Lesson 12: How to Handle Common Client Objections

Transcription

1 Lesson 12: How to Handle Common Client Objections [Aaron] Hello, everyone, and welcome to today s webinar, Don t Take No for an Answer How to Handle Common Client Objections. I m Aaron Joslow, host of today s event. Joining me today is our presenter, John Doerr. John is the founder of RainToday.com and Co-President of Wellesley Hills Group where he works closely with clients to develop marketing and growth strategies that produce measurable and sustainable results. John is also co-author of the book Professional Services Marketing, which is published by Wiley in This concludes my introduction. John, I now hand things over to you. [John] Well, good afternoon everyone. Sorry for that slight delay and good morning or good evening wherever you may be. I want to welcome you as well to this presentation on how to handle objections and to start off, let s think about the whole concept of selling professional services and the consultants who sell professional services. They re often used to being consultants, used to being lawyers, accountants, and they re used to success and the very thought of selling sometimes can be difficult because selling there s a lot of rejection in selling, and when you think about that the ultimate rejection is very often the whole idea of objections, and when you look at an objection, most people do everything in their power to avoid objections. They make you want to walk out of the room and say, Boy, that was a good sales call. We got through all those things. They didn t bring up anything that was too bad. We can take care of it in the proposal, and of course that s where the problem lies. So, what I want to do in today s webinar is to get you to start thinking about what objections really are, and how you can see them as a positive thing, how you can embrace them into what you re trying to do. I also want to have you take a look at what are the ways to handle objections. I m going to go through a five step process about handling objections. We re then going to look at some typical objections and figure out what are good ways to respond to those different types of objections and finally one of the most important things about handling objections is if you know you re going to get them then be prepared. Don t show up and think, Well, I just hope I don t get it. So, be prepared and what I find in my work is that most people know what objections they re going to get. They see them all the time. So, they really are not surprised, but they really try and avoid them. So, this is what we re going to cover today. So, let s start with a definition of objections. First of all, an objection is an explicit expression by a customer that a barrier exists between the current situation and what he or she needs to engage your services, and you notice it s a barrier. It is not a total stop sign. It is not a wall. It s simply a barrier and in fact I ve talked to some clients who say that they see objections as a buying signal because what an objection shows is that the prospect has in their mind engaged in the process internally about, Well, what would it be like to work with this person? and by doing that, they re actually thinking; they re weighing it, and that s a good sign. If you get instead SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 1

2 a response, Eh, you know. It was okay. That was great. That s really more scary to me than an objection. So, the first thing I want everybody to realize is an objection is simply a barrier between where they are now, where they need to go in order for them to engage you and that your job is simply to work with them on how to make that objection not such a painful thing. So, once you understand that and embrace objections as a positive sign, what is your job with objections? What are you supposed to do? Well, your objective is to overcome the objection and then make advances toward gaining commitment. However, there s some caveats in mind. First of all, the close begins the relationship. Now in a lot of sales programs, you ll hear about all kinds of closing techniques. The presumptive close, the alternative close. I even read one called the banana close. I m not sure what that one is. I was afraid to read about it, but there are lots of closes that you ll see about in traditional sales programs and training programs. When you re selling a product, oftentimes I can sell the product, you buy it, whatever I say it doesn t matter. Even if it comes back, you re going to deal with my customer service department. You re going to deal with the maintenance department. You re going to deal with somebody other than me. If I am in a situation where I m selling services, remember the close begins the relationship and so once I sell it, once I do make that connection to my prospect and they become a client then I am, of course, going to have to want to make sure that however you handle the objection can use those things about trust and honesty and being upfront with a client. The next caveat is really that objections often have merit. Now, in spite of the fact that we might say, My God, what are they thinking? How can they not see that this is the best way to go?, objections do have merit. It s a merit because they re trying to think of how they can use you. Where is the value in what you have to offer? When you think about what clients are thinking themselves when they re buying from you, try to think of, What is the problem I m dealing with, how can I possibly decide who is going to help me fix this problem, and third what is the value of solving that problem to me? What is the return on investment? So, if they re having difficulty weighing that through then they re going to have a question of how do I engage you? So, the objections have merit. It s part of the thinking process. And then the third caveat to worry about is process. It s not simply a glib let me counter with an argument. It is not but what I like to tell my students when I m in a classroom is that when you think about objections, you don t want to think of it as, I m on the other side of the room butting heads and I m going to argue over this objection, but what you want to think of instead is that you re going to be on the same side of the table working with the client to figure out how we can deal with this. Let s make sure this is as big a problem as you think it is, and let s figure out the best way to handle it. So when you look at objections, there are many, many common ones as I said and what you usually see is that if I asked live with everyone here and I said, Come on, give me your common objections, there would not be a long pause. People would be able to tell me right away what their objections are, and what I m going to do here with a poll (and Aaron you can bring up the poll), I ve pre-selected some objections. So, what I want people to do (by the way I see some people answering already) you can answer more than one here. Select all that SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 2

