Are objections getting you down? Are you getting burned out coming up with responses to deal with the excuses your prospects fire back at you? Do you have a plan to help avoid objections from the start, but it’s just not working?
In this episode of INSIDE Inside Sales, Darryl is joined by Michael Pedone, the insightful Founder and CEO of SalesBuzz. Darryl and Michael discuss effective strategies that can eliminate objections before they even happen! They offer up solid advice to increase engagement and help turn resistance into interest before the resistance ever happens. Learn how you can drastically reduce objections by up to 80% on this incredible episode of INSIDE Inside Sales.
Not in the mood to listen? No problem, you can read the transcriptions below.
Host: Darryl Praill, VanillaSoft
Guest: Michael Pedone, SalesBuzz.com
Darryl Praill: And it’s another week here at the Inside, Inside Sales Show. How are you doing folks? I don’t know about you but I am going nuts. I have a variety of challenges in my life, not to complain but here I go I’m going to complain again. As I record this, the Christmas season, the holiday season is upon us and of course I’m no where near ready to go because that means I suck at managing my time. Can you relate to that? I know, I know I can. It’s a life long challenge shall we say. You know my wife always says to me, I’m amazed at how much you can do. Like you are just like so focused, and you just like crank through it, and that’s her optics right?
Darryl Praill: That’s an interesting point of view. My point of view is I suck at it. I’m always behind. I’m always playing catch up. I’m always apologizing. I’m always asking for an extension. So yeah I suppose in the big picture I’m getting stuff done, but that doesn’t meet my expectations of me. So I don’t know if you can relate to that or not, but that’s certainly something that I am afflicted with, my life long struggle. We all have that don’t we? We all have these insecurities.
Darryl Praill: We all have these tid bits about our personality that we’re self aware, and what you don’t understand or maybe you do is that those influence and effect your ability to sell, whether it’s on the phone, an email, in social, what have you. I know even me, I’ll give you another example, another one of my insecurities. You know when I’m on social media if you follow me, LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera. I guess I have a reputation of being a straight shooter. I like to think instead of being a straight shooter, I’m just being honest and real. Right and if you call, you make a BS statement or you’re misleading, I’ll give you an example. I hate when people mislead young people or new people to the sales profession with promises of riches and millions if you just do X or you just do Y.
Darryl Praill: You just make more calls. You know why that may, may be true. Often that’s the exception, and they need to focus more on their technique. They need to be strategic and they need to understand how to handle a lot of this stuff. And when I see that I just viscerally react, and I call them out on it. I’m like really? Really, you think if I just did this much more, or if I work 23 to 24 hours a day I’m going to get a million dollars this year. Like is that, you know there’s consequences, there’s select decisions, there’s family, there’s friends, there’s hobbies, there’s whatever. You know maybe you’re caring for your ailing mother who’s in a home.
Darryl Praill: You’ve got balance in your life you have to pursue. So I call them out but the reality is when I do that my own insecurity says, oh Darryl, they’re going to yell at you. They’re going to think you’re an ass. They’re going to be all over you. And before you know it, then I start to, I second guess and I hesitate in my post. And again, that insecurity about upsetting somebody about that conflict, that comes through in everything I do. It’s no different than when I’m on the phone or I’m even in a live face to face meeting.
Darryl Praill: And we’re having a conversation, I’m trying to convey and demonstrate and persuade on the challenges that that prospect might have and on the merits of my decision and on how on my solution and how my solution could really make their life better. You know if I understand you Mr. Prospect, you’re telling me you have this situation. You have this pain. It’s having this impact on you. You have this critical event coming up shortly and if you don’t do anything this is the consequences. You know I hear you, did I get that right? Yeah, I got that right. Okay, well here you go. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Darryl Praill: And you can see how my solution will help you with that one. And now that we’ve done this a little bit of discovery. And then they throw out objection, after objection, after objection. And my insecurity really comes to the floor, you know did I not prep enough? Did I not do enough homework? Did I not have enough research? Am I not ready? And then I find myself occasionally, I know this is going to rock your world, stammering, stumbling, hesitating. And of course you don’t want to hesitate. You want to build and convey confidence. If they say you’re not sure, then they’re not going to be sure. So how do you respond to that? How do you handle those objections in life?
