Why You Keep Losing Deals to Objections You Saw Coming

You lost a deal this week to an objection that you knew was coming. I need to think about it. I need to talk to my partner. Hey, this just seems like a lot of money right now. You knew it was coming and you still fumbled it. You hung up the phone and then spent the next 20 minutes kind of ideating like you're in a shower after an argument, going over every possible scenario. The problem is like, you know what you should have said. And here's the question that no one's asking you. Why did you fumble it if you knew it was coming? It's obvious objections are somewhat inevitable unless you're just kind of trying to sell nothing but laydowns. People are gonna have concerns. It's pretty normal. It's not because you're bad at sales. It's because everything that you've been taught about objection handling is just built on the wrong premise. And in the next 10 minutes, I'm gonna take you through and show you exactly what that premise is, why it's costing you money every single week, and the system that I've taught to reps in all different industries to kind of flip objections into the thing that kills deals into actually helping close the deal. So for those of you who are like, why should I give a damn what this guy thinks about? So my name is Matt Ryder. I'm a former Special Forces sniper and turned into a sales guy. I was making like $22 commission selling, you know, gym memberships. And then over the course of time, crossed over into selling high-ticket services and products and became a 7-figure earning sales rep. Then I owned 7th Level, which is Jeremy Miner's company. And now after exiting that company, I've done the sales for many, many different companies, been a 7-figure earner. Using the system I'm going to teach you, I got $200K months in my own commission. I'm not like here to sell you on personality and charisma. What I want to do is teach you a step-by-step replicatable system that you can use on your sales calls to not get lost and actually be able to have sort of a tangible process that you can hang on to. And when things get weird and screwy, you can kind of default back to these things, which is how I was taught in special operations of how you build upon a skill set. So here is what most sales training teaches you about objection handling, and I'm going to tell you kind of why it sounds so familiar. Okay, so here's what most sales training tells you about sales training. And let me know down in the comments if this sounds pretty familiar to you. They teach you how to overcome an objection. So, they teach you how to kind of push through the resistance, okay? How to sort of counter the concern, right? Diffuse it. They teach you like clever rebuttals and word tracks. Like when they say X, you say Y. There are sort of scripted word tracks and comebacks, right? It's like kind of verbal judo. Getting someone to kind of stop resisting until they say yes and wear them down, etc., etc., right? That sounds familiar. Yeah, most of you have a version of this baked into you. So here's kind of what I want you to understand. When you enter into a sales conversation and you're trying to overcome resistance, you've already told your brain that the prospect is the enemy. You're in conflict mode, and the prospect can feel it like every single time, which is what leads to things like frustration. And frustration is by far and away the hardest emotion to try and hide and sort of overcome. And it's, it's seeping through you because you have this me versus you mentality. You know what happens when someone feels like they're being pushed? You become that sort of sales guy trope. And what they're going to do is they're going to push back even harder. Just watch any debate, okay? It just turns into a, like, a pissing match, okay? Block you, blocky bastard, bitch! So essentially, the better you get at, like, rebuttals, the, the better they're going to get at resistance. Like, you end up in kind of an arm wrestling, dick measuring competition. Like, you're on the phone with the prospect and just kind of waiting for you to stop talking so that they rebut or like then they can hang up or whatever it may be. And the guru who sold you these rebuttal scripts, like, they're fine. They already have your money. So here's the thing most people will never understand about objection handling. It's not a wall. It's a question in disguise. And when you start to be able to uncover the question, the entire conversation changes. So I call this the 4-Layer Objection System. Think of it like an onion, not because as you peel it back, it makes you cry, right? But as you peel it back, it uncovers more and more about the prospect. Although when you realize how much money you've left on the table not understanding this, you might actually tear up. So like, go and get the Kleenex and then, you know, I'll give you a minute to go and do that and then you can come back and start listening to the video again. The reason is because most objections have layers to it, but most reps just kind of stick to the top one because they never actually get a chance to peel through them and, you know, get to the underlying cause of what's really going on. So let's go through each one. So layer 1 is identify. So what's the real objection versus the smokescreen? The first thing you need to do when you get an objection is you need to go, is this real or is this fake? Right? Straight away, you have to kind of make an assessment. Okay, so I need to think about it. So like, I'll give you kind of an example of what I mean. Okay, so I need to think about it. It's almost never actually about thinking, right? It's like, now's not a good time is really never about timing. These are just exit