3 apply, and as you read down the list, have you heard something like this? Have you seen all of these, some of these? As many as you like, and I will give you a little hint. This is a summary of the objections: when I ask this in a class what are the objections you hear, these are among the top ones. You see I do not have a budget, we already have someone for that, or the incumbent problem, prefer to work with smaller or larger firm. Not too many people have a problem with that. Interesting how people do that. I have a consultant. We don t hire consultants. We like to do work with a local firm. Ah, your fees are more than we expected. So again, money problems. I know I don t have budget, and your fees are more than I expected, and then I have too many things on my plate right now, and I need to bring this to a committee. So, I can see people are continuing to answer these, but the money questions are the big ones. And the incumbent question is also there and I have too many things on my plate right now. There will be a question of I don t have a priority for it right now. So, we can move that poll, Aaron, and if we move ahead, if you think about objections despite all those different objections, the different types of objections and we said many, many types, we still get into a situation that I say there s really only four all those, all those words, all the objections you can think about, I contend can all fall into four types. The first one is no trust. The buyer has some sort of fear. They have some doubt that this is the right way to go. It might be the solution that they doubt. It might be you as the right provider that they doubt. It might be a big risk for them, so they re very nervous about taking that chance but for whatever reason, there is a trust gap. Now the second type of objection is there may be no need and when I say no need, it s not that, Oh, I need an audit, or, I need to have someone come in and help me with my warehouse management, or, I need someone to study my operations. There may be a need there, but they see it or they don t see the value of hiring you. So, they re really not seeing the reason to bring you on. There s no burning platform, there s no driving vision that they want to get you to come in for. So, there s no need. The third type of objection is no urgency. Yeah, that sounds good. Interesting stuff, but I don t have time for it. It s not really that important to me right now, and oftentimes that s the case where the value is not fully appreciated because if it is important enough, they would find a place to get it done. So, when they re saying, I don t have time. There s not enough urgency, it s really because they don t see the full value of what you re offering. And then finally, there s no money, and we re going to spend a little bit of time on money, which I m glad we are because that was in the top couple that people talked about in terms of no money, but money comes in many forms. It could be I just don t have the money. I m cash poor. I have no way to pay you for it. So, I d love to do this, but I don t have the money. It could be I don t have the budget in this year and, of course, in the last couple of years a lot of people talk about no budget. It also could be a question of I can t afford it. So, there s different ways where the money issue comes in. SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 3

4 So, what I want to do with our next poll question is to take a look at a couple of those that we mentioned at the beginning and ask ourselves this question. So, we re going to put up the poll which has one of the objections and again, if you re on full screen please go out of full screen and if people say, I have too many things on my plate right now, which one of these is it? Is it a question of trust, is it a question of need, is it a question of urgency or is it a question of money? And it s interesting. I see people moving around. You can put multiples on this. Those of you who have figured it out, we see that urgency seems to be the highest one right there. Oh, urgency is running way ahead, and as you can see different people looking at this are saying, Wait a minute. I don t have I have too many things on my plate right now. It s a question of urgency. Clearly, it s a question of urgency because if it were important, I would put that right to the top, but as some as you said it could be a way they re not ready. They maybe don t trust you enough, and it s a nice way to put it off. They don t see the need. They say, Yeah, that sounds good, but again, nice way to put it off and for some it could be money. So, you can see there can be different objection types in here. Aaron, let s go to the next one which is a question. Another type of objection was high on the list: next poll, and I want you to do the same thing. Again when you see this come up, I do not have the budget. Which of these is What type of objection is this? Somebody put money right away, trust, urgency, need. Again, you re going to see things across the board, and it s not really just the fact that some of you are viewing it in a different way. The reality of it is when you hear these objections, there s so much more behind it, and your job as a part of handling these rejections is trying to figure out, Well, what is the real root cause of this objection? because as we all know in a sales conversation what a prospect might say in the process of that conversation may be very, very different from their internal conversation. What they tell you is not always what s going on inside their mind. So, one of the things that s important for you when you deal with these hearing different objections is to figure out what really is the objection. Is it a question of trust, is it a question of need, is it a question of urgency, or is it a question of money? Because until you find those things out, for you to help solve the problem, move the conversation forward, to overcome the objection and work past the barrier, you have to know what objection you re really handling. So, what we re going to go to next is we re going to look at a five step process to handling objections. Very simple. Very, very powerful, however, about how to think about handling objections and the five steps are really listen, understand, respond, confirm, continue. Very simple to remember. See them there. Listen, understand, respond, confirm, continue, and what we re going to do now is I m going to walk you through what each step entails and what you re supposed to do through each step in that process. First of all, listen. Seems pretty obvious. However, how many times can you think of situations in which you heard an objection and you immediately wanted to respond to it. I m thinking of a situation that I was in not too long ago with a client, and oftentimes we ll work with clients on sales process and sales conversations, and they were relaying back to me a situation in which a client said, You know, I really don t see the need for this right now because, and the client was so used to hearing that because we don t have the budget that he immediately started to SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 4