Darryl Praill: And that could have been an objection on a social media post like I just talked about, but more than likely it’s going to be an objection in your sales efforts. You finally get that prospect on the phone. You’re on the phone with a gatekeeper. No matter what you’re having that conversation and they throw that objection your way. What do you do? How do you handle them? Well you know, I am not that smart. I know again I’m going to circle, and circle, and circle, but Michael Pedone, founder and CEO of SalesBuzz, and you can check him out at SalesBuzz.com. And again you should be multitasking. If you’re not driving right now listening to this, pull up LinkedIn go to Michael Pedone, SalesBuzz. Click follow or connect, your choice, whatever he’s got there. He my friends, he knows the answer to how to handle objections, and he’s here today. Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Pedone: Hey how’s it going? Thanks for having me on.
Darryl Praill: It’s going well my friend. Happy Holidays to you.
Michael Pedone: Absolutely, absolutely.
Darryl Praill: Now you are a, you’re sitting here if I recall, in the greater state of Texas at the moment. Is that not correct?
Michael Pedone: No, it’s not correct.
Darryl Praill: No! That was my guess yesterday.
Michael Pedone: I’m in Minnesota.
Darryl Praill: You’re in Minnesota. You’re a huge hockey fan, are you not?
Michael Pedone: My daughter plays hockey, so I’m up here with her right now. But actually the home office is in Tampa, so waking up to negative six degrees today was a little bit of a shock.
Michael Pedone: Now a couple days ago
Darryl Praill: So do you live–
Michael Pedone: A couple days ago I was swimming in my pool.
Darryl Praill: Were you really? And now you’re here.
Michael Pedone: Yeah.
Darryl Praill: And your daughter, is she on a scholarship? Is that what’s going on there? Is that why you’re in Minnesota?
Michael Pedone: She actually, she plays for a prep team up here, called Shattuck St. Mary’s so, but she just had hip surgery. So it’s her senior year, and I’m just up here taking care of her and getting her to her appointments, get her healed back up. So hopefully we can get her back on the ice and win a national championship this year.
Darryl Praill: What a fantastic father. See now I’m feeling insecure again, and going full circle, because I was never that good. So, there you have it. All right, so Michael talk to me about objections. This is what we’re here for today. I want to understand. I know you and I have had conversation. We were on a webinar recently together where we talked about this. And the conversation was so lively that we actually ran out of time. We actually went over and the audience was not complaining about running out of time. The audience was complaining that they had to leave and because we had scheduled an hour and we were over an hour, because the content was so good. So that’s when I said boom. I have to have you back on this conversation on the podcast because my posse here wants to hear from you. So, what is, let’s start with the basics.
Michael Pedone: Okay.
Darryl Praill: What’s the number one issue? Or what’s your biggest beef, or your biggest you know like let’s talk moment when it comes to handling objections? What do you see happening over and over again? And where should somebody start if they’re looking to be better?
Michael Pedone: I think the first thing you have to start, is first of all if we’re talking about SDRs. Right, because there’s two types of objections. There’s objections in the beginning of the sale, and well you know typically there’s objections towards the end of the sale. All right so, if you’re talking about objections where you’re having a hard time getting the decision-makers to even agree to have a conversation with you. You know you hear the no thanks, not interested, we’re all set, we already use somebody, not in the budget.
Michael Pedone: You know you’re hearing that stuff right upfront. I think we should talk about that first, and realize that those are, the one thing I want whether you’re a new SDR or whether you’ve been doing this for a while and you’ve plateaued and you’re not getting to the next level and you’re struggling with those is that it’s not, it’s not in stone that you have to have those objections. A lot of times salespeople think that okay since we’re in sales, I’m going to get this objection, and then I have to face it and I have to come up with something creative to say to get over that. And that’s one strategy, but it quickly leads to burn out.
Michael Pedone: Sales doesn’t become fun as you go on. The next thing you know you’re looking for something else to do, or you’re looking for another job or what have you and then it’s just turn over and you go to the next place and you start all over again. And six months to a year later you’re in the same spot because you’re just tired of getting those objections and the thing is this. There is another strategy where you could avoid a lot of those objections right upfront. The secret lies in, first of all recognizing, having self-awareness, or having somebody else that’s proven it over and over again say to you, listen you don’t have to always run in.