ramps that people use because they feel easy to do that. The prospect is trying to get off the phone without having to say, like, I don't trust you enough yet, or I don't see the value, something like that, right? So a smokescreen objection is one where the prospect is protecting themselves from a conversation that they're not comfortable enough to have yet. A real objection is a genuine concern like price, logistics, specific circumstance that can be solved, or a barrier that can be removed. So we have to kind of decide which one's which, and we should always err on the side of it being real. Okay, but if we have clear indicators of it not, then we can address that. But we have to really make an internal decision and, and sort of figure that out. When you're talking to somebody, like, you need to be sure, and do you actually know which one you're dealing with? Because if you respond incorrectly and you start beating someone over the head with a mindset bat who has a logistical barrier, that's not going to go well, and you're just going to piss that person off who has a genuine logistical concern. I want to kill you. So here's how you actually tell the difference. You just ask a simple question. It's not a challenge, it's a, it's genuine question. And it's like, help me understand, what is it specifically that you want to think through? Now, it sounds very simple, but so many things are wrapped in all this bullshit sales systems, like, hmm, that makes sense. And based off what you told me, I can understand that thinking about it might be something you want to do. But like, yeah, and just add all this padding and bullshit to it. Just a really, really simple, okay, and help me understand, what specifically do you want to go away and think about? And that will usually give you like the second layer, right? And most reps are just too afraid to ask a straight question. But it's like, we've already asked for their money, the veil is gone. Like, they understand that that we're dirty, filthy sales reps and they already hate us, so we might as well just kind of go balls to the walls, right? So that brings us into layer 2, which is the cushion. So that's like, they're not wrong. It's kind of surprising, but the fastest way to get through an objection is to actually agree to it. Now, that's not saying that you should say, "Mm, that's a great point," or, "Yes, you should go away and think about it," but it's sort of the headspace in which you come at the questions because like, if you're trying to genuinely understand someone's concern, you're going to have to take it as a valid concern. You can't invalidate what they're doing Otherwise, you're just going to come off as a douchebag. So we don't go like, hmm, that makes sense, and I think you should go away and think about it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like understanding the fact that their thought logic, that their logic train, although maybe flawed, is not ridiculous. And having a concern is completely valid. It's just that we need to then bring them around, okay, to a different or more productive way of thinking. When I'm thinking about objections, I want to be on the same side of the table, okay? If it's like two people kind of arguing back and forth, that's not productive. I want to get myself from the same side and be like, yeah, fair enough, man. Like, you know, I don't want you to make decisions without having all the available information, so let's just go through that. Okay, so like, you know, you don't want to like just go at them and start attacking them straight away and do like an if this then that kind of rebuttal style objection handling. All that's going to do is make them dig in to their current way of thinking, whereas if you can get on the same side of the table, see it from their perspective, and then just aim to shift in little bits, then that is going to, uh, allow the person to want to come around a lot more. Because in the day, you can't make anyone buy anything. All you can do is just kind like present a reasonable enough argument, and then hopefully that they take it. If they don't, fine, but whatever. But we can't start arguing with people and like completely invalidate their way of thinking. Okay, so this brings us to layer 3, which is you want to question into the objection. You don't want to go around it because a lot of people go around it to the point where they end up getting sidetracked by other objections and they don't actually end up dealing with the direct one. So you always need to resolve— you need to be a resolution within each objection handling cycle. So if you're dealing with money, you never leave money. You go directly in towards it. You try and go to the deepest part of the layer until you come out the other side having dealt with money. And then they can say, okay, how do you want to proceed from here? And then they can move on to the next one. A lot of people get sidetracked. They get halfway through something and then they go, I just need to check my part. And they go, oh, okay, if your partner was here, like, they don't actually end up finishing anything. So most reps, like, once they've heard an objection, they try and steer around it kind of change the subject to pivots. And like, also the, you know, the prospect is also kind of changing the subject as well. So you end up having really unproductive conversations. All right. So you want to ask questions about the specific objection and you want to dig into it. And if you guys want kind of more of this and you want really in-depth, there's a complete objection handling course inside of my school. Go and join for like $69 a month and you can get access to a huge— I think it's like a 20-hour objection course which