5 talk about: how it was valuable, how it could work into any budget, how payment plans could be Everything. But then he realized once he stopped talking that the client really was going to say something else. So, that first part about don t interrupt, again, our defense mechanisms go up right away when we start to hear objections, and that s why we interrupt, and that s why we anticipate. Also, because we ve heard the objections so much. Hear the objections time and time again. You already say, Aw, here it comes again, and we start to anticipate what s there and in doing so, we do become defensive. We sound defensive, our words are defensive, our body language is defensive, and it starts to sound combative rather than really trying to work with someone, understand what s going on. Very simple. As soon as somebody says, I have a few questions, and you know it s about objections, take a deep breath. Force yourself to listen. I worked with another client who used to do a lot of her sales conversations on the phone and in listening to what happened, she was a classic in terms of wanting to interrupt, anticipate. She did get defensive. She often answered the wrong objections. She sometimes would create objections that weren t there, and I finally said, Just take a deep breath and listen, and what she did because her tendency was to jump right into it is just put a big piece of paper next to a phone that says, Stop to listen, take a deep breath, then answer. The first thing is is make sure you hear exactly what the objection is. So, step two is to understand. Now as you listen, sure you re going to hear the way the client has presented it, but maybe it s not completely clear to you what the objection is all about. So, you want to be able to ask questions. You want to ask permission to ask questions, and you have to be comfortable with the way you say this. I can say when I hear somebody saying an objection, I want to make sure I understand exactly what it is. I actually will ask permission. Do you mind before I answer that if I ask a few clarifying questions because I want to make sure I understand exactly what your concern is and I also want to make sure I answer the right question, and you know that business about asking permission if that s not a comfortable way for you to say it, that s not exactly how you have to do it, but do make it so you re not defensive. Accept it. Let it roll into you and say, I need to understand this more. Once you hear it back, once you hear the clarification, you want to restate to make sure that you have gotten it right. So if you start to hear a question about, I don t have time. I have too much on my plate right now. You might say, Do you mind if I ask a few questions? I want to clearly understand what the problem is and what I m hearing So, you re saying I m listening. That s a way of proactive listening. I m hearing that you have a lot of other things going on and this doesn t seem to be a priority for you right now. Is that correct? They may say, No. Well, that s not exactly what I meant. So sometimes in repeating it back to the client, the client, the prospect hears it in a different way and they say, Let me clarify, but before you move on, make sure you have the objection right. So, make sure you get the objection right. When a client says, Yes. That s exactly what my problem was, uncover the real objection. So, one of the things, one of the little tricks about this is what I call the power of what else and generally when you get that first objection there is more underlying in that objection than just what is stated and so even when you get the objection stated rather than immediately answering that particular one, put it aside for a SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 5

