#345 - Sell Playbook: The Definitive Objection Handling Guide (Jason Bay, Outbound Squad)

All right, so today, what we're going to talk about, I'm super excited for this topic because there's two people I couldn't think of to jam with better than this on this topic. It's in how to handle any objection on a cold call. So we're literally in this call today. We're going to talk about objection handling. We've got some cool frameworks that we want to share with you, and then we're systematically going to go through every single objection that you could get over the phone from a mindset standpoint before we talk about tactics and frameworks. Nick, when you make cold calls, what is your mindset and objective when you're going into the call and you know that you're going to get objections like, what part of this do you think is a mindset component? And what is going through your head?

So I think the reality of cold calling is it might be part of our job as salespeople, but for our prospects, it's an entirely unwelcome interruption to their day. We are choosing to say, hey, I'm going to interrupt these people to try to start a conversation with it. That's part of our job. We have to do it. But we've got to keep in mind the experience for our prospect. They're not asking for this interruption. And if you pretend that your sales call isn't an interruption and you act like things are totally perfectly normal, it makes you look like every other nameless, faceless telemarketer out there. And for your prospect, they don't want to talk to every salesperson in the world, and especially the nameless, faceless telemarketer. And so you'll often hear things early on a cold call like, I'm not interested. Send me some information. We're all set. And the really important thing to remember here is those especially early dismissive objections that we get have nothing to do with what we are selling and everything to do with. They're an objection to our interruption. Your prospect. When they say, oh, you know, we've got it handled, they're not sitting there thinking through what your product does and what your pitch was. They're just saying, I'm not interested in your cold call. And so you've got to recognize that those objections, those dismissive objections are almost always going to happen. It's very rare that you book a meeting with zero objection. And so just like you memorize your opener, you memorize your pitch. You also should be ready and prepared for a third how you're going to respond to your objections, your mindset going in should be, you know it's coming and it's not about your product. And you've got to be prepared to handle that initial swat that you get from your prospect.

Yes.

So love it. Nick, your prospect isn't doing this every day, every hour of the day like you are. So taking that in consideration, Armand, can you comment on this idea that just because you get an objection doesn't mean it is a rejection? Or that just because someone says that they're using your competitor's solution doesn't mean that the call has to stop there? Can you comment on that?

Yeah. Objections are a good sign. And the reason that object good sign is that you gave your opener and your problem proposition or your value proposition or your pitch. The fact that you even made it this far into the call is farther than most sellers make it. So you're 60 seconds into the call and you're going to get one of three types of objections. You're going to get dismissive objections like not interested, call me in six months, send me some information that are sort of like swats. You'll get situational objections that are like, I have no budget, I don't have bandwidth, you know something about my situation and your product isn't lining up. Or you'll get objections around their existing solutions, meaning they have something in place or they have an in house solution. Two of those types give you something to work with. If someone is saying I have no budget, there's an implicit statement that says like, hey, this, this wasn't the worst pitch in the world. But the first objection that I thought of is the thought of paying for this is actually the problem. And so if I can disarm that and not have to worry about fighting them on the pitch or the product, if I can handle that initial resistance and get on the same side of the table them, like if someone says I have no budget, if I can say like, hey, you're probably not going to buy this thing, but just so you know it's out there, are you open to taking a look just in case budget opens up down the road? To me, I'm already working with someone who's a little bit of the way there. Now the tricky ones are the ones where it's like not interested or hang up immediately. The folks who give you no rope to work with whatsoever. But usually objections actually give you a little bit of rope to work with. And so all you need to do is agree with the objections and use the objections to draw More information out of your prospect and turn action into a conversation. And that's to the meeting.

Well, Armand, that's one of the other things that you saw with the gong data that we pulled when we were doing this book, which is the longer your conversation goes with a prospect, the higher likelihood you have of actually booking a meeting. And so if you can just get even some back and forth going, even. Even if it's around their objection, they start to realize that, oh, like, you're an actual person who's not just, like, schlepping a used car warranty or a predatory student loan. Like, you're a person who gets their space. There's far more likelihood that they will agree to a meeting with you. So really good call out there.

The thing that before we get into the Mr. Miyagi framework that I want to share is the objective when you're objection handling is not to handle the objection. The objective when you're objection handling is genuine dialogue. How do I get to a place where this person just feels comfortable being honest to me? And a big part of that is disarming them, which we'll talk about how to do. So let's talk and dig into the framework.