Michael Pedone: You can drastically reduce those types of objections by about 80%. That’s huge! If you switch around to where you’re only getting rejected 20% of the time in the very beginning of a call, you won’t even care about the 20% of the time because the other 80% you’re getting through and you’re getting to the next level. So I think the first thing we have to start with is recognizing that you know what, the objections, that I mean if you want to continue down that sales path where you’re going to run into them and try to overcome them, you can do that if you want, or you can actually learn another sales strategy where it eliminates those objections before they happen. So you can have a better chance of getting the conversation started.
Darryl Praill: So I know–
Michael Pedone: That’s what I would tell them.
Darryl Praill: As I listen to you I know every single rep in the call right now is saying but my manager or my executive or our in house coach is turning over in their grave right now because they yell at me non-stop that I have to have all my objection handling responses, you know, down and I need to be able to respond and then be able to give them.
Michael Pedone: Yeah.
Darryl Praill: And you’re telling me that I, you know I can do that, but there’s another way of handling it.
Michael Pedone: So–Yeah.
Darryl Praill: Let me, let me pause at this folks, you want to do both.
Michael Pedone: That’s true.
Darryl Praill: Like you definitely want to have those in the back of your head. You want to have them memorized and I’ll tell you why. Not just because that’s the you know point counter point back and forth that takes place in a sales call, that little dance if you will, but candidly, candidly, I’m speaking as a marketer for a second with a product marketing background, is you want to understand how your solution works, how it differentiates, how it addresses their pain. You truly want to understand that.
Darryl Praill: So it’s not just that you want to know the verbiage to use to counter. You actually want to just intrinsically, intuitively, innately know that. Because then when you deliver the line, you’re going to physically just sound way more credible, but I do want to come back to what he’s saying here. He’s spot on. What if you could perhaps avoid a lot of these objections before they ever appear which is what he’s getting at. So Michael, how do we do that?
Michael Pedone: Well the first step, well okay, so the first step is awareness that there is another way. The second step is this before we actually get to execution it goes back to what you were, you mentioned the pain. Sales reps have to know who they’re target audience is. I asked somebody the other day in one of my classes, and I was getting ready to role play, and I said who’s your target audience? You know they do optimization, search engines, marketing, things of that nature and they go, and the guy says anybody with a website. And I’m like no that’s the problem.
Darryl Praill: No.
Michael Pedone: Most salespeople they go wide instead of deep right? Because they don’t want to lose any sales, so they want to take anybody and everybody. And the problem is you spread yourself too thin. You want to go deep. You should, if you’re an SDR you should know the top three industries that normally buy from you, right? You might have 20 industries of different industries that buy from you, example, but you should know who the top three that buy the most. You should know location, average employee size, average revenue size.
[bctt tweet=”Most salespeople go wide instead of deep because they don’t want to lose any sales. So, they want to take anybody and everybody. And the problem is you spread yourself too thin. You want to go deep. ~ @MichaelPedone #SalesTips” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Michael Pedone: These are basics. You should be able to know how to pick your zebra out of the herd, and go you know what if they have this, this, and this there’s a higher percentage chance that they’re going buy from you. So now, once you know what that is you also need to know what problems would they have to have in order for them to be interested in what your product or service sells. Calling and saying you know I want to learn about your needs, tell me about your needs, is so old and outdated. You should know, you have to understand your business is only in business because it solves problems for specific scenarios and situations. You might have lots of different types of scenarios and situations.
Michael Pedone: You might have a very narrow niche. But in each one of those categories you’re going to have a very particular audience, that’s going to go ahead and resonate with that, and so as a SDR I should know one, I don’t always have to get objections. There’s a better way, which we are going to show you today real quick, but it also starts with knowing who’s your right audience. If you are simply calling on somebody who that has absolutely no need for what you offer you could have the best sales strategy in the world and you’re going to have to work a million times harder to get one person to buy from you. You could have basic sales skills but hit the right target audience and you’re going to do very well. Does that make sense?
Darryl Praill: It makes perfect sense. So know your, know who your audience is. I would say as a marketer know who your ideal customer profile is, you know, where you kick ass and where you can have the easiest in impact and the fastest way to connect, especially from a marketing point of view. In sales it’s no different from this front. You only have a few seconds often to establish that rapport and establish that level of interest. So okay so know your audience.
Michael Pedone: Can I share–
Darryl Praill: Yeah, go ahead.
Michael Pedone: Share a personal story that changed my viewpoint on cold calling and prospecting?
