#270 - Sales Playbook: Armand and Nick Teach You How to Handle ANY Cold Call Objection

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Everybody, and welcome to this playbook episode of 30 Minutes to President's Club. My name is Armand Farouk, and I'm here with my co host, Nick Sigelski. And today we are breaking down a bunch of objections, how to handle every single one of them, but most importantly, how to handle any objection in the world using what's called the Mr. Miyagi framework. Nick, why should people listen to.

I spent a lot of time as a salesperson rehearsing my cold call opener, rehearsing my problem proposition, or how I would pitch my thing. And unless things went perfectly well, I wasn't booking a meeting because I would get smacked in the face with somebody saying, ah, Nick, I'm not interested, or oh, we're not in the market for software. And I would sort of just stammer and I'd get hung up on and I'd say, well, I guess I should have sent them a prospecting email because then I could have handled their objection there. The thing is, folks, you're going to deal with objections, and we're going to learn in this episode that objections most of the time are lies. And if you can overcome objections and get past that moment of friction and tension on a call, you oftentimes will start to open the door for a great conversation with your prospect and ultimately book a meeting. So, Arman, how are we structuring this episode?

This playbook episode has three parts to it. Number one, why objections happen and what is the state of the mind of the prospect when you cold call them. Number two, we'll go through the broad Mr. Miyagi method. In other words, when you get an objection, what are the three steps that you should follow for every single objection in the world? And then lastly, my favorite part, number three, there are three types of objections, and we will be doing some live role play so you can actually hear what these objections sound like. And nine objections does not cover every objection in the world. There are more than double of that. So we're going to give you double that after this. We are going to be giving you 18 objections and scripts to handle every single one of them. You can actually go in the show notes and get that right now. This was pulled straight from the book on cold calling that we're working on right now. And I hope you like a taste of what's to come inside of that book. And a three, a two, a one. Let's today's show is brought to you by Text us, which helps you move your deals forward faster. When timing matters, the fastest way to move a deal forward is to avoid getting stuck in the inbox. And so my favorite way to get on a text basis is literally when your prospect requests a demo, just send them a confirmation text saying that you're looking forward to the meeting. And that opens the text channel for you to call back on it later, folks, we put an entire guide on how to revive ghosted deals, nudge next steps, and use texting to keep deals moving forward. With Text us. Check it out. It's free in the show notes.

All right, so let's start with what is your prospect thinking and feeling when they hit you with an objection? And I'm going to teach this, Armand, through a little story. You and I have been working on, the 30 minutes to President's Club book on cold calling. And last weekend I decided, all right, I got to make some progress on this book. I'm going to go to a coffee shop and I'm going to write for a couple hours. I got on my bike, I rode to my friendly neighborhood, Pete's Coffee, and I found a nice table outside in the sun. And I crack open my laptop. I've got a nice notch, wobbly table, and I started writing and I was making great progress. 10 minutes in, 20 minutes in. the half hour mark, I hear a guy clearing his throat to try to get my attention. And I look up and there's this college student wearing a bright orange ASPCA vest, and he's holding a clipboard. And. And he clearly wants to talk with me. And so I look up, I'm literally mid paragraph, and he goes, excuse me, sir, do you happen to love animals? And Armand, I do love animals. I'm an animal lover. But I knew that if I said yes to this guy, he was going to rope me in to donate money or sign his petition or talk with him for 10 minutes about how we can save all the animals. And. And I was trying to write a book. And so to get the guy to go away, I literally said, no, I actually don't. And he went away. And the point of this story is my objection had nothing to do with what the guy was selling. Helping animals. I actually support that cause my objection had everything to do with his interruption. And the exact same thing happens when you salesperson listening to this episode and interrupt your prospect. They are objecting to your interruption, not to what you are selling or what you are asking them for. The objection is to the interruption.