Alrighty. So as Nick said, and as I said earlier, most objections are not real objections. They're reactions. And this is the mistake that most people make is most people make the mistake of trying to handle the objection instead of trying to handle the reaction. To my point earlier, usually their reaction actually gives you something a little bit to work with. And so if you can redirect that momentum of the objection, like Mr. Miyagi waxes a punch off or waxes it on, then you can use that objection to create a conversation. So there are three steps to the Miyagi method. The first step is you want to agree with the objection. You want to agree with the objection before you handle it at all. If someone says, I have no budget, you might say, totally get it, Jason. Look, honestly, nowadays it's hard enough to keep a tool, let alone buy something new. Or if someone says, look, I appreciate the call, but I'm not interested, you might say, jason, I totally get it, man. Honestly, you probably reached out to me if you were, because my guess is you have most of the stuff taken care of. When I do that, two things happen. Number one, you're like, okay, like, thank God, it's not going to sell me. But then number two, I establish myself as a human being who's actually capable of listening to you as a human. So that's Step number one, and if you can practice one thing, folks, it's laughing and agreeing with objections. Step number two is I want to lean into that even more. I want to get them to pile onto that objection even more. And the way that I'm going to do that is I'm going to incentivize them to share more about the objection. So, continuing the no Budget example, I'm going to say, hey, Jason, just so no one calls you from my team again, or hey, Jason, just so I really make sure that isn't worth either of our time, would you mind giving me a sense? Is it because Budget is completely out for this cycle, or is it that anytime you try to buy anything, you've got to go through 7,000 business cases and you get put through the ringer? That's an example for no Budget. And the way that I incentivized you to there is I said, hey, just so no one else calls you again, which is what you want. And then I said, is it this, this or this? And then there, once you're talking and you're sharing more about the fact that, oh yeah, it's so freaking hard to buy a tool nowadays, or oh, yeah, Budget's completely out for this cycle, but later on in the year it might come up. But right now we have not. Now, what I can do is I can remove the pressure of the sale entirely and continue to show you that I'm listening, but then use your answer to do what I call selling the test drive. So, Jason, let's just pretend that you're like, all right, Budget is out for this cycle, but even though you don't have the funds to buy a car, I'm going to be like, hey, you want to take the test drive? I'm going to say, honestly, Jason, you're probably not going to buy this thing now. Oftentimes, the folks who end up getting Budget are the ones who at least know what's what, 1, 2, and 3 on their list. So I guess would you be completely against taking a look? Not for now, but just so you know it's out there in case Budget happens to open up, I want you.

To take a look.

Even if Budget doesn't come up, or even if you aren't going to buy something today and then you're in the car, that's when I'm going to convince you.

We just have really bad experiences with 30 NPC in the past. And, Armand, I just don't think that we could ever do business with you guys again.

I would Agree with the objection. Yeah, that guy's. Nick's voice is just horrendous. I would be in the same exact boat as you.

So a couple things stick out to me. The laugh and agree. There's certain things that are. It's almost Pavlovian, right. When you get an objection. Just like when you're. You're trained as a God. I hate to compare us to dogs and training dogs, but when you train a dog, it's like when they hear certain sounds, they pick up on these cues. And when they hear the dinner bell or they hear the drawer open, like they know there's a treat in there. You're almost doing the same thing for yourself here, where if you could just train that simple habit like you talked about, anytime I get an objection, I just kind of chuckle. Oh, totally. Or, hey, I totally hear you. Any version of that is like, if you train yourself to do that, it has the biggest, like, disarming effect to be very casual and almost laugh off the objection a bit. The other thing that I love is the incentive, just so no one calls you again. Again, if you just did these two things every single time you handle an objection, even if you didn't follow exactly what we share with you today, you would be 10 times better over the phone, especially in the cold calls. Because the way I compare a cold call to a sales call is it's really like driving a sports car 150 miles an hour on the freeway versus driving 50 miles an hour on the local highway. Got to think way quicker on your feet. And if you have these, like, kind of stock phrases that you use and go to moves, it makes it way easier to buy, like, a second or two for you to kind of gather your thoughts. Nick, you were going to add something.

Well, that was sort of what I was talking about earlier, where I think most salespeople who are cold calling with some regularity know that they. They probably need to have their opener down cold, and they need to have their pitch. We call it a problem proposition. A lot of people call it a pitch down cold. The third piece that you've got to. You're right. Have as a stock phrase is your response to the objection where when you laugh one, you show like you're comfortable and you're not rattled, and it's a total pattern interrupt. And then when you're agreeing with that objection, it's totally ratcheting down the sales pressure, which is why they're trying to get off the phone in the first place. You interrupted them. They're feeling the sales pressure because they feel cornered. You totally take that pressure away. And so, like, the way you get good at this is you literally just practice being like, shoot, that was totally my bad. Like, I should have assumed you had something in place. And if you can just get that memorized. So almost no matter what they say, you can just respond with that. It buys you a second to think of, like, how you'll actually then respond in overcoming the objection. So literally, it should be, shoot, I should have expected you had something in place and that should come out of your mouth effortlessly. You memorize it.

