E197: The 1 Sales Hack to Handle Objections Like a Pro Before They Appear - and Close More Trade Sales

In this episode, you will learn the number one sales hack to handle objections like a pro before they appear and then close more trade sales. Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction and industry sales and business leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years. In this episode, we're going to unpack something that every trade leader has to deal with, objections. We're going to have a look at how you can reduce the number of objections that you get from your customers, the type of questions that you can be asking to quickly bring them to the surface and solve them, and then how you can very effectively unpack them and solve them for that customer. So as we move into today's episode, I'd love you to think about a time perhaps when you had an objection from a customer. You've gone out, you've met them, you've quoted the deal, you've got to the end, and then there's the one more thing, or the I haven't thought about this, or the we can't get moving until. We've all had it. Anyone in sales has had late objections in particular come in that have not only killed a deal that they thought was moving forward, but also killed lots of deals along the journey far earlier than that. Now in 25 years of selling and having dealt with so many hundreds and now thousands of salespeople, there's one tried, tested, proven method that I've seen any salesperson, but particularly trade sales leaders and trade business leaders, use to help reduce the number of objections that they receive. And what this comes down to is pre-preparing and having a think about what type of objections may come up. Before they do. Now that's easy enough to do and can sit there and perhaps think, you know what, maybe that isn't right at the heart of reducing objections, but it's the first part of two things here that I want to talk about when it comes to removing or reducing the number of objections. So the first part here is all about the best salespeople I've worked with in my time who can really effectively reduce objections being those that prepare even very briefly before they go into their customer visits. And what this does is it gets their head really clear around what's coming, around the type of customer that they're about to meet with, around anything they've learned previously about this customer that might help them move them forward, about having a look at the site through GeoMaps, through any photos or Google Images that they have, or previous dealings with the customer, and just having a very quick think about, okay, what are the things we're going to need to address in this first customer meeting? But really importantly, what piggybacks on from this is questions being asked early of their customer that can bring to the surface any future objections. And this is right at the heart around where really effective trade leaders and any salespeople in their own right are able to really rapidly reduce objections. And that's by bringing them forward early. And I mean super early, as early as you possibly can in any engagement with customers, because that then allows you to deal with them effectively without any prejudices or pre-made up opinions or feelings about a certain topic. Profit. So let me give you an example here. Let's say you're in the trade industry and you're in the roofing business and you're going to a customer to talk about re-roofing their garage, right? Not their whole home, but re-roofing their garage. And before you go into that visit, that first customer appointment, where I see really effective business leaders in the roofing industry work is that they will study that roof before they go into that meeting. They'll have a look at the type of customer premises, the roof they've got already existing there. You can get it from satellite technology in half a second. And they'll start to have a think about, okay, is it a Colorbond roof? Does it look like a really cheap roof that has deteriorated, you know, ahead of its years? Can we see any rust marks on the roof? Is it a tiled roof? Is there— are there trees around it that are dropping things on it that are causing the gutters to bend? Is the guttering filling up with leaves? And we might need to look at some type of protection, some covering for that guttering. So by getting their heads in the game really early, they're walking in with a little bit of knowledge about that customer. Now when they're getting into that customer, to bring these objections to the surface, they're starting to ask great questions particularly around the research that they've done. And the types of questions that really effective early objection handlers ask really come down into 3 buckets. What's gonna stop it moving forward? What's gonna delay it moving forward? And what's gonna get it moving forward? So in a roofing industry example, what's gonna stop it moving forward? Questions might come along the lines of, is there anything that's gonna get in the way of this reroofing happening? Do you have any other works on the house that might stop it moving forward? Are there any major cost impediments? Are we having any other renovation work done on your house that might stop this moving forward? Right, they're starting to ask questions around what's going to get in the way of the reroofing moving forward. But they're also then moving on to questions that might delay it. I.e., are there any trees that are going to need to be cut down before we reroof? Is there any framing work or any other maintenance work that needs to happen on the garage before it might get ahead? Is there someone else that needs to be involved? In deciding, you know, your husband or your wife around what you want to do before you move forward. And they're starting to ask these questions. Of course, when we sit here and we say them now, they don't have context. They don't necessarily bring to life like they would in a perfect roofing example. However, what they do do is strive or drive thought, right? Drive ideas that should come into your head that say, okay, I hear what you're saying here. It's all about preparing before I go to a customer meeting to get myself into the mood to be ready to start talking specifically about that customer. And