And for this reason, that's why when you go and try to pitch or reaffirm the Value or claim your roi. Or if someone says they're not interested, you try to give them reasons they should be interested. None of this matters because they're not actually considering your pitch. They're objecting to the reaction. And so when we handle objections through what's called the Mr. Miyagi method, step number one is not to handle the objection, it's to handle the reaction. So let's go into it. There are three steps of the Mr. Miyagi method. Step number one, you agree with the objection. So if Nick comes at me and he says, I'm not interested, I'm going to say something like, totally get it. You probably would have called me if you were. Or if Nick says, call me in six months, I'm going to say, nick, you're totally right. I shouldn't assume you were ready right now. I'm going to jot down in my calendar that I should reach out in six months. Or if Nick says, I've got no budget, I'm going to say, hey, totally get it. Honestly, I should have assumed. Nowadays, it's frankly harder to keep a product that you have, let alone ask for budget, to buy a new one. By agreeing with each of these objections, what's happening is it's like Nick tried to sit in a chair, and I pulled out the chair from underneath him. He's like, wait, like, the salesperson isn't going to try to pitch me. He's not going to try to do anything. He's not going to try to tell me about why I should be interested. And they're like, oh, this person actually understood.

He.

And so through step one, you've blunted the reaction and you've removed the pressure of the sale.

Yeah. What you're doing is when you ambush your prospect in the middle of their workday and interrupt them with a cold call, what it does is it triggers their fight or flight, which literally shuts off the logical piece of their brain. And so when they tell you, call me in six months, they're not actually thinking through, oh, you know, actually, may would be a really good time for me to talk with this guy. No, they're just trying to get you off the phone. And. And what you've done by agreeing with that slap reaction that they gave you is you pattern interrupt, and you diffuse that fight or flight response to get them to actually listen to you. If you don't do that, you have zero chance of actually booking the meeting. So you're right. Step one, diffuse by agreeing what happens next.

Step two is not to just continue agreeing and hang up and never call them again. That might be what Nick does, but that's not what you're going to do today. Because step two is to incentivize conversation. And there are a couple of reasons you want to get them to keep talking. Reason number one, you don't have enough information about the objection to handle it effectively. So step number one is you grab a little bit more information about the objection. But more importantly, step number two is you want to keep playing in this character of I totally get it, your objection is completely valid. Could you tell me a little bit more about that? You want them to get it out of their system and now you're creating a conversation versus before they were just giving you a reaction. But what you can't do is you can't just agree with I'm not interested by saying why aren't you interested? There's no way Nick is going to answer that question. There's no way he's going to tell me because it's an open ended question that frankly pries into his business decisions. And it makes me feel like I'm interrogating why he has that objection when I literally just agreed with it.

I don't have a reason for not being interested because I didn't think through that at all. My not interested was a knee jerk reaction. And so when you ask me, nick, why aren't you interested? I don't have anything to give you and so I'm going to shut down and say I'm just not interested. Click. You have to feed me reasons for not being interested, which is what you do.

Exactly. You need to incentivize them to share more and then you need to make it easy for them to share more. So I'm going to say this, Nick, just so no one reaches out again, could you give me a sense? Is it A, B or C? You use a bucket question or a multiple choice question to give them potential reasons why they might not be interested. And what that does is number one, it makes it easy for them to reply. And then number two, it demonstrates that you've seen other people in their situation, you really did hear their objection and you're just trying to understand a little bit more as to why you really should never cold call them again.

So what we've done here is we're giving them some multiple choice options so that they pile onto us to make us go away even harder. And then we're actually going to take all of that momentum that they threw at us for why they weren't interested. And we're going to wax on and wax off just like Mr. Miyagi would, and use what they threw at us here about why they weren't interested to do the last piece of Mr. Miyagi method, which is selling the test drive.

That's correct. This is where a lot of sellers make the mistake of trying to sell their product. They remove the pressure of the sale by agreeing with it. They understand the objection. They get the prospect talking, but then they go right back to the pitch. They're like, hey, you still want to buy this thing? Here's why it's valuable. And they're like, you didn't really agree with me. And what you need to realize is this is still only a couple minutes into the cold call. You still don't have their trust. So what you need to do is you just get them to take a test drive. You sell the test drive, you don't sell the car. Here's what that actually means. You need to identify what will they get out of the meeting with you, even if they don't buy. The way I would sell the test drive on something like, no budget is. I would say, Nick, my guess is you're not even going to buy this thing. But would you be completely against taking a look? Not for this budgeting cycle, but just because the folks who usually are able to buy things are the ones who have their wish list ready. What I'm doing is, I'm saying, nick, I know you want to buy something, and I know you can't buy something, so let's just, like, have your wish list ready, and then if we get lucky, together.