Darryl Praill: Go for it.
Michael Pedone: I’ve always been a strong closer but I took this one job and they wanted me to do a lot more cold calling first and prospecting. You know normally, the leads are just there. They actually wanted me to prospect and find my own leads, and I’m like oh I equated it to like the old style vacuum cleaner salesman going door to door and throwing dirt on there when they open up. And I’m like no I don’t want to do it, and he goes no listen. We were selling advertising. So he goes you get this competitors magazine.
Michael Pedone: Here’s what you do you start flipping through the magazine. In all the ads that are full page ads you, that’s your target audience. ‘Cause we were going to, we wanted to get advertisers into our side. He said ignore all the quarter page or little you know eighth of a page or half page ads. Those people are just testing the waters. The people that are already spending money they already know the value, they’re already looking to gain new business. Go after the full page ads. They have the money. And it was just something that small that is what led me down the path of learning what an ICP is and then starting to ask more questions about the basics.
Michael Pedone: And then from there, it was like I had no fear picking up the phone because I knew that if what I’m going to say is going to resonate so soundly with them I’m going to getting I won’t care about the few rejections I get for the day because I’m flipping the funnel in the sense of instead of getting 80% rejection or 90% rejection I’m getting 80 or 90% acceptance and I don’t care about the other 10 to 20% rejection at that point. Does that make sense?
Darryl Praill: It makes perfect sense. I love it so I want to do a teaser here for the audience. I know that Michael’s a huge fan of the power of the opening value statement which is tied to your ICP. So with that, don’t go anywhere. We’re going to be right back. Stay turned folks.
Darryl Praill: Okay so we’re back. So know your audience, know your ICP. Know your, you also talk about, know your objective. I’ve heard you talk about that, but we’ll get to that in a second. Talk to me about the opening value statement. Because this is really where the rubber hits the road in how you can pre-end a lot of those objections if I recall.
Michael Pedone: It is but you have to put things in proper order, right? So you’ve mentioned we’re going to get to the objective in a second. The actual the objective has to come you have to know the objectives before you get the right opening value statement, right? So before you to OVS you have to, most sales people think that their objective, even if they’re in SDR, they think that their objective is to set an appointment. Okay, let me ask you a question. Why would you set an appointment with an unqualified prospect for your AE?
Darryl Praill: Oh my gosh.
Michael Pedone: Now here’s the thing–Darryl Praill: Yeah.
Michael Pedone: But here’s the thing, most SDRs will go well no I got the right title. You know that I’m calling the person with the right title so they’re qualified. That’s not qualifying. There’s three phases to qualifying. They have to have a problem. The first phase of qualifying is do they have a problem that they want solved that your solution can fix. If they don’t have that, they’re not qualified.
Michael Pedone: That’s really hard for sales people to comprehend. Then they’re like wait a minute no, I mean we offer this. They’re in the right industry you know, they’ll want our service. Not always. Let me give you an example. If you sell cars, if the dude just bought a brand new car yesterday and you follow up them guess what not qualified, doesn’t need it, just got one. Does that make sense?
Darryl Praill: It makes sense–
Michael Pedone: I’m trying to come up with–
Darryl Praill: And I want to use–
Michael Pedone: an analogy out there.
Darryl Praill: A point here though right folks. So and you’re right now going but I have these activity numbers I have to hit. I have to have so many dials. I have to have so many conversations, and I have to set so many meetings. Now if I’ve got a dude willing to take a meeting, why would I not do that? But Michael’s point here is think about that. Yeah, you may have made a meeting and you hit your activity number but if the AE takes that and says this is a chump change meeting. This is a waste of my time and I could have been closing somebody else when I was following up this piece of crap then all of the sudden they’re going to not want to take your meetings anymore.
Michael Pedone: Exactly.
Darryl Praill: So what you want to do is you want to be strategic and set killer meetings so that when the AE takes that they’re going to go oh my gosh this is a meeting from Praill every single one he gives me is killer and boom your career just goes on a rapid trajectory. So fully agree with the point you’re making there. So that’s–
Michael Pedone: Okay.
Darryl Praill: Talk to me about the opening value statement.
Michael Pedone: Right.
Darryl Praill: Because I want to get and throw some questions at you, some common objections–
Michael Pedone: Absolutely.
Darryl Praill: But I’m cognizant of the time.
