Deadly Conversion Busters: Turning “Yeah, But” Into “Yes, Please.”

Why is your prospect on the fence? How can you convert that concern into a reason to buy?

In this episode Chris and Tony reveal:

• What you need to do to discover the real problems behind your offer
• How customers might be misleading you with their objections
• Why you need to go beyond the FAQ
• How to reinforce your answers to objections so they grow your authority
• The 3F technique for making customers feel good about their concerns

Deadly Conversion Busters: Turning “Yeah, but” into “Yes, Please”

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Tony Clark: This is The Mainframe.

Welcome back to our Deadly Conversion Buster series. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about objections, specifically turning ‘Yeah, but’ into ‘Yes, please.’ How you doing, Chris?

Chris Garrett: I’m doing great. We had a fantastic time at the Authority Rainmaker conference in Denver. It was an energy drain, because of the social battery, but it was well worth it. Fantastic time.

Tony Clark: Yeah, it was a combination of exhaustion, and coming back, we were totally energized. We got to hear some amazing speakers, and we closed it out with Henry Rollins from Black Flag, among other things. We got to spend some time with him afterwards.

I, being a metal, punk, and rock fan going back to my teen years and hanging out in the clubs in Miami, it was cool talking to him about seeing Rollins Band play in 1987 at The Cameo and him actually remembering specific things about that show. It was very cool to connect again now in a business environment, which was full-circle here.

Chris Garrett: He even gave a shout-out to a couple people at his own live show, which was really cool. I only saw that on Twitter. I didn’t get to go. It’s funny talking about ‘Yeah, but.’ His entire presentation, to me, was about getting started, doing it yourself, going out there, and making things happen. In terms of objections, our episode today, he was basically saying, “Whatever objections you have, they’re not valid. Go ahead and do it anyway.”

Tony Clark: Yeah. The big takeaway from that was that you can do it no matter what. Not taking no for an answer is a way of approaching it, and giving the finger to those who are telling you, “You can’t do it.” One way to do that is to understand your audience. That’s one thing that he really does. He understands exactly who he’s trying to reach because he’s one of them. That’s one way to do it.

What You Need to Do to Discover the Real Problems Behind Your Offer

Tony Clark: Another way is asking the question, finding out what’s holding your audience back. The objection may be your own, or it may be from the customer, but identifying them is key, because a lot of times, the struggle is, “What is the actually objection? What is the reason for the holdup here? What is the roadblock? What’s blocking this?”

Chris Garrett: Yeah. You have to filter out the valid concerns, the things that are stopping people from buying, and the things that people are saying to you to make you feel better, or make them feel better, about saying ‘no.’

An example of that is, we have a company that looks after our pets when we go away. They have been wanting to sell us pet food, but my wife wants to buy the pet food from the pet store. But she doesn’t want hurt their feelings. It’s crazy to me, because it’s a business. They’re not friends. They’re not family. It’s a business. Actually, you’re wasting their time by keeping the dialogue going.

How Customers Might Be Misleading You with Their Objections

Chris Garrett: You have to actually drill down to the real objections, the real concerns. Usually, that means asking why. Don’t just take the first answer.

If you get the actual objection, you can understand where the objection is coming from, the emotion behind it. Also, you can start talking about solution or an answer to that objection. If you only have a superficial, surface-level question, the service-level objection, then you’re not going to address the real thing, and it’s not going to help your conversion.

Tony Clark: Exactly. I’ll give you a great example from my own experience with my own vet. The previous vet we had was very adamant about not getting any of the medicine, or supplements, or any of the heartworm pills and those sort of things from 1-800-PETMEDS or anywhere besides them. They were very firm about that, and they couldn’t give a good answer why. Even the answers they provided weren’t good answers.

I would give an objection: “Well why? You’re charging so much more, why can’t I get it from them? They’re reputable. Why can’t you give the prescription?”

“Oh, we don’t. We won’t back it up.” Well, why? “Well, sometimes, we don’t know how long they’re going to sit.” Well, that wasn’t a good answer to the objection.

My current vet was able to explain to me reasons why they chose to do that. Actually, it started out by softening that objection by saying, “Well, you can get them from wherever you want. If you want us to give a prescription, we’ll do that, and you can order them from wherever. However, you get them from us, you know that we just received them in. They’re the exact thing we’re prescribing. Also, to be honest with you, we’re not that much more than you would be charged from getting them here.” My current vet was able to answer my objections in a way that made me feel like, “Well that’s a good answer, and I’m going to now purchase them from you,” and I do.