Great. Armand, I'd like to make this a little more real for our audience, and I'd like us to do some role play of this.

Okay, Mr. Sales Manager, so let's assume that I've already given my opener and I've given you my value proposition, and you've heard that, and now you're about to give me the first objection. Let's go. Three, two, one.

Look, Armand, I appreciate the call, but now's not good. Give me a call in six months. All right?

Totally makes sense. Nick. Look, this one's on me. You probably would have called me if you were ready now, so I shouldn't assume you were ready today. Just so I don't sound like a total goon when I reach back out to you, was there something you had in mind in six months, or is the team just, like, crazy busy?

We're just. We're not making Any changes until our new CMO starts?

I wouldn't want to do that myself either. So I'm going to write that down. New CMO starting in six months. Completely get it.

Yep.

Hey, crazy idea. And you can actually tell me this is the worst thing in the world. I know you're not going to buy anything now, but usually when a new CMO comes in, they sort of want to try some new things. And so would it be the worst idea if I showed you around, just so you know what's out there? And when she comes in, you can give her a sense of what her options are to do. Media, sponsorships, partnerships, things like that. Break, role play. So what I'm doing there is Nick was coming in hot. He's like, not now. Call me in six months. And honestly, folks, most of the time, this is a lie. He's just busy. He doesn't really care. And so I agreed. I'm playing along. And he actually gave me a real reason. He said, yeah, the CMO isn't going to be on board until then. And so I was like, okay, what can I give him now? Even if he doesn't buy, that would make him look good in front of the new boss. And that's what it means to sell the test drive, is I'm not getting Nick to think about buying this thing now. I'll get him to buy it later on when we're on the call. But the thing that he gave me was more information about the objection. And I'm actually using the objection as a reason for him to take the test drive today.

I want to point out three extremely important things that you are doing in your immediate response to that objection of, hey, call me in six months. And what the salesperson does is they immediately punch back. What Armand did instead was he agreed to totally get it. You probably would have called me. We've now lowered their defenses, and all of that contributed to me as the prospect feeling safe to give him more information. So now that we understand the Miyagi method, agree, incentivize, and sell the test drive, we have everything that we need to overcome individual objections, and that is the good news. The bad news is we're likely going to have to overcome multiple objections on any given cold call if we actually want to book the meeting.

So now let's jump into the three types of objections and let's give you two examples of each of them. The first type of objection are dismissive objections. Basically, anything that isn't a real objection, it's a brush off. Or a SWAT is a dismissive objection. And so for that reason, our approach with these objection is as follows. We're going to be what's called disarmingly blunt. You want to have the opposite equal reaction. You want to break the. The tension when you agree with the objection, and then you want to use the incentive portion to get the real objection.

So look at that.

Nick, I think we're ready to handle. I'm not interested. And you're going to make me cold call you again. And so let's assume again, I've done my opener, I've done my value pop, and a three, two, one, a ring, ring.

I'm not interested.

Shoot, this one's totally my bad. I guess either my pitch was really crummy or you would have reached out to us if you were interested.

Hey, hey.

Look, Nick, just so I can get a little bit better here, could you be brutally honest with me? Is it because you've got a solution? Is it you're not thinking about this problem at all? Or is it that you just hate getting cold calls and it's okay if it's the last one?

We're working with sales goon.

You're working with sales goon.

All right, break.

So we're going to pause right there. And the reason for that is we got the real objection there. We got the competitor. Sales goon was the competitor. And we're going to save that to the third category of objection, which is competitors and existing solutions. But that means I've effectively handled I'm not interested.