Michael Pedone: All right so here’s the thing, you have you know your ICP. You build your prospect list that matches that. You know what your objective is. You want to get a conversation going so you can qualify them and then set that appointment where we’ll have a higher closing. How do you do that? Let’s say you have all that information in front of you. You got the right suspects in that database. It’s what you say after hello my name is that’s going to be the key. See most people get objections after they do their introduction because their opening value statement is all about them and what they do and not what it solves for the prospect. Does that make sense?
Darryl Praill: It makes perfect sense. Give me an example.
Michael Pedone: Well like I said, so if you call and say hi this is Michael Pedone with XYZ company and we provide blah blah blah and I’d like to get on your calendar. Is next Tuesday or Thursday better for you? You’re probably going hear no thanks, not interested, we’re all set, already have somebody that does that, not in the budget. You know what I mean? So and then and now the strategy that is widely taught is when they say that come back with something else. Like you know, I’ve heard somebody say recently and ask a question like, well you’re not interested in increasing sales?
Darryl Praill: Yeah I love that one.
Michael Pedone: It’s so–
Darryl Praill: It’s cheesy.
Michael Pedone: It’s so confrontational that of course they’re interested in increasing sales but now you’re standoffish. I mean if you were picking up somebody in the bar that way you responded like that I mean obviously they’re not going to want to you know. They’re not going to gravitate to you. They’re going to pull away, you know.
Darryl Praill: What you’re not interested in having great sex?
Darryl Praill: I don’t know why that would not work. I just don’t understand.
Michael Pedone: Oh my gosh you know–
Darryl Praill: But so–So what should they have done? How should they phrase that?
Michael Pedone: You have to structure your opening value statement where it’s front loaded with what you got to agitate a pain or scratch an itch. And you don’t want to do a sales pitch, right. You don’t want to do a spray and pray. For those of you that are getting somebody on the phone and you just data dump, I know why you’re doing it, right. You just, you believe so strongly that you can help them but you’re just so tired of getting rejected that you’re just going to throw everything at them and you’re hoping that something sticks.
Michael Pedone: And you know what? It might work once in a while, but if that’s your strategy you’re going to lose a lot more deals than you ever win. So the thing is this, is you have to think in the words of Twitter. Like Twitter was because it was like short and sweet right, 140 characters is what it started with right? Your opening value statement has to be very short, sweet, agitate a pain, scratch an itch, and you want to gain permission to continue the call so the guard drops and the ears go up. So let me give you a bad example like I just did earlier right.
Michael Pedone: So again if you call and you introduce yourself and your company and you go the reason for my call is we provide blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’d like to get on your calendar. You’re going to get resistance. So you want to turn resistance into interest, before the resistance happens. So one way I do it is this. Hi, this is Michael Pedone with SalesBuzz.com and listen the reason for my outreach is my course on inside sales actually helps outbound sales teams learn how to get decision makers on the phone so they can increase your pipeline, and if I caught you at a good time I’d love to ask you a few questions just to see if what we have to offer may be of some help to you. Would that be okay?
Darryl Praill: And you’re giving me the power, which I like that, at least it feels like you give me the power. I can give yes or a no–It feels like it. It feels like–
Michael Pedone: Yes. It feels like they’re in control.
Darryl Praill: Right.
Michael Pedone: But see this is one of the greatest secrets of control is the more control you give away the more you retain, right? ‘Cause if their guard comes down I’m piquing their interest and lowering their resistance but they also feel like they’re in control, I’m actually in control because the strategy’s going to get me what I needed anyway. Right we’re all to, you go ahead.
Darryl Praill: I’ve heard versions of that, almost identical to what you just said with a slight twist because they may still say no but they may say and I can do that in about 30 seconds. Do you have 30 seconds? Right, and by the way feel free to time me. Now I know that’s a personal style but the point is even for me, well, yeah okay. A, I answered the phone so I knew I was going to be in a conversation. So you can do this in 30 seconds or 60 seconds whatever and then we can decide whether we want to continue. Go, you got my time.
Michael Pedone: Here’s why I don’t like the 30 second, I saw somebody else–
Darryl Praill: Did you notice by the way folks, if you’re watching on video, that he crossed his arms when I said that? You could tell right away he didn’t like what I said. That was awesome.
