E239: How to Handle Objections Without Discounting or Chasing to Win More Trade Business and Make More Money

Discounting to win projects is the hate of almost every trade leader that I work with. Today we're going to talk about how you can handle objections without needing to discount or chasing so you can win more deals. Welcome to Trade Sales Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction and industry leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so that you can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host Ben Wright, and over the last 15 years I've helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes. Let's get started. I think I've seen more sales trainers talk about the perfect objection handling framework than just about any topic I see out there. And these perfect objection handling frameworks— it's a tongue-tie to get it out— often revolve around a fancy word that you break down into individual words that come from it. Yeah, easy to remember, but not so easy when the word's not that memorable. In fact, I can barely remember a word around how to handle objections, and I've had that many frameworks thrown at me. But what I can remember is a system and a process. And this helped me remarkably across my sales career. And it's something I'm working with on a business right now in the renewable space, right? Which was a lot of my heritage. But really this framework for me and this process we're going to go through today, which has 3 steps, was so impactful that I think single-handedly it gave me the confidence to not have to dive any deeper into objection handling frameworks. So I have never in my 25-year sales career rolled out a single objection handling framework, but nor have I ever felt that I've needed to because I was losing deals on too much pushback. So I think it's a real testament to the simplicity of this framework that it's allowed me to remember it, but also the effectiveness of it. So I'd like to share it with you today. And I hope that as you're walking your dog, at the gym, driving, riding, taking some time away from the kids out in the back shed, whatever it is, I hope that this is a moment where you can have a think about how you can handle objections so you don't need to discount to get deals done. Okay, so we start from the beginning here. And ideally what you've done is roll out a framework like the 3 Ds. Now we have gone through the 3 Ds. A number of times in this podcast. If you haven't got to it yet, I can send you some details specifically on the 3 Ds, right? So you just need to get in touch with me to hear that. It's very, very easy to do that. If in doubt, complete the quote quiz at the end here, jump on and put a note on it, right? And we'll get back to you on that. But for me, the most important part comes back to the 3 Ds, which is all around deliverables. And that is getting really clear on what the customer wants. So that when we have an issue, Issue being the word for objection. I hate that word. I'm going to call them issues instead of objections. So getting really clear on what our customers want helps us understand when an issue arises, how to handle it. So if an issue comes up around function of a product, is this actually going to work? Is the smart lighting system that you're putting in going to work or is it going to be fickle? When we know that a driver for them is based around quality of light because they have aging eyes, your customer may be someone that's in the second half, not the first half of their life, and The quality of light's really important because they simply can't see as clearly. So in this instance, when we know that that's one of their drivers and they raise a question around is it going to work, we can specifically respond back to that issue around what's important to them. Yeah, one of the great things about the smart lighting function is that you can turn your lighting up and down really seamlessly. So when you're reading and you need that extra quality of light, we can turn that up. But when you don't need that strength of lighting to help you read that book or the newspaper or whatever you're looking at, and you want to dim that down, you can also do that really intelligently so that you can have whatever you have on the TV, or when you're eating dinner with your family, you can allow that lighting to prevail. So by actually relating back to the key driver, in this instance, that they wanted good strong lighting, how could that be handled by your smart lighting control? We're actually covering the first and second steps of this process, but more importantly, we're actually showing people that the that we've listened to what they want. So I want to give you another example here. So let's stay in that market there around the electrical industry, right? And when we have a customer that's really focused on price, let's hit one between the eyes. And we're talking about a smart lighting system and the customer's response is, "Hey, this is a little bit more expensive than standard lighting." But if we know they're really focused on price, but the standard lighting is going to help them reduce their lighting costs. But in this instance, when we can say the smart lighting will turn off lights when they're not being used, when no one's in the room, they will dim down lights very easily to use less power. Or they will use only a bank of your lights. They allow you to turn banks on and off when you're in, in the rooms. But if we can show that there's a fast payback on some of the extra cost around that smart lighting system, then we're relating back to that price driver that they have. Or if they have a risk driver in this smart lighting system, we can talk about how they have lights that go on outside at certain times. Or you can provide varied times when your lights go on so that there's no pattern. If you're away, right, of people watching the house, light comes on at 7 o'clock, light goes off at 9:05 every single night, right? So it allows us to get really clear on why the customer's raising the issue. So what I've done here is I've actually spoken about the first two parts of this framework. And the first one is that when someone raises an issue, the most effective way I have seen the thousands of salespeople that I work with handle this is to make sure they know exactly what the customer wants. So they've spent the time at the start of the deal to get really clear on their deliverables. This then allows them to really effectively relate back to these deliverables when the issue comes up. So in this instance, smart lighting, all right, and whatever the driver is from that customer. Really importantly though, there's a closing of the loop that I see super effective salespeople do here, and that's to confirm that what they've said actually solves the issue. Because in many instances, customer will raise an issue, we'll respond to it, but the customer's not always happy with that response. I had the issue today when I was talking to a technical equipment supplier for our studio that we're setting up. They asked me a question, I gave them an answer, but I raised an issue with it. They then gave me an answer around how we could handle that issue, but it was not important to what I wanted. They then moved on to the next steps of the deal, but they didn't circle back with me to say, hey, Have you solved this? Now, in this instance, all it does is it slows me down and it forces me to go back to other suppliers. And now I've raised that issue and it hasn't been handled as I wanted. I'm going to go look at it with other suppliers. There are 3 or 4 in this competitive part of our process, right? I'm going to ask the same question to everyone, right? And I'm going to ask it until I get it handled effectively. And whoever handles it most effectively, right, is going to step themselves ahead in the deal. So when we talk about handling issues or objections, without needing to follow a framework, but more importantly, without then needing to simply discount to get the deal done, what I'd really recommend you think about is rolling out a process that, one, makes sure you're really clear on what the customer wants. So you need to do that at the start of the deals. But if the issue comes up, it's not too late. You can certainly sit back with the customer and say, okay, do you mind if we explore what's really important to you around this proposal or around what you want to achieve so that I can help answer that question properly? So all's not lost if you haven't qualified and got clear on what they want at the start, but certainly that's the first step. The second one is to then, when you're handling that issue, to relate it specifically back to what the driver of this deal is, to talk around exactly what the customer wants from the deal so that you can answer it in a language or in a manner that they're going to land with. And then the third one is confirm that you've handled it. Actually say to the customer, hey, does that solve that issue for you? Because if not, we can look at other options. If not, I can talk about it, you know, I can go into more detail about it. It's really important that we confirm back with our customer to say, right, are you happy with that? Is there anything else we need to go through? Because once we get through these issues and we handle them well, that really helps us step those deals forward. So that's the key message from today. And thank you, I'm grateful for you listening as always. But what I'm hopeful is you can take that framework as to how you can handle issues that come from customers and roll it into your process moving forward. Because my role is to make sure you are not wasting hours and hours quoting and not winning deals. Because at the end of the day, if I can help you change something, you won't keep getting these same stressful results. You won't keep having to work long hours. You won't keep having not enough money in the bank to show for it. But what you will get is a sales process that grows. And if you're not ready to talk to us directly, I'd recommend you jump onto the free quoting quiz because that is going to pinpoint exactly why you're not winning more jobs. And what you need to do to grow quickly your sales. And we'd aim for 20 to 25% here. So click on the free quiz link in the show notes. It'll get you started. It takes less than a minute, and I personally have a look at each answer that comes through. That's it for today. Please keep living in a world where 1% better drives what you do, because it does make all the difference. Bye for now.