Transcript for "Mastering Objections: A Sales AE's Workshop On Turning No’s into Yes’s": Hey, everyone. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone's having a wonderful day so far. We've got some awesome content to cover with you guys today, and I've also got some amazing guests joining me here today. As everyone trickles in, why don't why doesn't everyone just put into the chat, you know, where you're coming in from, where you're tuning in from? We'd love to hear hear from you. Also, please, if you have any questions while we're going, through the webinar here today, please feel free to use the chat to ask any questions. We'll try to get to all of them. Also, we wanna try and make this webinar interactive. So if there's any brave folks that are attending the webinar here today that would love to join us up on stage and, share some of those objections that you're getting, throughout your deal cycles or on cold calls right now that you may be struggling to to overcome. Please please, put it in the chat. I've got, Anthony or as I like to call him, God during these webinars in the background helping me out. So he'll bring you up on stage if you wanna join us. So today, we've got, like I said, awesome content that we're gonna be covering. And today is all about objection handling and how to get you closer to closing that deal. So with that being said, I wanna hear from everyone that's attending. What is the most common objection you you have experienced this quarter so far? You should see a poll, coming through here. Yep. It's on the screen right now. So no budget, no interest, not the right person. We already have something in place, timing, send me an email, the classic, or other. Let us know what is the most common objection you're getting. It looks like we already have something in place is, slowly taking the lead there. While the results come in, why don't we kick it off and start, getting to know our guests a little bit? So I'm gonna pass it over to our guests and let them introduce Everyone, Dave Forchett. I'm, talking to you from Colorado just outside Boulder. Well, see, I've been 34 years in high-tech beauty enterprise software. I started off as a BDR, the way that we would call ourselves back then. 17 years as an enterprise sales rep, three time CRO. I'm a current adviser to LeadIQ and a former customer of LeadIQ at my last company, PlanView. So super excited to be here and share my knowledge with you. I'll also say that I built 5 sales enablement organizations, and coaching and teaching sales is a passion of mine. Awesome, Dave. We're very lucky to have you on here today, and I look forward to hearing you plug LeadIQ all the time throughout this webinar. So thank you so much. Cameron, why don't you introduce yourself as well? Cool. Thank you everyone for joining. It's a pleasure to to see so many, awesome cities on here in different countries. It's really exciting. My name is Cameron Emery. I'm based in Denver. Originally from New Orleans, but lived in Denver for 6 years. And, professionally, I've been at Salesforce just over 4 years. I started as an SDR, then moved up to BDR. So did inbound, outbound sales, qualifications, leads, pretty much everything with that. And then I've been an account executive on the health care and life sciences team working with small businesses for, just over 2 years now. So that's really my story. Excited to be here and and, share some good knowledge. Awesome. Thank you, Cam. I know you have a wealth of knowledge to share with our attendees, so we're excited to have you. And last but certainly not least, Colby, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? Thank you, Sean. Yeah. My name is Colby Offinger. I'm calling in from the great state of Maine right now. So I help support the the BDR function in EMEA and enterprises with a little bit of commercial sprinkled in on there. So, thanks to using drinking our own champagne here at Mindtickle. I get a lot of time off too, so I'll enjoy hiking, biking, kayaking, snowboarding. If you guys enjoy those 2 thing those things too, I would love to entertain a conversation via LinkedIn, so feel free to shoot me a message or, you know, email me. Awesome. Thank you, Colby, for joining us here today. And I know for sure that your reps are always overcoming objections, so we're super eager to hear your insight and see what your reps are doing, you know, with some of these objections that are coming up on a daily basis. Again, I wanna thank everyone for for joining us here today. We also are gonna share a few, resources in the upper right hand corner here. Really, really awesome resources for objection handling that we've collected from our guests as well as some of our internal resources here at leadIQ we what we would like to share. So you should see my most recent blog post here at LeadIQ, around some of these, common sales objections and some frameworks on how to overcome them. And then, also, you should see a resource from Mindtickle, around objection, the objection handling virtual classroom. So please check those out. Lastly, LeadIQ is actually pushing out a state of of prospecting survey. We would love to get your insights. So anyone, if you would if if you're open to sharing, what's been happening and what's happening in prospecting here today, we'd love to hear from you. We're gonna culminate this report and publish it this year, and you all gain early access to the report and have a chance for your insights to be featured if you'd like to share some of those insights. Alright. Awesome. Enough of the, the the opening agenda. Let's jump into the content here and start talking about objections. So I wanna open it up with a quick poll, that we we want kind of a hot take that we wanted to get your guys' opinion on. So when facing an objection, it's better to ask probing questions than provide an immediate answer. So we'd love to hear what you guys feel, agree or disagree. And I kinda wanna get the take of our guests here to see how they're feeling about this hot take. So why don't Colby, why don't you share share your insights on this? Yeah. Absolutely. So I you know, we we're all selling, calling into