6 moment. Put it down for a moment and say, What else is bothering you? Is there anything else? What else is of concern? What else is getting in the way of our continuing in this conversation? What else? and essentially what you re doing is you re continuing on the what else, the what else, the what else until you get to the point where the person says, I think that s the only thing. Oftentimes, it is that last what else, that answer to that last what else is the real objection and if you start answering the objections from the bottom up, find that oftentimes you don t have to even respond to the ones on the top that the objections as you move forward are in that what else, what else, what else covering the root of it. So again, you may have a situation in which somebody talks about money is the problem and your first reaction, of course, is to say, Well. You know, I understand. Let s talk about the value. Let s talk about this, but instead you would say, Well. So, what I m hearing is that this really doesn t fit into any kind of budget you have allocated for this. Well, yeah. I think so. Well, is there anything else bothering you? Well, the other thing that s bothering me and I m really concerned that it is In fact, I don t see the return on investment here. I like the idea. I m really excited about this, but I don t see a return on investment. I understand that. What else? Is there anything else that gets down to it? and you might get down to really get down to the fact that, You know, we had a really bad experience with a consultant last year and you don t seem like that consultant, but I had a bad experience. Anything else bothering you? No, the problem is I had a bad experience with a consultant. They threw out the budget. They threw out timing. They threw out value. When it came down it, it was a trust issue because they had a bad experience. So now, you can start to answer that question. Had a bad experience. Well, tell me a little bit about that experience. Let me understand what happened. Was there a disconnect? Did they not deliver? So, you understand that you want to move that forward, but keep on asking what else. So, that is what I call the power of what else. So, step three you get to respond, and you notice that you had to go through two steps before you responded to the objection. Step one and step two with the question of listening and understanding before you respond because you want to make sure it s the right objection, that you want to understand it fully; you didn t anticipate and just want to respond to the objection. Now, minimize is one of the most important things. It s sort of that Shakespearean thing, Methinks he doth protest too much. If you go into all kinds of detail and explain why you should do that and why this isn t a problem and so on and so on and so on, you start to maybe say the objection is more realistic than anybody wants to be let in on. So, you really want to make sure that your response is minimal, that you don t go crazy on your response. You want to answer immediately. You want to be able to say, Okay. I ve heard what you have to say and we ve gotten down to what I think is one of the concerns. So, let s talk about that, and so you will come up with a quick response, minimal response, and then you want to propose a resolution process. So, if we could do this or I understand what this is, if we were able to move it like this, that might be a good way to go and want to find out put that on the table because you re trying to change the shape of their thinking and what they had before SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 6

7 to thinking about a new way of looking at the problem and then finally, don t buy it back, and I ve seen that happen time and time again where a person responds to the objection. The person on the other side of the prospect says, Yeah. That sounds Yeah, if we can take care of that, I understand now how we can do that, and what happens instead is that the seller, the consultant, keeps talking and then I say, Well, wait a minute. Maybe I don t like that anymore, because what happens is the more you talk, the more mistrust arises often, the more confused it can sound and so you want to be careful about buying it back. I remember a classic years back, this was many years back, I won t tell you how many years ago it was, but I was with my boss, this is the president of the firm, and we went to a client and there was an objection to money and I must confess, give my boss credit, he did understand how to handle objections for the most part. He found out what really was the question and he did indeed get over that objection, but then he kept on talking and as a result of his talking, the client brought the objection back on the table and again, that s a case where you want to answer immediately. Step four, confirm. Ask whether your answer is going to satisfy the objection. Basically, test out your solution with the person and say, If we could do this, does that sound like that would work for you? You mentioned that you were concerned that we aren t a local firm and you re concerned the thing that was bothering you about local is not expenses, but it was really that you like to have frequent touch and I suggested that we re often in this area with other clients. We try to put it all together so that we can touch on a monthly basis and during the time that we re not visiting you, we certainly can do webcams. Does that work for you? Does that accomplish what we re trying to accomplish here that you can feel more in touch with what s going on? If the person says, No, don t be discouraged by that. All it says is you just haven t figured it out. Maybe you haven t gotten to the what else yet. Then you say, Okay, based on my solution, then you re almost starting it over again and say, What is it that concerns you the way I suggested it? So, you want to see what s bothering that person about that particular objection and the other side of that is you also don t want to take yes for an answer and don t take yes for an answer immediately. Why? Because sometimes people say thing like, Yeah. That works, and you can tell. You can tell their body language that they really don t mean that it works. All they ve said is, I don t really wish to talk about it anymore, or, I m not as fully engaged, or, Yeah, it was an okay answer, but I can live with that. It s up to you to say, You know, it really doesn t sound like you completely agree that that s a good solution. Am I right? Is there something else that s still there? Go back to the what else. You want to reengage that because your job is not to push the objection aside. Your job is to embrace the objection, to find out what s really there and to eliminate those barriers that we talked about at the beginning, and if you take yes as a Yeah, it s okay, you want somebody to get excited about it and if you walk away and the person, Yeah. It sounds good. Why don t we write a proposal? you know you re going to waste your time with that proposal. They still have an objection. SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 7