Basically, the thing I love about cold calling, if there is a thing to love, and I'm not one of those weirdos that just loves picking up the phone and calling people, okay, like, it's, it's work for me too. And I've been cold calling at one form or another for over 15 years. The thing that is so great about cold calling is how predictable it is. Like, you know exactly how a cold call is going to go. You're going to get lucky every now and then where a prospect's like, yeah, I got some time. What's up? But most of the time you're going to get an objection, and you know it's probably going to be three or four of the most common objections. The not interested. So the not right now. Hopping into a meeting, I'm sending an email. You can literally practice and rehearse and get really, really good at these. That's the thing I love about cold calling, is the predictable element of it. You want to walk us through what, what is a dismissive objection versus situational versus existing solutions? And more importantly, why is it good to think about objections in terms of, like, categories?

The reason you want to think about them in categories is the way that you handle the objection. All dismissive objections, you're basically going to handle the same. A dismissive objection is a reaction and a rejection to the interruption, not about what you sell. And what you need to do with those is you actually have to agree. Super, super hard to wake them up and be like, yo, this is not your run of the mill cold call. And so you almost match their ridiculousness. If they're like, is this a cold call? You respond and you're like, yeah, it's going so, so poorly right now. Look, I know nobody likes cold calls, and honestly, I don't love having to make these, but I promise I did some research on you, and this isn't just a random dial out of the blue. And I'm wondering if I can get half a minute to share what I found and why I called and then you can totally hang up on me if it doesn't make sense. From there, I'll let Arman talk about situational and solution because I think he has a bit more expertise on the exact style on them.

I want to double click on something you said and it's they're objecting to being cold called.

Right.

They're not objecting because they know what your solution is and they have one already. They're literally objecting to being cold called and interrupted by someone that they didn't ask to call them. Acknowledgement is what they need.

Yes.

So what you did a really good job there is you just acknowledged without lowering your status and being like apologetic and saying sorry. So there's a big difference I want to clarify between those. Acknowledgment. Your prospects need acknowledgment, not apologies.

Well then I'll give you one more thing to plus one what you just said, Jason, which is when they snap at you and they bark at you. Is this a cold call? That's an emotional reaction. That's their like fight or flight going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding in their head. And what a lot of salespeople try to do is when they get hit with a dismissive objection, they try to logically overcome that objection. But you've literally like triggered the amygdala stuff in the prospect's brain where they're not listening to what you're saying, they're feeling what's going on. And if you respond to is this a cold call with well, I'm not sure yet. I did some research and I pulled a list to find people that I thought I could help. Like, they're not listening to that and you sound like every other seller and they're going to just push you away more. And so the key here is you have to actually hit them in the emotional gut before you can get their brain to listen.

Arman, objections.

So if I give you the one liner approach for each of these categories of objections. Dismissive objections. Agree hard and get the real. It's a swat. They say not interested, get the real objection. Situational objections. If someone's saying no budget, no resources, I don't have time for this, whatever it is, they're feeling the pressure of the sale. They're not actually objecting to your product. They're objecting to the thought of buying anything because the thought of buying something is so much work. And so what you want to do is you want to pressure of the sale entirely. Like what we did with I have no budget. And so with I have no. You want to say something like, hey, you're probably not going to buy this anyway, but hey, you at least want to know what's out there. With existing solutions, this is probably the trickiest of them all. So with existing solutions, you've got to know your top four or five competitors and you want to have one trap question in mind for each of them that gets them to think. So I'm going to say, for example, if let's pretend that I was selling a 30 MPC sponsorship and I'm cold calling Gong and Gong does not currently sponsor us. They sponsor. I need to agree. And I say, hey, honestly, sales goon is a great group and it rarely makes sense to switch off them just so I make sure that it's really not worth either of our time. I'm curious, how do you go about tracking who's actually listening to their is it this, this or this? What I want to do is I want to ask one trap question that pokes a hole in their existing solution or when I was selling pave, so we sold a compensation solution and other solutions could integrate with a customer's HR systems. And so the trap question that I would ask is I would be like, hey, it probably doesn't make sense for you to switch compensation planners now that you have one. Just so I make sure that no one else calls you, I'm curious, how do you go about making sure that the data from your H R and your equity systems matches what's inside of your compensation planner? And so by asking a trap question, you poke a hole in their existing solution that gets them to think and also you demonstrate industry expertise. That's how you handle dismissive, situational and existing solutions.