a really tough market. It's very competitive for for most folks on this call right now. And the BDR organization over here at Mindsettle is really in charge of the first third of the sales cycle. So we are getting a lot of those initial objections right in our face all day every day. Right? But when you really look at the objections that we get, you can almost break it down into 10 common objections no matter what industry you're in that you're going to get. Right? So if you can master those first ten objections, you know, think of your your brush offs, I was expecting somebody else, I'm not the right person, I'm running into a meeting. If you could really master those fur those those very basic ten objections, you're almost guaranteed to get that first 30 and 45 seconds to, then get another minute. Right? So the first 30, 45 seconds of any call, it's you're gonna always get, hey. I'm busy right now. I'm x, y, and z. And if we can acknowledge those, level with them, and then ask a quick question right off the back of that, you're almost I mean, I would say you're winning a good portion of the next minute, minute and a half to really provide that value statement. Love that. I love that. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, oftentimes when you get that first, no. It is really a brush off. So you've gotta understand what the true objection is. So I love that framework, Kobi. Thank you for sharing it. So what I wanna jump into now is, in your opinion, Cam, what is the true purpose of objection handling? Yeah. I mean, I Colby had a really lot of great points there. And for me, throughout my experience, I like to think of objections as, like, that's where the selling really starts. So I think it's usually can be a red flag if someone's totally agreeable and just says yes to everything. They might, like, be trying to get you off the phone or just, like, not being totally honest with you. So I think if you take anything away from today, one of the themes should really be objections could be a really good thing, because it shows, like, if they're if they're willing to to ask you questions back or kind of show reasons why, like, they might not be entertaining your, like, call at first, you know, you kinda have to dig in why. I think that's where the report building starts, getting to know who they are, like, what's important to them, rather than just trying to make assumptions and just, think that they were excited to talk to you. So, the way I look at his objections is really when the selling starts, but at the same time, it's that first opportunity for you to build that relationship with that person and, that, you know, leads to a longer sales cycle and more success overall. Definitely, Cam. And, I mean, that's something that I experienced when I first started off in, tech sales as a BDR is those happy years. You just get those happy years and you're like, oh, they're telling me everything I wanna hear. It's going great. But usually when that happens, they're probably not being fully honest with you like Cam's saying. So you really gotta assess out what's truly happen happening within within that within that objection. Right? Because usually, it's not the true objection and we really need to get it out. So, Dave, I'd love to get your opinion on this, you know, because, of course, objection handling is different from a seller's perspective than a BDR's perspective. So in terms of objections throughout a sales cycle, what do you feel like is the true purse purpose of overcoming those objections throughout a deal cycle? Yeah. Well, look, the deal cycles are rarely made up of 3 huge milestones. Right? The first one is, you know, is it pipeline? Right? Is it in SQL? And you're working on qualifying that. So whether you're doing outbound or you have an inbound lead, you're gonna run into objections. Right? And, you know, they're gonna be slightly different. But the thing I'll tell you this, if you have a point of view, you've done your research and really understand who they are, the persona, the value drivers of your solution breaks, you should be well prepared to be able to not just answer the questions, but dig deeper and be more curious about where that route is coming from. So make sure that on the pipeline stuff that if you're a BDR, if you're an AE doing, you know, cold, you have to really make sure that you you're you're dealing with the right ICP, right, the ideal customer profile, and you're dealing with the, the persona and you understand what value drivers of your solution lines up to their job to be done. Right? What what's their date of life? Then you're gonna be better prepared to have a really good conversation. In sales, though, look, the second milestone is how do you get the solution fit. Right? This is where you're doing your discovery and you understand the requirements of what they wanna do. And, you know, the framework I like to use is a value framework, which is really designed in a way that will have a conversation of discovery and will tease out objections along the way. And some of those objections could be competitive traps that maybe a third party vendor set against you. So asking questions about why it's important to them, how will that impact them or the team, You know, the biggest thing that you gotta be fearful of is, you know, if it's a competitive trap, is it a gap in your capabilities for your solution? Right? Because that's what's happening. They're trying to quantify and qualify. Right? They're trying to qualify you if your solution's gonna meet their minimum requirements. Right? And so if you think about it through that context, that's really important. The other the, the third one is, after solution fit is vendor of choice. Right? This is where you're probably running into things like pricing objections and the stuff that just you know, hey. Look. You've been you've been down selected as a vendor with 3 other vendors. Right? Now this is, like, where you gotta fight to win. Right? You have to get the 20 yard line to punch it in for a touchdown. It's so important that you don't lose track of that framework of asking questions why it's important. Like, you