8 And finally when you re all done and they say, You understood it, proposed a good solution, you confirmed it and you tested it out, continue moving on to the next step in the process. So, you might be in a situation where the objection came up early. You just had to clarify needs. Maybe you want to take it further because you want to uncover the impact and this comes from our RAIN Selling methodology so you look at the aspirations and the afflictions and the impact to say how will this affect what you re trying to do? You may want to advocate for your solution, that you give examples and stories, and you want to advance the sale towards commitment and view the sale moving forward, finding out exactly how you can fit into their proposed situation. So, those are the steps that you would follow and you follow those pretty much in every situation. Now again as you go through this, you will have different objections that you hear that you re better at, that you re good at, that you can deal with and sometimes you can t, but if you follow this process, at least you ll get to the point where as you walk out the door or hang up the phone, you will know what s in your way and hopefully you ve had a chance to make the best case for why they aren t such a big problem. There are some slight differences in responding to each type of objection depending upon the objection, and it s the type of thing that you want to start thinking about. So if you look at trust and need, two of the biggest types, you have situations where you may have high trust/low trust and also you ll see a need with low need and high need and if there s no trust and no need, well, that may be the biggest objection you re going to find. You can t uncover need, you really don t have enough trust for them to share a lot. You can t dig as much because they re not patient about this. Usually, it s a question of moving on. You can work over time to get their trust, and handling the objections does not always happen the first call, the second call, the third call. It may happen over a series of situations, but the no trust/no need action is a case where you might have better things to do and move on. If there is strong trust and strong need, well there s no objection. Let s keep on moving to the commitment. They feel you re the right solution. They trust the solution. The need has been clearly articulated. Well, that s the best thing in the world, but it gets a little fuzzy when there is strong trust but no need. And as I was putting this program together, I started to think about a client that we were working with where as a part of what they were doing, they went back to a number of their colleagues in the industry in which they work, and they had a great deal of trust, and they had talked to them prior to launching this particular service and all their colleagues said, Oh, yeah. This is fantastic. This is really good, and they really said, Yeah, thumbs up. Let s move ahead. Once they put it all together and went back, they discovered that, Well, wait a minute. There doesn t seem to be a need, and even though while they were trusted colleagues who were in the industry and were the target market, seemed to have indicated it was important. When they actually started talking to people, they finally couldn t uncover need. Well, don t just turn around and run when that happens. Think again to understand going back through the process is starting to think of let me understand the problem. In this particular case they said, Well, we have people who do that, and as they explored the question it was partly they did, but they also didn t have people that did their particular, a niche, SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 8

9 part of it and oftentimes there were situations in which they were overburdened and when they were overburdened when they were resource constrained, what they did is they just stumbled through, and that s when they made a lot of their mistakes and so since they had the trust, they took the time to explore, they had to clarify what the expected results were and then articulate the value more clearly. I think what happens when there s high trust and you don t uncover need, you make assumptions to the purpose of understand. In this particular case, it was an educational question that they had to work on. If you see strong need and there s no trust, you have to nurture the relationship over time. Find the fit. Make your past results more tangible. The trust often can be, as I said, trusting in you that you re not the right person or trusting in your solution because they re not quite sure I can believe that can really happen. So, make your past results as tangible as possible. Case studies, stories, exact example and don t push it too fast. A classic example for someone like this would be in the accounting profession where everybody needs an accountant. Surely, there s a strong need. If I m a company that wants to go public, I need to have an audit but maybe I don t know you well enough and maybe I won t get this particular audit, but if I can start to show over time that I m a good fit, when companies make changes in some situations, companies do change audit firms every few years. You want to really get into a situation that you can nurture the relationship over time and get it to the point that they do trust you. In money situations, it s really often a question of clarifying your value proposition. The best scenario is to get the client to clarify it for you. So, talk to them more about what they are trying to get out of this. This is where you ask the impact questions. If you re able to solve this, what would happen to your financial situation? If you were able to work on this and get this done, what would happen to your goals? If you don t get this done, what might be the consequences? So, you really want to get start to talk to the client about the value proposition. So, it s not you just repeating it over and over again, but it s a question of getting the client to clarify for you the value proposition. Now, this is when it is a clear case of money. Remember, there are times when money will be a red herring and that s one of the things we have to realize that it s easy for people to say, I have no budget. For a lot of us in consulting, people don t have a budget for some of those things. It s not a question of budget. It s a question of are they trying to achieve something and can they get a return on investment for it? So, you could say, If money were no object You want to also make sure you engage the money discussions at the right time. Oftentimes, we get the money objection way too early because people say, What s that cost? and we throw out the answer and, of course, the way I describe it is money is that big dollar sign is standing there naked with no value around it, not dressed in any value at all and as a result, all people look at is the dollar sign and sometimes it s a question of you haven t articulated the value. Sometimes they never bought this before, and they don t even know what they should be paying for it. Sometimes they re comparing apples and oranges as we all said. SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 9