Let's get to the good stuff, you guys. So I figured what we could do here to have a little bit of fun is I can just give the lobby objection towards one of you guys and that if I have a different take on it, I'm happy to kind of role play that and share it as well. So dismissive objections. These are the ones that to Armand's point earlier, what I love is you had like a little kind of cheat, cheap kind of way to think about what you need to do. You needed to agree really hard and get the real objection. Nick, not interested, man. Appreciate the call though.

You're all good. Jason, you know what? I should have figured that you would have had something in place. Hey, Just so nobody from my team bugs you again, is it that you already know what we do and this just, like, isn't a priority right now, or is it that I just called you at the worst possible time and you're not a huge fan of cold calls and it's totally fine if it's that last one. Now, what you'll give me is you'll give me one of two if you tell me, hey, I just don't like cold calls or this is a bad time, I'm going to go to the line that I used earlier, which is like, hey, look, I really appreciate you being upfront. I don't love having to make these calls, and my guess is you don't love getting them either. But I promise I did my research on you and I called you for a reason. And I'm wondering if I can get just 30 seconds to share what I found and why I called you. And then, look, you can totally hang up on me if it doesn't make sense from there. If they go the other route and they're like, oh, we know what we do, I can start to explore that and agree with whatever they said about my solution that they thought wasn't a fit. And I'm going to explore that and try to have a conversation there.

Love it, Nick. For me, I like to demonstrate that I know what they do for a job really quickly in the call, and I like to do that when I. Objection. Handle. So the way that I usually handle this sounds something like this. Oh, hey, yeah, no problem. Nick, I am curious before I let you go. The number one thing that we see folks like you worried about right now is downtime that gets created when you have to track certificates manually on a spreadsheet. And it's just such a pain in the butt. Is that something you're responsible for or am I totally barking off the wrong tree?

So, folks, more ridiculous the objection, more angry the objection, more ridiculous your counter response to be. So with dismissive objections, you want to do what's called being disarmingly blunt, which is if someone says, not interested, that's not that bad. I'll say, totally get it. If someone's, where'd you get my phone number? Now counterbalance that angry action with an equal opposite humorous reaction to break the tension. So you say, where'd you get my phone number? I'm going to say, man, this one's totally my bad. I must have screwed this one up. It's from this provider called Banana Leads, and I could literally send you A screenshot of where your number is, what it looks like and what they have on you just so you can go chase it down. And honestly, I'd love to get some tips from you because I don't know how you've avoided cold calls. Honestly, man, I would hate to interrupt you again. And I promise there's a reason that I actually reached out to you. Could I get 30 seconds to tell you why I called? And then you can totally hang up the phone on me after that. And so I'm going to offer to send you a screenshot that's going to one, show that I'm comfortable. Two, I'm agreeing with the objection. Three, it gives you a reason to stay on the line. And then I'm going to pivot back to my permission based opener because this is what's called a pre pitch dismissive objection. You might do a cold call opener. And then they're like, wait, where, where'd you get my number? You don't even know what I do yet. So I can't even do the full Miyagi yet. I've got to go back to my permission based opener. Yeah.

So we're all a fan, I think, on this call of just being honest with where you got their phone number. I think the other key thing too is to not be overly apologetic about it. It's like I, I kind of have the mindset. It's like, dude, it's 2024. Like people get calls on their cell phone and I just probably caught this person in the middle of a bad day. It's all good. Where it's like, oh, hey, my bad. I actually just totally candid. I got your number from a, a platform called xyz. I'd be happy to send you some information afterwards and how you can get your number removed, but the reason I was giving you a call is. And then you go right into the reason for your call or do the permission based opener like he had talked about. Either of those will work really well. So I think another one the send me some information. AKA you know, send me an email. Some variation of that. Let's go. And Nick, I'll just kick this one your way. Nick, you want to just send me an email?