then when I'm there, I'm starting to use some of what I've learned already about the customer to bring forward any potential objections that they might have. So what would stop the deal moving forward? What would delay the deal moving forward? And then the third area, and we'll use some roofing examples again here, is what's going to get you moving forward. If I can come back with a proposal that's done in this timeframe, it's re-roof within 2 weeks. If I can find a way that we can take your existing roof and drastically extend the lifetime. If I can repair your current roof. And then we look at doing your garage and your entire property together in a couple of years' time. If I can treat the rust spots, not by simply putting in better quality Colorbond roofing, but by arranging for you to have some trees chopped above the top of your house there so you get less rubbish being dropped on. If I can arrange for Gutter Guard to come out onto your gutters, right, to stop you having to clean them very often, right? Are these the type of things that are going to get us moving forward quickly? All right, so it's all about then asking questions that get the customer thinking really positively about how their life changes once they get that product installed. So if we're looking at the roof example and we have a customer who is just sick and tired of cleaning out their gutters, roofers who are listening, that's me. I'm so sick of doing it at our house. If someone came to me and said, right, we're going to re-roof here, but at the same time we're going to install gutter guard, it's a hell of a lot cheaper because the roof's off. It's a lot easier to access. We don't have to retrofit. And we just roll it out. Then all of a sudden I'm looking forward thinking, yeah, that changes my life. That helps my life. That means I'm, instead of being up on the ladder every 6 weeks, which I am cleaning our gutters because we have that many trees around, you're only up once a year, right? Or once every 6 months. Then for me, I start to look really positively around how we can move forward. So when we talk about handling objections, it's all about number 1, getting yourself ready and prepared to specifically talk about that customer and that customer's needs, which is your research. The second step is all about then making sure that we are trying to bring forward any potential objections or any drivers that will move the deal forward. Now, of course, drivers aren't specifically objections in themselves, but when we focus on the positive drivers, i.e., gutter guard on your gutters, it starts to reduce the significance of minor objections. For me, the minor objection might be that I didn't want to reroof the entire garage, but only parts of it. But when I can see that I can get gutter guard quite effectively across the whole garage, then for me it's okay. Do you know what? Let's re-roof all of it instead of 75% of it. So we start to then help us reduce objections by focusing on the positives moving forward. Now the third step here when it comes to handling objections like a pro is all about repeating back any of the objections or the issues, what will delay a project or what will stop a project, about repeating back those and trying to work through solutions. So we're prepared, we're having a think about what our customer might say as we go into their premises. We're asking the right questions to bring forward those objections that might stop or delay the project, or we're looking at how we can move it forward with the positive angles, the how this project can change your life approach. And the third one is that we're repeating those back and solving them. So again, in the roofing industry, if the objection's coming up that, you know, I've got rusted screws, I'm getting some water leaks from a couple of these screws, Right, then the way that we can be potentially handling that is to say, okay, well, we at an absolute minimum need to rescrew your roof. However, that's going to cost $2,000 to rescrew your garage roof, and it's not going to reduce the need for you to re-roof in a few years' time. We would be far more cost-effective with your money to put in a new roof at the same time as the screws. Then we don't have that $2,000 sunk cost to rescrew, but we're doing a whole new roof and the rescrewing, and in time, you know, you're saving yourself that $2,000. And the examples will flow, right? As you're sitting here thinking now, I want you to start thinking about some of those common examples or objections that you get and how you can be repeating them back to a customer and solving them. So that in its essence there is a super powerful way to handle objections like a pro before they appear. If we think in a summary here, right? What we've gone through today, it's all about 3 things. Number 1 is getting yourself prepared. So not rushing into a quote, Having not thought about it, but thinking about exactly what you need to do before you go into that quote. Number 2, it's all then about asking questions around what's going to delay or kill a project, or what's potentially going to move it forward quickly. And then number 3, handling those there and then. Repeating them back, showing that you care, showing that you understand what they've asked for, and then solving them on the spot to the best of your ability so that they don't come up later. That's it in a nutshell, how to handle objections like a pro. It makes huge differences to sales cycles. It makes huge differences to increasing close rates and also speed of deals moving forward. So that's it for this episode. Thank you. Very grateful for you tuning in. What I'm hoping you've done today is, as we've gone through these objections and particularly the examples in a roofing industry, it started to have a think about how you could just very quickly adjust your sales process so that when you're going into meetings, you're better prepared. You're asking the questions that bring objections forward. And you're handling those like a pro then and there. That's it for today. Looking forward to the next episode. There's very much a 1% better theme that's run through what we've gone through in this podcast episode. Have a think about how you can apply being 1% better each and every day because it will make the difference. Bye for now.