10 So what you want to do with a money objection, first of all, make sure it is a money objection and once you get down to that then get back to the value. Make sure you can help them see the value. I strongly recommend not lowering prices without altering your service levels or deliverables. People think, Alright. You re too high. If you cut it by 15 percent, I will get it, and I know in bad economic times, we re all tempted to go with the lower price to lower our pricing to get the assignment but think about that. There s this whole mistrust about how you came up with your price in the first place and if you can immediately cut it by 15 percent or so then what s going to happen? You create a mistrust; and don t fall into the trap that thinks just because you re doing it for less now, you can make it up in volume later on. The classic: I worked with a company that did leadership training, and they had a huge contract. I think it was about, for them, it was a half a million dollar contract. It was a big organization and in order to get the job, they lowered the price thinking, Look. If we do a really good job on this, we ll make it up later on, and sure enough they did a fantastic job. It was everything they said it was going to be and then what happened is the client came back and said, I want to quadruple it. Two million dollars. I want it spread out throughout the organization, and they wanted a bigger discount because of volume. So, they lost money on the first one and they lost more money, but they made it up on the volume. But you really want to make sure you don t lower that price. And then finally, you may be dealing with the wrong buyer. Just make sure you re dealing with somebody who can pull the trigger. Oftentimes, people who have money objections are the wrong buyers. Now, the people who are responsible for putting things in place and getting things to happen can evaluate the plusses and minuses of the price versus the return. So, you want to make sure you re talking to the right person. I want to give you a little secret when it comes to handling objections and I call it the Secret of TGB and I will actually give this to a friend of mine who taught me about this a few years back. He said, It all comes down to three things oftentimes and it s time, goal and budget, and we talked about time. That s a question of no priority now. I don t have a sense of urgency and a budget could be money, but the goal is what they want to do and so whenever it comes down to a question of money or if it comes down to a question of well, it s not a priority, you oftentimes want to make sure that you go back to the goal. What is their goal? What are they trying to achieve? One way to look at that is to really say, What are we trying to get done here? So, if they talk about it it s a priority. If they talk about it s not the right amount of money, don t engage with that argument right away. Go through the process, once you understand what it really is and say, Let s go back to your goal. What did you want to accomplish here? Get them to tell you what they want to accomplish. Get them to see how they will benefit from working with you. Basically, get them to sell it back to themselves by getting them excited about the goal. Once they are excited about the goal, once they determine that the goal is indeed what they want to do, then they will go back and figure out, Well, let s make it a priority, or, Let s see if I can find the money. Again, if money were no object let s put that aside for a moment. What are SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 10