So I'm going to actually steal the approach that you did with this one. Jason, I. You made a post about this the other day and I really, really liked. So you go, can you send me an email? I'm like, totally. I'd be happy to do that. Let me actually put something together for you. Later today. Can I ask you one question just to make sure what I send over isn't totally and utterly irrelevant? You're probably going to say yes to that question and I'm going to go cool. So the reason I called you and what I was thinking of sending over is I assumed that you were like a lot of the insurance defense law firm CFOs that I've been talking to recently who's been really, really frustrated with the increase in deductions and rejections and appeals on the bills that you send to insurance carrier clients. And I was going to send you some stuff about some of the things that we've been doing with Scadden and DLA Piper to help them cut down on those rejections. But, like, if you're not even dealing with that at all, I probably shouldn't send that email over. I directly stole this from you, Jason. You made a great post about it the other day. What I'm doing is saying, yes, I'm going to do that, but it's giving me another opportunity to pitch the problem that I solve.

I think the key there is the thinking behind this is you already did the hardest part. There's a 5% chance to even get the person on the phone. What do you guys think the odds are of booking a meeting when you send a person an email? One out of a hundred people I send the follow up email to actually will book time with me, so I want to book time with them while I have them on the call. So I love that first piece of let's dig in and do more discovery if they're willing. Hey, before I send that email over, you mind if I like ask you real quick? A lot of what we're hearing right now is that folks are doing a lot of manual certificate tracking on spreadsheets and it keeps leading to downtime because they don't get notified when certs are expiring. How does that resonate with you? What are you seeing? Get some intel. Hey, you know, Nick, I could totally send over an email to you, but I think it would actually be more useful and valuable for you if we took maybe 10 or 15 minutes. I can show you how customers like X, Y and Z are handling that exact problem if you're not interested. At that point, we, we part ways, friends. And if I get resistance to that? I learned this one from a client of mine. Okay, all right, how about this? I'll send you the email. Let's put five minutes on the calendar, same time tomorrow. You can totally decline the Event after you look at the email, if you don't like it. And if you do like it, we keep the time. How about that? And that's something you can pull out of your back pocket, like, almost for any objection. But this one's, like, very layered and nuanced. I want to do slight digging and discovery. I want to ask for the meeting again. And if I get rejected one more time, I'm just going to say, hey, let me put some time on the calendar. You totally decline it if you don't like what you see.

This is a great example of when. When a prospect says, send me some information, they're giving you something to work with. When you press on that a little bit and you're like, hey, honestly, I could explain this better over a call and back. And they're like, no, no, I'd rather. Really rather see the information now. You have the grounds to say, hey, let's make a deal here that take the time, personalize the information, call out explicitly what you should look at. And I'm going to drop a calendar invite on your calendar just to make sure that you actually read it. And if you don't like what, you decline it from there. And now that there's. Now there's some actual goodwill in the exchange because they said, no, no, no, I do you to go and do this work for me.

It's actually a negotiation thing you're almost doing, Armand. There's like a give. Forget there. You're like, okay, cool. I'm going to put together something really custom for you. But in exchange, schedule time and then decline if you don't like it. You have the right to ask because you are doing something for them.

Let's. I think one more that would be good to do here is the not my responsibility. Let's say that you get this objection from someone and it's like, it's not my responsibility. But let's say they have the job title of someone whose responsibility it should be. And oftentimes I find the prospect here, they might totally have a misunderstanding of what it is that you're reaching out about. I'll kick this one your way, Armand. How do you handle this one? You know, hey, that's actually not my responsibility, Armand. I don't really handle, you know, like payroll and, you know, stuff like that.

Totally. This one's totally on me, Jason. Honestly, it's sometimes a 50, 50 chance where things like running merit cycles and whatnot, financial falls, either in the head of People Ops court or in the head of hrs just so I make sure I don't call the wrong person again, I know you run people ops. Would it be in Jane's court who runs HR over there? And so what I did there, the reason that Jason gave me that reaction is because I restated the problem solve or the area that we're focused in. And Jason realized, no, that's actually my court.

This is one of the any times on calls where people are like, they weren't paying attention when you. They picked up the phone.

Exactly. And so what I would do is I'll be like, it sounds like this actually does fall in your cord. And Jason, normally the way I would work with a head of people ops like yourself is typically. And then I would go into the problem we solve in a very brief pitch. What happened in this is one of two things can happen. You're either the right person and you weren't listening, or you were lying. That's situation number one. Or you are actually the wrong person if you're the right person. Either way, I'm going to suggest the other person that I think it is. Because when I'm like, hey, should I reach out to your head of hr, Jane, if you are the right person, be like, no, no, it's actually me because you don't want me cold calling your colleague, being like, hey, Jason said it was you. And so if you are the right person, you're going to raise my hand, you're going to tell me when I call out the other person that I plan to call anyway, if it is the wrong person and it's actually in Jane's court, it's not in your court. At that point, I'm going to ask for the referral, but I'm not going to ask you to send the referral email because I usually find that prospects never want to send a referral email. A lot of reps will try to go for the referral and be like, jason, would you be comfortable making an introduction or forwarding a blurb over to Jane? Jason's not going to do that. I cold called him 15 seconds ago. Instead I'm going to say, hey, was going to reach out to Jane anyways. Could I ask you for a ridiculous favor here? You say, yes, it's a ridiculous favor. And I'll be like, would you be completely against me mentioning that we spoke? Just sh. Just so she knows I'm not coming completely out of the blue. And so I'm going to tell you that I'm already going there. Would you mind letting me just like, let her know that you spoke already. And almost always you'll get a yes to that. And then I'll send an email to Jane that says spoke with Jason. Almost always gets a reply.