goes into every single objection, exactly how to handle it, and gives you a formula formulaic way of understanding exactly how to do that. And you can go and join the link down below. We also have like a bunch of coaching sessions every week, and it's the best value sales training on the interwebs, says me and my mother. You want to understand the real concern instead of guessing, and then you want to have the prospect start examining their own objection out loud. An objection that gets examined usually dissolves because most objections are sort of like on the surface they make sense, but then when dug into it, they don't make sense. I'll give you an example. If I want my business to grow, I have to invest. There's just no other way around it, whether— because you have to invest time, effort, money, resource, whatever, right? Resources, whatever they may be, need to go into the business. So if someone wants to grow their business and they have agreed that your way is the way to grow the business and they don't want to invest, they have diametrically— they're in like a weird diaspora. They're being pulled in two different directions, right? That's what anything— if I want a tree to grow, I have to take the seed and put it in the ground, and the earth must invest resources into that sunlight, nutrients from the ground, water, time, all that kind of stuff for it to grow. Okay. So when you start examining people's like sort of more visceral reactions, a lot of time you find out they're actually not very useful and they don't really hold much water. And the best way to kind of attack them is to just go directly into it and start talking direct and ask really direct questions about it. And then from there, once you've sort of— once you've gotten on the same side of the table, you've addressed the concern directly, right? And now we're talking about this from the same angle. Now we have to shift the angle, which is layer 4, which is the reframe. In the final layer, once you've identified the real objection, you've sort of cushioned it, you've questioned it, now you're gonna reframe it. You're not gonna rebuttal it or like rebuke it. I rebuke you, right? And here's kind of the difference, right? So a rebuttal tries to make the objection wrong. A reframe shows the prospect a different way to look at the same situation. One where their concern is actually evidence for moving forward and not against it. Okay, I'm gonna say that one more time. A rebuttal tries to make the objection wrong. People hate being wrong. Okay, like, they get real angry about it. A reframe shows the prospect a different way of looking at the same situation, one where their concern is actually evidence for moving forward. Not against it, you know what I mean? If they want to invest, they need to invest, and their lack of wanting to invest is the problem that's stopping them from growing their business. If they want to grow the business, they need to invest. You just have to look at the problem differently. Let's go through some of the most common price objections. It's too expensive. The rebuttal is like, but look at the value you're getting. It's push pressure, list of features. They don't really care. Okay, the reframe for that is like, okay, Hey, just so I'm clear, is the concern about the actual number, or is it whether— or are you just concerned whether or not it'll work, right? Like, because if you— if then— if is it the number, or is it like the potential ROI? Like, help run me through it, right? Again, then you can— you're diving straight into it. Reframing isn't about being clever, it's about being precise. Every objection contains some sort of underlying belief, right? And— or like identity structure. And people really like— people will do really crazy things in order to like maintain their sort of belief, right? And your job is to sort of, I guess, gently examine that belief with them. Because if you come at it from the wrong angle, they're just going to hate you. Like if you attack it or you ignore it, like you're not going to be able to show them the same situation from a different angle. So they're never going to come around to that way of thinking and it's going to get really, really combative. So when you do all 4 layers— identify, cushion, question, reframe— objections stop being these things that kind of kill deals. And they become a thing that reveals whether or not the deal should be done. So that's the system. It's 4 layers, none of which require a crazy enormous IQ or being salesy or slick or gross, right? But they work. So here's what I would get you to think about. In the last 90 days, how many deals have you lost because you just fumbled the bag on objections that you kind of know what to say, but you didn't have an underlying framework or decision-making process in which to be able to use them? And then I want you to write that number down.? Because like, that is the amount of lost commission that you've had not having understanding. So let me know down below what that number is. And then if you want help with this kind of stuff, and you think that what I've said is valuable here, then go down to the link below, join the school group. It's like $69 a month. If you want to go up for the most expensive version, it's $199. And that comes with like 27 different coaching sessions a week with coaches from all different walks of life and industry. Plus we have like fitness coaches and AI coaches in there and all that kind of good stuff. And it goes through an awful lot of content for what I think is a pretty reasonable value. If you want that, like, subscribe, you know, share this video around because that always helps. And go down below, join the school group, and I'll see you in the next video.