Michael Pedone: So here’s why. Here’s why I think that’s bad sales advice or at least it’s not the next level up sales advise, right, because if you say the thirty seconds or you try to be cute and do the 27 seconds just so it breaks it up. It puts you in a situation where you have to spray and pray.
Darryl Praill: Yep.
Michael Pedone: You have 27 seconds where you have to do a data dump. I don’t want to do a data dump. I want to get a conversation going. So my style is pique interest and gain permission to continue the call because if they go yeah I got a second go ahead, I’m like great and now I already know the next three questions I’m going to ask to get in the qualifying phase–
Darryl Praill: And I love that.
Michael Pedone: To engage them.
Darryl Praill: Boom, you nailed it right there. So yeah sure go ahead. Next three questions and you’re engaging them. That’s brilliant. All right–
Michael Pedone: Absolutely.
Darryl Praill: Let me flip it on you. Let me go into kind of you know rapid fire now. We understand the importance of knowing your audience. We understand the importance of your opening value statement. We understand that you need to understand your objective. So let’s use some real life examples here. Classic early call objections, all right. We don’t have time today for middle of the call objections but here we go. You do your thing you just did to me, and my answer to you is sorry but I’m busy right now.
Michael Pedone: Listen I totally get it. I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t think I could help your sales team tremendously. I just need a minute to ask you a few questions. Would that be okay?
Darryl Praill: All right, so explain to me what you just did there. If you had to break that down kind of semantically.
Michael Pedone: So some of the things I normally get, I mean ’cause if you’re a sales director who turns down getting their inside sales team to perform better and increase their pipeline? You know what I mean? I didn’t over promise. I didn’t guarantee anything. You know I said there’s a possibility, but I just need to ask you a few questions. So I’m teasing that with the carrot. So that’s all by design and it makes it easier for them to go you know what, okay, I got a second go ahead, but if they said right now’s really not a good time I am prepared. You talked about being prepared, having that script.
Michael Pedone: You know these guys have metrics and numbers to hit. I still want you to be prepared for the no. I just want you to get no a lot less. So when you do get a no, I’m not going anywhere. I say listen I understand your time’s extremely valuable. I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t think I could help you solve XYZ, but I would just need to ask you a few questions first to be sure. Would that be okay? So I try a second time. Now what you’re going to hear, when you do it right, is one of two things. They’re going to say okay go ahead, or they’re going to go listen no, you know what I’m interested, but I have to get to a meeting. Call me this afternoon. That’s okay. The third thing is right, there’s only three things. They’re going to say yes, they’re going to set a time to call, or they’re going to come back with a third no. So I have a strategy for that you ready?
Darryl Praill: Yeah.
Michael Pedone: Okay, it’s called planting the seed. So if you came back down after I tried that second to go well right now’s really not a good time. No problem, I’ll tell you what. What I’m going to do is this because I really think I can help you. I’m going to send you my contact information. If you ever run into a situation where you’re going to have to start having some uncomfortable conversations with your sales reps. They’re not hitting their numbers. They’re not picking up the phone. Their skills aren’t where they need to be. I might be able to help you with that. At least you’ll have someone you can reach out to and we can have that conversation at that time. Is that fair enough?
Darryl Praill: That’s totally fair, it’s cool.
Michael Pedone: Great, and then I’ll confirm his email address. I send him my contact information. I’ve put him in my file. I’ll put him in a marketing campaign. If I’m really hot on this guy or girl I’ll set up a next call, notice I didn’t call it a follow up yet.
Darryl Praill: That’s right.
Michael Pedone: I’m going to set up a next call. And then I’m gone. I can’t tell you how many times a trigger event will end up happening to that dude and all of the sudden they’re sending me an email. They’re calling me back. Now I have an inbound lead all because I planted the seed. I used to do it so many times that my manager said that guy had no chance. I mean he was, you know it was like a little worm in his brain all night.
Michael Pedone: You know he kept thinking about it. You know if you’re a sales director you’re going to have uncomfortable conversations if they’re not hitting numbers, right things of that nature. So this is where you have to know the pain points of your target audience. Now somebody might listen to this and go well that works for you in the sales training but no I did the same thing in every industry I’m in. The plays are the same. It’s the words that are changed based on the industry and the pain points.