That's going to be a very high replied email. I think a lot of, like, what we're talking about, objection handling can feel like a lot like, oh, yeah, it's like really step by step and very linear. They give you this objection, you give them this response, and then you get a meeting. And it just hardly ever works out like that. What are things that we can do when a prospect is like really short with us, which happens a lot on a cold call? How do we get them to maybe open up a little bit when we're objection handling and get them to like really lean in and actually have a conversation with us? What do you guys think?

Follow the objection. Ask questions about the objection that they gave you. They didn't have budget. Is it that there's no budget right now or, like indefinitely? There's no budget. What you're trying to do here is show them that you're actually wanting to understand the objection that they gave them and that you're putting pulling the sales pressure down. You're pulling the sales pressure away. So instead of trying to ask them questions that box them in a corner, well, well, what are you not interested in, Jason? Instead be like, oh, your objection is the truth. Tell me more about it. Just so nobody bugs you again. And if you keep asking them questions about their understanding, you're almost playing dead in a way where it's like, oh, okay, you're not interested. Totally good. I should have figured that. Hey, just so we don't bug you again, like, give me more about that. You're not the right person. Tell me more about that. Is it. Is it actually this person over here? So if you don't have a script, which you might not want to be following a script because there's a million objections you should get. The framework is agree with their objection. Should have figured you have something in place or should have figured you'd be all set. Is a very generic one you could use. And then just ask them questions about what they had rejected you on. And that's how you can start to get more to the point of if they're short. Armand talks about this a lot. If they're ridiculous or like very short with you, you've got to like, really open them. Like, I'm so sorry. Like, I'm getting the sense that you're not crazy about people Calling your cell. And, like, I should have assumed that. Look, I. I got it from a database called Banana Leads, and I'm happy to send you a screenshot of, like, where you can actually get your number removed. I'm going to be honest here. Like, I did some research for this call, and this just. This isn't like, a random spam dial. And I'm wondering if I can get just, like, half a minute to take, tell you why I called. Like, again, show them that you're a person, not a nameless, faceless spam dialer. Because I think most of the folks.

Here are not that so much of this is. Again, the objective to go back to the beginning is not to handle the objection. It's to humanize yourself and have genuine dialogue. And if you, like, break outside of the script for a second and just have, like, that, like, hey, I can tell, like, you're really not picking up what I'm putting down here, which is understandable because I called you in the middle of your day. Like, do you want to level with me real quick? Like, is XYZ a challenge that you're running across, or am I just totally barking up the wrong tree?

Yeah.

Somebody hangs up on you, right? You call them and say, hey, Armand. You give him your permission, base opener. And he barks back, oh, I can't talk right now. I'm crazy busy preparing for a big meeting. Click. A lot of salespeople think the right thing to do is to immediately call Armand back and be like, hey, I think we got disconnected. That doesn't work. Like, tell me in the chat, folks, if, like, Armon's like, oh, yeah, we must have gotten disconnected. Let me hear out your pitch now. Like, they just hung up on you. That's not going to work. So they hang up on me. What I want to write down is the specific words that they said right before they hung up, the date and the time. And what I'm going to do is, a week later, I'm going to call Armand back and I'm going to go, armand, you and I last spoke on July 17th around 1:45 in the afternoon. And at the time, you were like, hey, I can't talk right now. I'm crazy busy preparing for a big meeting. And you admittedly hung up on me. And look, I know I called you out of the blue then, but I promise I did some prep for this call, and this isn't just, like, a random spam dial. Can I at least get half a minute to share why I called you? Back and then, look, you can totally hang up on me from there if it doesn't make sense. What I want to do is I want to call out, hey, you and I talked. Before you send this to me, do you use a little bit of guilt to be like, you admittedly hung up on me and then reorient around like this isn't just a random spam dial, and use the fact that I did some research on you as a way to incentivize them to actually hear you out?

