Nicolas Cole says the top B2B sales objection is prospects claiming they've been burned by agencies before. Instead of defending yourself, ask clarifying questions to surface what really went wrong: communication failures, missed deadlines, broken promises. This shifts the conversation from a battle you can't win into discovery that rebuilds trust.
The objection, the objection of we've been burned by agencies in the past. Okay. This is the number one objection. Like, this objection is not going away. And so that means it becomes a game of how do you speak to that objection and how do you overcome it? The second thing is, this is, this is a very important idea to internalize. Alicia put in the, in the chat, results are everything with B2B. And that is both true and false at the same time. It's true in the sense that when you talk to B2B organizations, they are very likely in the sales conversation to make it about results. Now you have to, you have to ask the question though, why are they doing that? Well, they're doing that because when, when you're dealing with a bigger and bigger organization, every decision gets scrutinized. Like they're managing a budget and they're like, I got to make sure that this ends up being net positive. Okay. Now the irony is that of all companies in the world, B2B are probably some of the worst at marketing. Like they, they light marketing budgets on fire every single day. And so you have to remember that. Just because they're in the sales conversation, just because they're asking, what are the results? What are the metrics? How do I track this? What's the ROI? That doesn't mean that, A, that's the right way to think about it. Just because they're asking for it doesn't mean that that's right. And then second is, just because they're asking for it doesn't mean that you have to change your service or do anything differently. And I know because I ran into this a gazillion times and people would try and make it about numbers and then I would explain, well, that's not the point of the service. You know, and so if we sort of separate, because I think it's like you can solve for different things here. Okay. If you're, if you're solving for the sales conversation, how do I overcome this type of objection? How do I overcome the objection of like, well, what kind of ROI can we expect from this? Right? Like they're like, I want numbers, you know? In the sales conversation, the thing that you have to come back to with a service like this is we talk about this a lot. Were you on last week's call, Mo, by chance? Yeah, the PGA call. Okay. So we talked, we talked a lot about how when a client is pressing you on something, the worst thing that you can do is try to defend yourself or convince them of something. The best thing to do is ask questions where they have to admit the answer to you. So in this situation, it's like, okay, first of all, if they say we've been burned by agencies in the past, the raw— everyone here, this is a very important concept. Okay. If a client says we've been burned by agencies in the past, what do you think your response to that should be? Yeah, Rebecca. Exactly. What happened? Like, how are you, how are you supposed to help them overcome that objection if you don't know or you don't understand? Well, what happened? Right. And if you start to play it out like the moves on the chessboard become very simple. We've been burned by agencies in the past. What happened? Oh, we hired this newsletter agency and they were horrible at communicating. So does the objection have anything to do with metrics? No, they literally just told you the answer. They're like, we're just afraid that the next person, AKA you, isn't gonna communicate with us. What do you say? You say, totally get it. I've run into that a ton too. But that's why when I work with clients, Directly address the objection that they just said, right? So whenever, whenever you receive any sort of objection or faulty belief, the wrong move is let me defend, let me convince you as to why, you know, it's not that. And the right move is just asking the clarifying question. The same thing here is like, what kind of ROI can we expect?
What would— what do you say to that?
Do you defend your position? Do you try to convince them of something? Mustafa, exactly. How do you measure success? How are you supposed to overcome the objection if you don't know the thing that they care about?
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What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