11 we trying to accomplish here? You want to help them see that achieving their goal is the most important thing on their plate. When you get into situations where people say, Ah, I don t really have the time right now. It s not on my priority list. I have a million projects going on, you want to create that urgency and how do you create that urgency? Well, the best scenario is get the client to prioritize themselves. Start to get them to think about what, again, this means to them. So, you don t want to have any negative implications for the client, If you don t do this, you re going to fall into a hole, but you do want to get to the point where they start to think, What will I get if I do this and what will I get if I don t do this? You want them to start thinking about the what won t happen. What kind of thing, what won t happen? Again, there may be things that are more important to them and if you can at least get them to articulate their priorities, perhaps you know when to come back to them. Perhaps you know when rethink what you re going to do with them and what you re going to do in the touch plan, but if it really isn t bad timing then help them prioritize. Going back to the time/goal budget. Think about what they re trying to do, help them balance the things on the plate and help them figure out how they re going to get it. So, one of the ways to do that is you ask the big question, What won t happen? First of all, you want to ask yourself what won t happen. Well, if the client doesn t do what I suppose, what will not happen? So, let s suppose you re an engineer and you re selling compliance work on environmental engineering, and you have a situation where they re in a super fun site, and they really have to clean it up and they re saying, You know, I just got a million things to do. I got this contract. I got this. I got that and I got that. Now, you could tell the prospect, If you don t do this, and this is the negative implications, You could be cited for these fines. You could be shut down for awhile. The environmental impact statement. I mean, there s a number of things that you re thinking, I ve done this a million times but won t happen. What you want to do is you think that through yourself, you bite them down, and then you go to the prospect and say, Well, what would happen? What do you think won t happen if you don t do this? Get them to start thinking about it. See if you can get them to quantify the results and then show your results related to that. Now, this requires preparation. You want to know, Hey, listen. Every time we do this somebody says, I can avoid it. What s the big deal? If I don t do this, it s not going to be a major problem. So rather than coming back to them, you want to make sure So, you go through the process. Let me make sure I understand what you re saying, that you don t see it as a necessity because you really don t see the return for you. You don t see the consequences. You got a lot going on, and then you ask them, Well, if you don t do this, what kinds of things do you think will happen? Oh. Well, I thought about this and thought about this, and this is where you can start to quantify the results so that you re trying to make the measurement that what they spend will be very minimal to what they could possibly get fined or what it would cost them. I mean, it could be a number of situations whether it s IT consulting, operations consulting. You want to get them to start thinking about if they don t do it, what won t happen and the key thing is, the reason you want them to talk about what won t happen is because you want them to articulate any financial implications, any negative implications, because if you can get them thinking like that they can get more interested in moving ahead SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 11

12 because you have the solution that they need. If you throw it out there, now you ve created a trust barrier. They re not sure if you re just trying to sell them. You may say that they could save a million dollars and instead they think they can only save $750,000. Either way, your cost of $50,000 is a great return on investment and instead of deciding, Gee for $750,000 and I m only spending $50,000, I get a good return. They re arguing whether it s a million or $750,000. So, you really want them to articulate what it s all about. One of the other big things, and there was one when we did the survey, the poll question at the beginning, is what do you do when there s an incumbent? What do you say when you have that we already have somebody? First of all, you do not want to say anything negative, of course, about your competition. That just makes you look totally unprofessional, but you want to express that you understand that. A lot of our clients often have said that to me before they were our clients. If you re in accounting or law, you can say, Oftentimes, there s a chance for a second opinion, and there may be places where you re conflicted out that your current provider is conflicted out. There may be situations where the internal or the external audit is a situation that s different, but you want to get the prospect to talk about that current relationship whatever it is. You understand a lot of our clients have done that sort of thing. A lot of our clients have had people before. I m curious. What do you like about working with the current provider? What s really important to you? and then you also can listen for places as they talk about their current provider where you might add more or different value. Again, you don t downplay what you do, but it s very simple to say, I understand. You really like that quarterly touch and we understand that as well. That s very important to us. In fact, what we provide is a written report on a quarterly basis and we check in on a monthly basis. You may find that that extra touch is what gets there. So, that s why you want to find out what they like about their current relationship and if there is any breakdown, if there is any situation where there is any kind of fallout that they start to think of you because they start to think about the things that you said about how you handle the relationship. The other thing is the professionalism that you show will pay you huge dividends when the time comes that someday they do move on. So, don t be discouraged by incumbent objections. I often find that as a good sign because that means they do buy your types of services. You ve identified a prime suspect and stay in touch over time, follow the right way of going through sales conversations, understand what their needs are, and you ll be in a better position to work with them when the times comes when they really do need somebody who can move in and do what they re perhaps not getting from their incumbent. Again, no negative comments about the competition. We talked about that already and recognize that this may be a long term prospect. Don t be discouraged by the fact that you re not going to walk away with the business tomorrow. I remember we did a lot of work for an accounting firm a couple years ago and of course in accounting and of those who are not in accounting may know this anyhow. We re coming up on the time when April 15 rolls around and everybody is very happy they finally get to relax although in Massachusetts, it s now May because of the flooding, but what you find is they don t really want to talk to anybody until April, SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 12

