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Key Takeaways
“If it’s what I would consider to be a false objection my goal is not to deal with it. My goal is to side step it and continue talking.”
— Jeff Hoffman, M. J. Hoffman and Associates
* People tend to diffuse the responsibility for their objection by using plural pronouns. This usually means they don’t have the authority to tell you their department has no budget.
* Leave budget alone. Find a way to ask questions about something else so they can’t push you off the call.
* Figure out what “We don’t have the budget” actually means. The term is broad and meaningless, so call them out. They won’t want to look like they’re fooling you or they’re full of it, so force them to defend themselves by getting specific.
Transcript
Announcer: This is Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman and CeCe Bazar. For more information go to OpenView Labs or MJHoffman.com.
CeCe: Thanks for tuning in to the Strictly Sales library here wiki for all your sales questions and objection handling. We are joined today by Jeff Hoffman to talk a little bit about budgets and your clients. So Jeff something that people here especially when they’re prospecting just as an objection right out the gate is “Oh we have no budget for that.”
Jeff: Right. Right. Well it comes up at different times and I think where it comes up in the sales process is going to dictate the way you handle it. If it’s a serious question around budget, it’s generally going to require more than a short answer but we tend to hear that a lot early if it’s really not so much around budget but a way to kind of outbox us.
CeCe: Totally.
Jeff: And for that I think we need to have some good tools.
CeCe Bazar: So let’s jump in a role play on how exactly we might be able to handle that.
Jeff: Sure. I think right away so we can do it and I’ll give you a couple of examples so why don’t you fire at me with the budget question.
CeCe: Thanks so much for your call Jeff but actually we don’t even have budget for that right now.
Jeff: I’m sorry. Who’s we?
CeCe: The entire marketing organization. No budget.
Jeff: Time out. Now one of the first things I do with weird objections is I isolate the plural pronoun. You said… You said we and I said who’s we? Because when people give objections in the plural, we, our, they, they’re diffusing responsibility for the actual objection which we don’t let them do.
So we both know the person you’re talking to doesn’t have the authority to tell you that the entire marketing department doesn’t have budget. That’s absurd. So by saying we. Now if she said I don’t have budget, I would do something else. So we’ll go back and you can say your answer again. I’m sorry. Who’s we?
CeCe: The marketing organization.
Jeff: So this is my first call to your company and I know very little about your structure. How many folks are in your marketing department?
CeCe: We have seven people in marketing.
Jeff: Okay. Does that roll up to a VP of marketing?
CeCe: Yes. We have an interim VP of marketing right now.
Jeff: What do you mean interim?
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