If you actually go back and listen to what Armand did there, he's giving me a menu of reasons for why I might not be interested. Because again, if he just asks me, nick, well, you don't even really know what I'm selling yet. Why are you not interested? I don't have a reason. Because this is a dismissive objection that does not come from a place of intellect or reason. And so if he just tries to inquire about the swat, there's nothing there. There's no substance there. He needs to present me with those menu of choices so that I can take one. Otherwise, the call is just going to break and I'm going to hang up.

So let's assume that we got past I'm not interested. But this one's going to be even worse. Let's say that I give Nick my opener, and I haven't even gotten to my value prop, or what we call a problem prop. I open and Nick says, where'd you get my Phone number. The goal here is going to change a little bit. I actually need to get back to getting permission to explain what I do. In other words, if you've heard us talk about the permission based cold call opener before, I basically need to get back to. To that. So let's do it again, Nick. And a three, two, one. Ring, ring.

Where'd you get my phone number?

Shoot. Look, it's a. It's a contact database called Banana Leads. Look, it sounds like you really don't want to get calls on this number, so I'd honestly be happy to send you a screenshot of what they have on file just so you can go chase them down and not me. And you know what's out there. Look at. I'm going to be honest. Like, I don't love making these cold calls. And my guess is you don't love getting them either. Just so no one calls you again for my company. Could I at least tell you why I reached out to you specifically? And then you can tell me if it makes sense to buzz off and send you that screenshot.

I guess I'd be open to that. Nice. So what's happening is Armand picked up the phone, he called, he gave his opener, and instead of the prospect going along with a cold call, they smacked him in the face with that dismissive objection. And so we're apologizing. Oh, my gosh, we're playing dead. We're letting them kick us when we're down. So you're overco overcoming this objection by being disarmingly blunt. You're just giving it to them real, which is something that they don't expect. And you're doing it in four places. First, you're telling them the truth. You're saying, I found your phone number on a contact database called Banana Leads. Then what you're doing is you're actually helping them pile onto it by saying, hey, I'll actually send you a screenshot of what it looks like in this database so you can make it go away. 3. You're telling them you don't love making these calls. And you probably know they don't love getting them either. Oh, my gosh. What salesperson is actually going to tell the truth and say that? But now they're starting to realize that there is a human being on the other end of the line, and you are that human being. So maybe they should hear you out. Which is what you're going to ask for in your last disarmingly blunt piece. Which is when you're saying, hey, Could I at least tell you why I called you specifically? Just so nobody bugs you anymore and we can decide what we do from there.

Those are the first two examples for dismissive objections. And again, if you want all 18 objections, we have scripts and talk tracks for each of them. Go check that out in the show notes. Let's move on to situational objections. This includes things like no budget, too expensive, I have no resources, I'm busy, and all these different product objections, frankly. In other words, something between your product and their situation does not match up. And the key here is they're objecting to the situation they're in. And so what you have to do is you actually have to remove the situation entirely. You need to remove the pressure of the sale, take the sale off the table. You're basically going to say you're not even going to think about spending money right now. You're going to remove that entirely and you're just going to try to get them in the car. So let's do that for no budget. And three, two, one. Ring, ring.

Sorry, Armand, we just don't have any budget right now.

I totally get it, Nick. Nowadays, it's frankly hard enough to keep a tool, let alone add something new. Look, just so no one calls you again, is it that you're at a budget for this fiscal year, or is it that you get put through the ringer every single time you try to buy something?

It's a bit of both, honestly. We're. We're pretty tight on things right now.

I appreciate you opening up here, and I know it's frankly pretty hard to justify any spend. And look, my guess is you're probably not going to buy this thing right now. Question for you, like, if budget ever frees up, the people that usually get it at least have a directional sense of what they'd want. Would you be completely against taking a look? Not for now. But just so you know, it's out there and you have a wish list if nothing else.

So what Armand did here, he's trying to give me some options to get me to open up. And I did. I said, it's a little bit of both, which is not really an answer, but it at least gave Armand an inch of space because he sought to understand the objection, but before trying to be understood. And he tried to be understood with how he sold the test drive. And if you listen back to what he said, he pushed away, you're probably not going to buy this thing right now. But then he gave them a reason for taking that test Drive. AKA he sold it.

