spots, you're gonna see what are the areas of opportunity there. I'd love to do a ride along. I'd love to dive into the areas of opportunity here because this really should be a 5% problem. But if these problems do happen, there's some golden BBs uh to help with it. So that's today's question of the day. If you're enjoying question of the day, follow, share, give a rating question of the day is on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, reach out to me on email. It's going to be listed in the show description. Let's get your question answered. And if you're a next star member, schedule a call with me and let's get this addressed one on one. Let's get very specific to your situation. I'm Coach Chris. We'll see you tomorrow.