I’m fine to do that. Not only am I helping out my local veterinarian — we love them, our dogs love them, and we are able to provide them with our money for the product — but they were able to address my concerns and my objections in a way that made me feel comfortable to buy through them.

Chris Garrett: Not only did they answer the concerns and answer them in a way that actually addressed you as an adult and with respect, but they added authority with their answer. They didn’t just say “No,” or “Because I said so.” They answered in a way that said, “Okay, you have the option to do that, but here’s the benefit, here’s the advantage, of going without approach.” You don’t just feel better, but you’ve actually learned something useful for the future that will make you more connected to them. An unanswered objection or an objection that’s not answered properly festers, and it causes doubt.

In the previous episode, we talked about fear. It causes some fear. If you look like you’re avoiding answering, you look like one of those really bad, sleazy politicians. You’ve got to be very careful.

One of the reasons a lot of people try to avoid objections is because they’re afraid of raising the objection in the audience’s mind. You have to remember that it’s going to be there anyway. You can answer and address these objections, both directly and indirectly. You might think that “We’re only wanting to sell you these drugs because we make a profit on them,” but sometimes, you can say “Here’s the advantage of getting your drugs through us, and your service or product through us, versus other outlets.” You can just talk about it in a beneficial way.

Don’t be afraid of objections. You really do need to address them.

Answering Objections in a Way that Empowers and Inspires Confidence

Tony Clark: The point there is that the answer helps educate the customer. We’ve been talking about that through this entire series, and we talk about that a lot. An educated buyer is a buyer who feels that they’ve gotten something, and they feel comfortable about their purchase. By educating with an answer, you can, like you just said, demonstrate your authority in a way that makes them feel comfortable buying from you, versus in a way that makes them feel disrespected, or that they’re ignorant, that they don’t know.

It’s amazing how the way you phrase something and the way you present an answer can make somebody feel stupid, or you can actually make them feel like “Hey, I’m here to educate you because I do know a little bit more about this, but let me tell you in a way that makes you feel empowered.”

That’s what this is really about, educating and empowering with the answers so that they can let go of that objection.

Chris Garrett: That’s one of the reasons I like to do webinars. First of all, all the questions you get on a webinar are a form of an objection. You get the regular objections, like “How much is it going to cost? That sounds like it’s quite a lot,” and “Okay, it sounds like it will work for these people, but will it work for me?” Then you get other questions like, “How long is it going to take?”

These are things that should be in the copy, but by answering them in a Q-and-A in the webinar, you can actually have people, instead of feeling ashamed that they’re having to ask, you can help them feel smart by answering the question. You can say, “That’s a really good question,” or “Thank you for asking that.”

Being interactive is also giving people comfort and a connection to you in a relationship, because personalities are coming into play. It’s hard to do some of that in text. A Q-and-A or a webinar can actually bring out objections but allows you to answer them in a way that you can test the response: “Was that a sufficient answer? Let me know with follow-up questions.” You can answer the biggest objections, because if 10 people ask the same thing, you know that’s something that really should be in the copy.

Tony Clark: Exactly. You also want to have a way of repeating that. You’ll do it in the copy, and you can provide that in testimonials that the customers have provided you that answer things that are already in the copy, and FAQs, and in video. If you do webinars or you do an audio interview, you keep bringing up those items that are the typical types of objections. By having it repeated in multiple formats in a variety of different places, it comes out a lot more clearly. You get the message across. Anything that’s repeated, you get to see that it really sticks. You get to reinforce those things that you’ve already presented, but in a new way, in a new form, so they’re constantly having their objections and their questions answered.

Chris Garrett: It gives you a feeling of confidence when you read copy that is upfront, and honest and transparent about things that may be concerning you. Then you feel the comfort, because it’s coming across with confidence, it’s coming across with authority. When you try to hide, or have an asterisked little caveat, it doesn’t have that same confidence.

Somebody recently did a launch — I’d like to know how it went – what they did was a webinar right at the deadline. I think the deadline for the launch was midnight Eastern Time. I think the webinar was like 9:00 p.m. It was an objections webinar. They actually came out and said, “If you’ve got any remaining questions, then come to this webinar, and we’ll answer them all.”