All right, now, let's assume that Nick is a busy guy. He's pretending to be a busy bee. He has all these fake meetings on his calendar. He's going to tell me he has no bandwidth. Let's roll it again. And three, two, one. Ring, ring.

Armand, we're just stretched way too thin. I really can't take this on. I'm sorry.

Totally, Nick. I hear you. You know, honestly, like, every marketer that I talk to nowadays, they literally have three jobs, so I don't even know how you're doing one, let alone three. And so, like, I would hate to bug you again when you're already strapped for time. You mind me asking, is this just like a temporary busy phase, or does it look like you're going to be swamped until 2032?

It's more like 2030 at this point, but yeah. I mean, this is just not a good time, man.

Ah, good. Well, just to give you some breathing room, I'm gonna pencil in the contract start date for January 1, 2032. So I'm being real generous here. But look, Nick, I know you're really swamped, and I'm gonna be honest. Like, most of our most successful customers are really lean teams being asked to do more with less, and frankly, way more than is reasonable. My guess is you're probably, probably still not going to buy this thing. But could I at least show you how we've helped other lean teams like yours get some time back, if for nothing else? So you know what's out there, and you've at least considered some other options.

There's two things that I want to point out you did here. One, you have showed the human on the other side of the phone by using your ridiculous sense of humor. Oh, are you going to be strapped for the next decade? I'll pencil the contract to start in 2032. Okay, that's business humor. It's not that funny, Armand, but it's enough to break the. Wait. This isn't some generic telemarketer calling me. This is an actual person. And when the person that you're calling realizes that you are a human being, it'll actually be a little bit nicer. But what created the space, Armand, to be able to come up with these witty things on the spot was that you actually slowed down. A lot of times, prospects will try to rush us off the phone, and. And they speed us up to try to get us to go away, and the temptation is to be like, oh, gosh, I've only Got a second? Let me handle that objection. And talk faster. When you slowed down the tempo, it actually gave your brain a second to think about those putting your quotes here. Funny things that got you to break that veil of telemarketer to real person.

So let's go to the final category, which is existing solutions. They're either doing it in house or they're using a competitor. What's tricky is you may or may not know who that competitor is. So notice with this one, our approach is a little bit different. This isn't us entirely removing the pressure of the sale because they're so freaked out about budget or whatever it is. And what you need to do is you need to rip one hole of doubt in the competitor, one hole of doubt in their existing solution with what we call a trap question. What is the one thing that their existing solution doesn't do? And ask them a question about it. But watch closely on the delivery on this, because if you do this the wrong way, it can come off as a leading sleazy sales question. So let's make this example even a little bit more tactical. Nick's going to tell me that he's doing an in house solution. So he's a CFO currently and he's managing all of his equity and stock option management programs on spreadsheets. So let's do it. 3, 2, 1. Ring, ring.

Arman, we're good. I. I manage our equity myself.

Oh, look at you, super cfo. Well, I honestly don't hear that all the time, but I should have assumed that you've got the spreadsheet wizard skills for days and this wasn't going to be interesting. So honestly, it doesn't really sound like it's a pain. Just so no one else calls you again, I'm honestly curious, how do you guys go about doing your evaluations for those?

I think we use an external firm.

Interesting. I know this sounds odd, but we actually manage both your cap table, your equity and your valuations. And between the two of them, the cost alone might be worth taking a look. I'm going to be honest, it sounds like you've got a lot of good stuff going. You probably already have a good vendor. I don't think you're going to change, but would you be completely against me showing you around just so you know what's out there?

Nice. So what we did was that trap question was you said, hey, it doesn't sound like equity is a problem, but out of curiosity, how are you doing your valuations? You knew that that was Something that somebody who manages their equity themselves probably isn't able to do. So that's one where you actually had to have that in your mind and maybe do some prep as you were making your cold calls. And then I gave you that inch of space. And what I thought you did well at the end, end there was you didn't sell too hard. The way that you said interesting I thought was really powerful. And I'd encourage people to go back and listen to that. It was like you were contemplating in real time and you were having this idea of, well, this might be worth taking a look at. You did a good job of selling me without being salesy. It gets a little trickier though, if someone doesn't tell you what they're doing. They keep their cards a little closer to their chest and you've got to pull out the competitor for them to know which trap question to ask. So why don't we do the last one, which is when they don't immediately reveal that competitor.