13 May, June May, June more likely and what we discovered is sure everybody has an accountant, everybody has their brother-in-law, everybody has their person in place, but this is where you can offer value. Find what s important to them and then offer value as you go along. This will be your long term prospect and see if you can discover their next buying cycle. How often do you go out and look? Is this something You know, what is your buying process when you do? What s important to you when you look for this type of service? People are oftentimes looking for ideas. I know with clients we work with in market research, I know that clients we work with in some operations research and consulting, that clients are looking for the next great idea, and they often will engage a conversation that provides value to them, and if they start to see that you can provide value over the long term, that will pay you long term dividends. We talked about spoken. We said at the very beginning objections are implicit barriers that are spoken about what stands in the way between your solution and the client engaging you in that solution. So, you want to prepare, and also as I said everybody, listed. Everybody right away said, Here are the objections. I put down a list of objections and you know what they are and if any of you have been in business for very long, you know what objections are there. These should not be surprising; whether they think you re too small, if you re not local, whether your price is too high, whether they don t understand the value, whether they don t see how it works in this case. Whatever those objections are, you know what they are. You ve heard them all before. So not all objections, however, are expressed and again as I said sometimes you have to be in tune to what those objections are. We have to be aware that body language, any number of things can be expressed in those objections and if we walk away from a sales conversation knowing, knowing absolutely there is an objection that s there but was not expressed we are not making the best possible solution for us to make that sale. I was in a situation a year ago and we were working with We work with a number of accounting firms. We do not work with many banks. In fact at the time, we had not worked with any commercial banks and I knew from the We were called in as the third person. You know and it s always a nice thing. You were brought in just for comparison and we knew we were competing against two other firms that had more experience in commercial banking and in fact, that was one of the primary prerequisites for choosing, but they knew us, they liked what we had to say but we knew we were probably third in a three horse race and one of the things we could not overcome and it was very specific is they said, What experience do you have in commercial banking? and the answer to that question is, No, or was, No, at the time. So, I went into the meeting and there were a number of people sitting around a table. I was the only one there. Went through a series of questions, did my presentation, had a good give and take. I found out a lot was going on and they were ready to end the meeting and before we could leave, I said, I have one question before we leave, and they said, Okay. What s that question? and I said, Well, how come nobody has asked us about our experience in commercial banking? and they kind of joked and they said Somebody took the bait and said, What is your experience in commercial banking? and I looked at them and I said, Well, tell me SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 13

14 a little bit more about your concern. Can I understand this? and they explained what their concern was that they felt like they were a commodity, that you had to understand that it was really hard to show a point of distinction and I said, Well, can you think of any other kind of professional service firm that s very close to that? and they said, Oh, yeah. When you think about it, accounting is, and again taking the bait for me, I said, Ah, accounting. Well, I do have a lot of experience in accounting. Let me tell you how accounting and commercial banking are similar and why I see the two connecting, and we did win the job. We had had no experience in commercial banking, but I really was prepared for it, and there is an element of really listening and bringing up those objections that are not expressed. So, you want to anticipate and raise objections that may be under the surface. Don t think just because they haven t been raised that they aren t there. Balance the benefits of strengthening the relationship by being honest with the risk of complicating the discussion. Clearly, you may have some situations where they haven t even thought about that and you can tell, but just like we see in these two cartoons from Zits, it s really the unspoken communication, and maybe the guys have fewer things going on than the girls in this case, but it is getting that unspoken communication because those under the explicit objections are easy. It s the implicit objections that are harder to deal with. Now, if you re going to bring up, and this is the last point before we get to questions If you re going to bring up objections, be prepared and I call it the Improv of Objections. You know as I said, what objections you re going to get. You ve heard them, so what you want to do is prepare very well and this is a shot from Who s Line Is It Anyway, which is an improvisational show, and I don t think it s still on, but it used to be one of my favorites, and what I discovered because I had somebody from improv in one of my classes said that improv is not as improvisational as we think. People really do prepare and they prepare the possibilities. They know how they re going to react to each other and in reacting to each other, they can then take from their bag of tricks to be able to It s humor in comedy. Well in objections, it s really the same thing. Make a list. Which objections do you always hear? Where might you be vulnerable? Where is it going to be really tough like I gave the example of mine with the commercial bank experience? I knew that was the one that was going to kill me. I had to deal with it head on and I practiced to make sure that I was answering it in the same way. So once you know where you re vulnerable, prepare your response. Practice with a colleague. Are you just making excuses? Are you proving your value? Is it really a good way to handle the objection? Now the key, of course, is going through the five step process that I mentioned and coming up with a way that you really understand what that objection is and make sure you re answering the right objection, but be prepared. I can t tell you how many times that what I see when I talk to consultants about the objections they face and I said, Well, how are you going to handle it? and they say, I m not sure. I just hope it doesn t come up. Well, if you know it s going to come up, make sure you have a good objection a good answer for that objection and if you don t then maybe you re selling to the wrong type of people. SellingConsultingServices.com RainToday All Rights Reserved. 14