Let's do the no budget one. This is probably one of the more common objections right now, especially with like, the macroeconomic uncertainty stuff that's going on. So, Arbonne, you know, no, we don't got any budget.

Totally, man. Look, it's hard enough to keep it, let alone add something new. And so, look, I. I would hate for anyone else on my team to bug you. So just so no one calls you again, would you mind giving me a sense? Is it because budget for this cycle is out or is it that any spend whatsoever requires you to do a triple backflip?

You know, I. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's a lot of work to bring in a new, you know, payroll and compensation solution.

Yeah.

And yeah, we just sort of spent our budget for the year too, so.

Oh, that's good. At least you had some budget to spend. So, look, knowing that you already spent all of your budget, Jason, I'm going to be honest. I don't know if you're going to be able to buy this thing, if you're going to want to buy this thing. But every once in a while, in the off chance that budget does open up in the org, you know, it's you folks who know what's like 1, 2 and 3 on their list that end up getting it. So I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but would you be open to taking a look? Not for now, but just so you know, it's out there in case ends up in the future. And so I've removed the pressure of the purchase entirely. I'm not a business case. A lot of sellers are going to be like, well, we produce this much ROI or pave pays for itself, or 30 MPC pays for itself and all this nonsense. They're not listening. You're not going to convince them of that on a cold call. Get the meeting, get them in the car. And then once they're enjoying the thrill of the test drive, that's when you get them.

So I have a different Take on this one. I like your take, but it's this idea of using the objection as the reason for the meaning. So, Armand, do you want to work.

With me on this one?

I'll be like, jason, I appreciate the call, man, but we just literally have no budget.

No, totally. I'm actually hearing that a lot, you know, right now from other CEOs and founders of E. Com companies. And that's actually the reason for my call. I don't know if you're dealing with this, but a lot of what we're seeing is that because these founders are using so many different solutions to manage their website, the dev costs are just out of control right now. And that's one of the things that if you're open to it, I can show you how we could lower some of those development costs. And if nothing else, you might see how other founders and CEOs are running their businesses and maintaining profitability and that sort of thing. Would it be the worst idea to maybe find 15, 20 minutes? I can run you through some of that stuff and see if anything looks interesting to you.

Nice. You used both the. Hey, some folks can actually reduce their spend. But even if that's not the case, you'll know it's out there. So you sold the test drive by making them on things that are in the market or at least giving them a sense of ways they could reduce costs. So even if they don't buy the car, they're. They're off after they meet with you than before. Yes.

So the way that you guys can incorporate this is if your solution helps with some sort of cost angle, even if that's removing manual effort, use that as the reason for the meeting. The other kind of concept here is like, I call it chunking up. Like a lot of times when someone says they already have something or that it's too expensive or they don't have budget, it's easy to be down here in features and functions land you want to kind of chunk up. Especially if you're talking to an executive, you want to kind of chunk up to stuff that's more insight driven. The. If nothing else, you'll get to learn how some of your peers are handling X, Y and Z. Like executives love that stuff. So chunk up to like the situation or the insights. Excuse me, like above the solution. That's a really good reason for someone to take a meeting to.

I got a tough one, which is, you know, our si. My sister in law is our supplier and we're never gonna change unless she dies. That's an existing solution objection that I don't know if it's worth your efforts to continue to try to overcome. I think one of the things where sometimes salespeople get things wrong is they get taught that like, persistence always wins. And following up with that lead once a week until the sister in law dies is probably a poor use of your time and you're better off calling a bunch of other prospects. And so I think one of the things in the existing solution ones is like, you should know when to give up on prospects so that you can reallocate those sales calories to other better prospects who have higher likelihood of closing deals with.

Let's talk about. We do it in house and if you want to use your previous employer maybe as an example. So yeah, Nick, you know, we do a lot of that stuff in house.

Totally, Jason. That's, that's on me. Like, I should have figured that you all had a way to handle your client billing. Hey, just so I make sure, like, there's really nothing here, I'm curious, how do you make sure that when your attorneys are doing their time, that their, their time entries are in line with your, your client's billing guidelines? Because that's one of the things I've been seeing with a lot of folks recently. What I want to try to do is ask a question of like, one of the big things that the law firms I would sell to couldn't do is like, the attorneys would do their time entries, but they would not be compliant with what the client's like, weird. Very, very niche billing guidelines were. And I knew that they couldn't do that. I knew they couldn't make sure that their attorneys time entries were in compliance. And so I would ask a question in sort of an innocuous way for them to be like, what, what do you mean, like, or we can't do that. We had a really good one on the 30 NPC podcast recently with this, this woman, Melissa from, from Air Garage. And she sells to park the people who like collect the money when you go try to park downtown to go to a concert. And she gets hit all the time with like, yeah, we already have a way to collect money when people are parking at our place. And her trap question is like, totally get it. Like, how do you make sure that you're, you're dynamically pricing and changing what you charge based on how popular like the events in the areas are? I imagine you charge different than when like Taylor Swift is in town versus when like Nick Sigelski is doing A concert. And so she asks a question and they're like, well, wait, we can't do that. So you ask an unanswerable question.