Let's go back to I'm selling 30 minutes to President's Club sponsorships. All right, so three, two, one. Ring, ring.

Yeah, Armand, we're already working with another podcast, Nick.

I should have figured. You're already getting your name out there. Your brand looks really, really good. It must be Sales Goon, Rev Monkey or Commission Cam, right?

Yeah, we're using Sales Goon. We're sponsoring them.

Oh, the goons. I love Sales Goon. They're a great group, man. Look, it honestly rarely makes sense to switch off of them and it sounds like you're in good hands. So just so we don't bug you again, you seem like a pretty data driven marketer. How do they go about tracking the results of their podcast ads?

You know, I mean, it's podcasts, you sort of don't know, but they sometimes send over report about telling us how many downloads their show got. It's honestly just we know, it's awareness.

I was wondering too, because that's a problem that we've thought about a lot as well. And look again, we're not in the business of replacing Sales Goon or anything like that, but some of their customers admittedly have chosen to work with us. And the reason for that is we're actually able to funnel your demand from the podcast to the webinars, to the newsletter to you. So you actually know where your spend is going and you can quantify some of this stuff. Would you be completely against us showing you how we do that if for no other reason? So you can work with sales goon a little bit more effectively so that you know where your spend's going.

So let's see what you did there. One, you gave that menu of options. You said, is it sales goon, Rev monkey, or commission cam? First of all, those are ridiculous names, but I love it because it opened me up. Show that you're an insider by presenting options, and even if you get one of those three wrong, they'll probably tell you the fourth versus if you were just outright asked. The other thing you did well, you didn't badmouth your competitor. The best way to lose credibility as a salesperson is to start trashing the goons and saying they're terrible. And our podcast is way bigger right away. You started by saying they're great, which is sort of like that agreeing piece of the Miyagi method where you lower their defenses by saying they're awesome. You made a good choice. And so what you're doing is the sale was never too hard. You were constantly agreeing and validating my decision as a prospect, but you were saying, hey, there is a benefit to you at least getting some of this information from me.

That's right. So, folks, those are your two existing solution objections, and let's take it all the way from the top. So what do we cover today? Number one, we talked about how Nick hates animals and why most objections are actually reactions. Number two, we talked about the intro to the Mr. Miyagi method. The three steps agree with the objection to remove the pressure of the sale, incentivize conversation to get them sharing more about the objection, and then number three, sell the test drive. In other words, what will they get out of meeting with you even if they don't buy? And then from there, we went through the three types of objections. For dismissive objections, you want to be disarmingly blunt, and we handled not interested. Where'd you get my number? And there are other objections that you can find in the show notes like call me in six months, and other sorts of brush offs for situational objections like no budget, too expensive, busy yada, yada. We talked about removing the pressure of the situation and removing the pressure of the sale entirely. And then lastly, we talked about existing solution objections, which include solutions, competitors, and also people who are just stuck in contracts. So at the end of this, folks, keep in mind, you should not memorize all the scripts that we're going to give you. But I would definitely go and take a look at them so that you can practice the framework and listen for how you can agree, incentivize and sell the test drive and use those scripts as applications for the Miyagi method. Alrighty, Nick, how can people help us out here?

The good news is, once I got my buddy from the ASPCA to leave me alone, I was able to make pretty good progress on writing the 30 minutes to President's Club book on Cold calling. And folks, if you learned even a tidbit of information in this episode, I think you might like the book that Armand and I are working on. We have put a tremendous amount of time into that. It's one thing to do a 30 minute podcast episode about objections, it's another to spend. And we probably spent 42 hours on that chapter alone in the book. And we've got all sorts of other stuff on openers, value propositions, AKA problem propositions, how to be a dialing machine and gatekeepers, etc. And so if you learned something in this, you might want to check out the show notes. You can get access to the book or pre order the book in the show notes depending upon when you're listening to this episode. And at very least go get that objection handling cheat sheet that we got for you. It's free. See you next week on the show.