Darryl Praill: What I love about what you just did too, and I keep on saying this over and over again on our pods here, is you played the long game. You ultimately said you know with option number three can I send you some information and you know whatever and the point is your point was boom nine times out of ten they come back to you. You played the long game. Too many of you listening are trying to get that home run every single time that first call. Don’t. Build a relationship. Play the long game. Next one, we already have someone for that but thanks anyways.
Michael Pedone: So that, see that means your opening value statement is you’re talking about your product and what you do and not what you solve. Listen, your target audience already has a solution for what you offer. I don’t care what you sell. They already have some type of solution that you offer. You’re not coming up with a brand new invention. They have somebody, whether you’re selling a software or if its logistics or if it’s marketing, they already have something in place. You need to come in and tell if you’re getting that response, your opening value statement is talking about what you offer and not what you solve.
Michael Pedone: So for me if I were to call you and said, and let’s say you’re a sales director, and I go you know the reason for my call I offer an online sales training course and I wanted to, you know, ask you a few questions. You’re like oh yeah we already do sales training in house. That would have been because my opening value statement sucked and it led you to respond that way, but if I said the reason for my call I specialize in helping outbound sales teams overcome call reluctance. If you have a team of 20 sales reps, I’m a bet you have at least five struggling with call reluctance even though you have sales training in house.
Darryl Praill: So–
Michael Pedone: And now all the sudden I’m not getting that objection, I’m getting a better response. Does that make sense?
Darryl Praill: It makes sense, you’re speaking to the pain and the benefit as opposed to speaking to what you do right? So you’re leading to a conversation. Now that’s a big thing. I love that. Next one, we don’t have money in the budget for this right now, but thanks anyways.
Michael Pedone: Okay, that tells me that you over explained in the beginning. You did a data dump on what you did. So you didn’t follow the process. Your opening value statement’s job is to do two things and two things only and it’s supposed to do it in this order. It’s supposed to pique interest first, gain permission second. So once that happens, and you pique interest and then you gain permission. You’re now in a position where they’re giving you permission to be able to ask them some questions. So you get a conversation going. This is what you want. If you’re getting the objection that you just mentioned it tells me you’re over-explaining what you offer and then they go yeah, we don’t have it in the budget for that.
[bctt tweet=”Your opening value statement’s job is to do two things only in this order: pique interest & gain permission. ~ @MichaelPedone #SalesTips #prospecting” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Darryl Praill: All right, okay.
Michael Pedone: That’s why–
Darryl Praill: Go ahead.
Michael Pedone: Now you can try to overcome that, right and you can do that sales path or as a straight commission sales rep all my adult working life I got tired of that. The burn out was high. Sales wasn’t fun. I wasn’t making any money, and then so I decided. I analyzed why am I getting these, instead of trying to overcome I’m going what did I do to cause it? And then when I fixed my opening value statement, I left those objections in the dust, and I started having more conversations, started making more money. So it’s really, you know, it’s up to you guys on which path you want.
Darryl Praill: All right, so if you’re like me folks, I know you’re listening to Michael and you’re going damn keep on going, keep on going but you may have noticed we’re basically out of time. So what I want you to do, if you haven’t done it already, is I want you to follow Michael on all the social media platforms. You can learn more about his services, sales training, everything sales related at SalesBuzz.com. Michael, what’s the best way for them to call you or contact you directly?
Michael Pedone: Best way, if you have a sales team that needs help, you know go to my website SalesBuzz.com. You can take a free course on demand right there. All my training is done live like this, you know, but if you’re interested if you need help, take the free course first see if you like what the on-demand session has to say and if it resonates then reach out to me and we’ll talk from there.
Darryl Praill: Talk about the worlds most understated sell but most compelling. Take the free course. Why would you not take the free course? And in fact you should take the free course with everybody you work with and throw it to your managers as well and you’re going to see the impact it makes. Take the free course. Apply the lessons. Use these lessons here. AB test it, like we talk about all the time guys. Try it in real life and if it works go back to SalesBuzz.com with Michael and continue this conversation with him. My name is Darryl Praill. Michael, thank you for your time today.
Michael Pedone: Thank you guys, hope you enjoyed it.
Darryl Praill: All right we’re done, we’re out of here folks. Wishing you a wonderful holiday if you’re listening to this in real time. If you’re listening to this on demand pay me, ask me what gifts I’ve got. In the mean time, I’m Darryl Praill. I’m with VanillaSoft. This is the Inside Inside Sales Show. We’ll talk to you soon. Take care, bye-bye.