This traffic question is the key if you want to use this strategy. I think the other big thing is there's a variation of this question that you can ask from the point of view of like an end user. So, for example, let's say I sell a cybersecurity solution. And one of the differentiators is that this cybersecurity solution isn't just like the Internet stuff, like with the phones and the emails and the tablets. It's you're Costco and you have a manufacturing floor. Hey, Nick, you know, I'm really curious before I let you go, if I was on the factory floor and I found out that some of my employees had cell phones that were connecting into the WI fi environment on the factory floor, how would you guys know that? And it's like you're going to get, I don't know, you know, you're going to get all kinds of like, weird responses to that question. How do we come up with a good trap question?

So what I would do is we had a list of competitors. It's like, you don't need a fancy enablement tool or all this other stuff. We literally had a table where it was competitor on one side. Top three things. They can't do that. We do. And it was just three bullets. So at Pave, it was like these legacy competitors all had these three things in common. This, this and this. And if you can group competitors into categories, usually these are the old guard solutions. These are like the new. Fancy startups only do like one thing, but they do it really well. If you can group your competitors into buckets and then just say these are the three things that they can't do that we do. Just pick the top one. And that's your trap question. You don't have to know everything about your competitors. You need to know at least one thing about each competitor.

This is like table stakes. If you're doing a lot of cold calling and let's say you're an sdr, maybe you don't do a lot of the selling. You need to meet with your account executives and like, think about what that battle card might look like. Because these trap questions are just like they're, they're money. Because it, it not only exposes a gap, but it immediately conveys to the prospect that you understand exactly what their work environment is like and what they go through and the solutions that they use it's, it's credibility because that's the number one thing I feel like you have working against you in sales is that I always say in sales, you're starting from behind the starting line. Start from a place of skepticism, with your prospects on a cold call in a sales call, et cetera. Politics and law are probably the only two other professions that deal with that.

Let's rip one more big.

Three mistakes that salespeople make with gatekeepers is one, they lie. Lying to the gatekeeper, not good, gives everybody in sales a bad name and it will come back to bite you. Mistake number two is, is they try to befriend the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper is not there to be your friend. They are there to detect and reject pitches. And they're not going to generally put you through to their boss just because you decided to be really nice that day. Mistake number three is they try to pitch the gatekeeper again to the point earlier. The role of a gatekeeper is to keep the gate closed for people that are pitching and to open the gate for people who belong getting through. I use what's called the triple bypass approach with gatekeepers, where what you're going to do is you're going to dose information to the gatekeeper bit by bit and only when asked. And so when they first answer, all I'm going to do is I'm going to hit them with what's called the slide by which is I'm going to say, hey, could you get me over to Armand? It's Nick. That will work for a lot of gatekeepers. I don't say my first name, I don't say his first name, I don't say my company name. I say, hey, could you get me over to Armand? It's I'm sound pretty direct. That'll work with a lot of people. It won't work with everybody. Sometimes the gatekeeper, oftentimes they'll go, what's this regarding? What I don't want to share is product or pitch stuff here. I want to share context. So I might say something like, yeah, I actually work with a couple other Scadden partners in the LA office. Would you mind letting them know it's Nick Sigelski? Or I might say it's around the office you all are opening in Tacoma. Would you mind letting him know it's Nick Sigelski? That might be the trigger, the piece of research for why I called. I'm giving a piece of context, the trigger for my call or the fact that I work with other people like them. If that doesn't work, and it will some of the time, I'm going to share some social proof. I'm not going to lead with, oh, yeah, it's Northwestern Mutual. I'm going to say something like, yeah, we actually, we work with a couple other partners in the office, helping them with their tax planning, amongst other things. It's Northwestern Mutual. I actually sent Armand a note the other day. Would you. Would you mind letting him know it's Nick. I'm also finishing each of those statements with a question to keep the pressure on them to get me to my destination, not to open the door for them to be asking me questions.

Nick, Armand, awesome to chat with you guys. As usual, that's all we got. Thank you, everyone.