I think that was a really good idea. I’d love to know if it worked for them. Anybody that doesn’t buy until right at the deadline has been thinking about it, has been questioning it, and has been uncertain. If you can tip anybody over on that final hour, then you’re going to get more sales.

The downside is, anybody that feels persuaded or pushed is likely to refund. You have to do it in a way that’s confident and with authority. Also, you have to say, maybe this isn’t for you. You might explicitly say, “If any of these match, then this probably isn’t for you.” For example, we might have an advanced course where we say, “You know, if you’ve never made a dollar online, then you need to do this course instead first. Make your first dollar, and then come back to us.” Don’t try to answer every objection in a way that says ‘bye.’

Tony Clark: That really brings up the third piece of this, which is how do you reinforce those answers to help people feel more confident in their purchase?

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How to Reinforce Your Answers to Objections So They Grow Your Authority

Tony Clark: There’s several ways you can do this. One way is by offering a freemium product or a free trial. There are these last nagging questions that people have. If you offer a trial and let them get in there and see it themselves, they can answer those objections themselves. They can actually feel more confident in their purchase. You can provide a webinar, like you were talking about earlier, where you demonstrate those things and answer those last questions that people have. You can use social proof.

There’s a lot of different ways to go about this, right?

Chris Garrett: Yeah. The simplest way to reinforce it is, like you say, demonstrate. Instead of telling, show. We’ve mentioned before in previous episodes, show people inside your member area. One of the objections is, “Does this thing even exist?” I buy into a lot of Kickstarters. So far, I have not been burned too badly, but there are a few times that I should have seen the warning signs.

The trust factor is increased when somebody can see something in action. At the same time, as you are saying, “Okay this thing is real,” you can say, “Look how quick and easy it is.” People can see you clicking around, or they can see that the operation is simple and obvious. You don’t have to have a telephone directory-sized manual to go through before you could even get some benefits out of it.

Tony Clark: Another great way to reinforce is through your guarantee. We talked about this in a previous episode about gaining trust by providing a refund period or providing a money-back guarantee. That overcomes the biggest objection of, “I’m going to give you money, but I don’t know what I’m going to get.”

By clearly stating that you’re going to get a time period that you can make sure that this is right for you, that overcomes those last objections that people have. Because even though they’re giving you the money, they know that they still have a chance to say, “You know what? This isn’t right for me.” That’s a huge way to get over those last objections.

Why You Need to Go Beyond the FAQ

Chris Garrett: Yeah. If you’re going to address these objections in a way that feels natural and conversational, you’re going to get a lot more trust and a lot more confidence. Also, you can introduce elements that flow a little bit easier, smoother, rather than just having an FAQ.

An FAQ can work really well, but it’s the last resort. It’s the afterthought. An FAQ is easy to update. It’s easy to build on. But when you try to reinforce it, it’s really good to have elements that address both the logical and the emotional.

The 3F Technique for Making Customers Feel Good About Their Concerns

Chris Garrett: A good way of doing that is to have case studies and testimonials with ‘feel,’ ‘felt’, and ‘found.’ This is a sales technique that goes back a long, long time, way before my time. What it does it is addresses concerns in a way that says, “Okay, I can empathize, but here is how you might think about it differently.” You’re not saying, “You’re wrong.” You’re saying, “Okay, other people have felt that way, and I felt that way, but here’s what we found.” It’s saying, “You were right to feel that way, but here’s the information you were missing,” or “Here’s how experience differs from what you’re worried about.”

Tony Clark: How do we wrap this up here? We have the typical objections that come up, and that final piece of the sales process, and we have addressed some of those here. What are the takeaways of how to address these objections?

Chris Garrett: The first thing is to either guess or find out what the objections are. Even when you guess, you should validate them against real customers, real prospects. Find out what they really were nervous about, what was holding them back.

If you guess, you really do need to validate with real customers, real prospects, because you need to ask why: “Why was that a concern? Why was that holding you back?” Then fold all that into your answers, but you want answers that give you more authority to emphasize your benefits and answers that don’t try to persuade everybody to buy, because not everybody is going to be a good customer.

You can use copy. You can use testimonials. You can use FAQs. But don’t just leave your answer expecting everybody to take your word for it. You need to show as well as tell. You need to give people trial periods, and you need to use evidence and proof.

Tony Clark: That’s addressing your objections.

In our next episode, and our final episode in this Deadly Conversion Buster series, we’re going to talk about bad headlines. We’ll see you next time.