know, you deliver your price and they come back and say, well, this is really expensive. Like, this is too expensive. You know, we can't afford this. Budget is not there. Right? You know, ask your well, compared to what? Right? Like, compared to what you're already doing today, well, we need to build a business case then to justify this to the economic buyer when you agree. Or, you know, no. Your vendor is 20% less than you and the competitive vendor is 20% less than you. If they're truthful or honest, then you know that you got to sharpen your pencil or you have to sell on more value. Right? But the point being is objections are buying signals and and what Cameron said. Right? It's really where sales begins. I truly believe that they're buying signals and intent. You know, when you're in that kind of, stage where you're at, the try to get solution fit and prove that your solution meets their requirements, but then also find your choice, you know, where they want to award you the business. Definitely. Great insight. Thank you so much, Dave. Colby, I'd like to hear from you, you know, since you you lead a team of BDRs in multiple different sectors and segments and everything like that. You know, what where do you see your reps, you know, when they're initially starting off? Where do you see them struggling in terms of objection handling? Like, where where, like, what is the most difficult part of objection handling at the beginning of your career as an SDR? Feeling comfortable doing it. Right? I think that is a big hurdle for anybody new getting on the phone, feeling comfortable with overcoming the objection. Right? So we could and Dave, Cameron, Cameron, I'm sure you guys have lists of scripts and objection handlings and stuff. We could provide that for anybody, but we really have to create an environment where they feel comfortable with making mistakes first and feel, comfortable with growing. Right? And only through that kind of growing environment are you going to get better. So we like to set up a lot of role plays. We like to spread tribal knowledge. That's something we do with our own system with our call AI. So anybody new coming into the business, they're probably listening to hundreds of calls before they even hit the phone. Right? Because they wanna hear the what good sounds like, what improvement sounds like. And, you know, we're all to blame here. Sometimes we mess up a call. And, you know, those are our our biggest learning lessons in there. So, you know, we could provide a lot of content for folks, but I I think the the the biggest point for somebody new coming into this business is don't be afraid to fail, and we all started where they were at at some point. Right? And look at I mean, we got Dave on the line right now, and he started way back before the they even called him BDRs. Right? And look at him today. So, you know, there there is light at the end of the tunnel. It just we we gotta be able to take the risk and the jump. Definitely. Definitely. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, everything that's good happens on the other side of fear is what I always like to say. Right? So you gotta just dive in and just do it, and that's the only way you're gonna get comfortable with it. Right? So what I wanna talk about now is, you know, when it comes down to objection handling, of course, there's tons of frameworks out there. Right? So, Cameron, I'd love to hear your perspective because it's kinda interesting, you know, on frameworks and how you've been trained in terms of objection handling. Yeah. I mean, I I would agree with what Sean says. Like, when you approach frameworks, I think it's really important to keep that in context. Like, there are frameworks for a reason. They're not a dedicated script always. They're not like a silver bullet. Like, they're not just gonna work each and every time. I think frameworks are helpful in trying to understand, like, the steps to qualifying someone, and that's, like, really what they do for me. So, in my experience, like, Sandler the Sandler sales method has been a very popular one that I've adopted throughout my career, and a lot of what that speaks to is, like, the 80 20 rule of essentially, what that means of you're talking 20% of the time and the customer slash prospect is talking 80% of the time. So it's really just a great way to, like, let them talk, hear what they have to say, and have thoughtful follow-up questions. So I think it's just important to keep top of mind that it's meant to be a framework, but at the end of the day, it's supposed to be conversational. So if it, let's say, goes off script or kinda goes outside the bounds of, like, what you're preparing for, just to be prepared to pivot and, kinda let them speak and just hear them out and show curiosity. So I think that's what makes, conversations and sales successful. Definitely, Cam. And I and I totally agree with that. Right? You know, frameworks are there to guide you, but at the end of the day, you know, I'm not gonna sound like Cam on the phone. I'm not gonna sound like Colby on the phone. I'm not gonna sound like Dave on the phone. Right? So I've gotta have my own voice. And the only way you're gonna be successful is finding that voice and being yourself on the phone. Right? So you've got to, yes, follow the guidelines and follow the frameworks, but also be a human being. I think that's what what it comes to first and foremost. Right? Not a robot. Right? They that's why AI is not, you know, selling to selling to people right now. People want to buy from other people, and they crave those relationships. So you got hired because of you. Just remember that. So always try to use your own voice and then use frameworks as a guideline. Dave, I'd love to hear from you. You know, I know, you have a particular way that you like to coach your reps and coach your team in terms of, you know, overcoming objections and really, you know, sussing out true deals. Yeah. Yeah. Look. Guys, I've been trained in any type of sales best practice you can think of. Right? I've been through Sandler and Bosworth and Siebel. And, I mean, they just spent so much work throughout my career that you know? And there's the net bad. I can boil it down to this. It's really hard at first, and that's why you gotta practice in role play. Role play with your peers, role play with your manager, and then be premeditated. So next time you get that objection that you didn't think that you did very well on, if you role play it and you learn, like, 5 or 6 questions that you're gonna ask because you're gonna wanna ask a series of questions. And one of the best practices I like is from challenger sale. It's called the 3 t's, teach, tailor, take control. So I will ask a a question to an objection, and then I'll stop and pause before I allow an answer. And I'll preface by saying, the reason why I'm asking you is this, this, this, and this. And it's usually telling a short customer story, you know, what what I've learned, what we've learned as a company, somebody in your role, somebody just like you that's done this with us. Right? And what you're doing is you're leading the witness, almost like a a lawyer does on the stand. Right? And you ever see, like, you know, Court TV or, you know, some of the movies? It's the same thing. Right? You need to be premeditated, and you never wanna really ask a question that you you don't know the answer to. Like, you're you know you're guiding them through this process, and this way you gotta role play it. So, yes, marketing and sales enablement can create the common objections that you're gonna get and the questions you should ask, but it's not gonna roll, and it's not gonna be easy for you unless you practice it and be premeditated. It's kinda like an athlete. Right? If you wanna be really good at anything, whether it's a golf swing or a wrestling, double leg, takedown, you gotta do it thousands of times to build that muscle memory. I can go to any company in enterprise software, b to b, don't even need to know the products, and I can handle any objection. Why? Because it's the same framework. It's the same thing. People buy technology to solve business problems. So the truth is you need to figure out, like, where that question's coming from. Is it a business problem? How big the problem is it? Is it a tiny problem or a big problem? Is it not relevant, and it's somebody like maybe the competitor's champion trying to catch you and set a trap on you, right, because they're not in your camp? You gotta ask questions, And then you gotta start to figure out, you know, you know, are your questions good, and and are they responding to it? Are they giving you feedback? So the point being is role play with your manager. Don't be afraid to fail because you're gonna fail forward, and you're gonna get better each time. Yeah. Definitely, Dave. And I think I think I think that's a common theme that we're hearing coming up, right, around objection handling. Being genuinely curious, right, and asking questions. That's what it really comes down to. Right? When someone gives you an objection, be genuinely curious why they're giving you that objection instead of trying to overcome it. Right? Because in my opinion, the true purpose of objection handling is not to, you know, book the meeting or win the deal. It's to truly understand. Right? Like, what's really happening and what's behind that objection. So you shouldn't be trying to overcome it. Instead, try to understand it. Right? And the best way to do that is by asking questions. Yeah. A 100%. You know, Sean, just to kinda pile on that a little bit. Like, you guys have to be uncomfortable, and you should ask uncomfortable questions. Right? And so look. You're if you know you should be doing business with that company, they're the right ICP, they're the right persona, you've been trained. If there's lots of companies and lots of, people that have their title that use the technology that you're selling just like them, your job is to connect the dots and and make a connection. So ask those uncomfortable questions, dig down deep, and peel back those layers of the onion to figure it out. Definitely. Definitely. So the this comes up to our next topic. And with regard to, can you anticipate objections prior to hopping on a call? Right? Maybe by doing research. So I'd love to get your take, Colby, on is there is it possible to really anticipate what that objection might be prior to hopping on that call? Yeah. I think in our realm, yes, there are, objections that you can kind of anticipate for. So I'm gonna give you a shout out to one of my reps, Keyshawn Brown. He's one of our message masters here at Mindtickle, and he has this really good intro where he will go if he notices again, like, we always are looking for businesses that are growing, but that that doesn't mean that that's our only customer base. So if he knows a reduction or, you know, whatever's going on there, he'll intro with something like, hey. I've been speaking to a lot of leaders that are working in a reduction environment, and, ultimately, what they're trying to do right now is to get more with less. So they'll he'll he'll actually handle what he thinks is a perceived objection right in the intro. Right? Get that hook in there. I also think that in the BDR realm, we're gonna have a group of objections in the first 30 seconds that we could prep for. Right? I'm too busy. I'm running into the meeting. Is this a sales call? And, again, it goes back to to to mastery of those those those ten objections that we're gonna hear throughout our whole career. If we could really master those, you know, we can we can get that extra 2 minutes. One thing I'd like to add too is also listen to your game day footage. We see athletes do this all the time. After a call, if your if your calls are recorded or your Zoom things are recorded, spend some time and watch that game day footage because you might learn something about yourself. You might learn something about how you're you're positioning something. A lot you know, practice. Again, practice, practice, practice, but also look at your outcomes. Watch your outcomes. Listen to your outcomes. You can improve a lot just by watching yourself. Definitely. That's great advice. I mean, that's how I got better is listening to my calls, but also listening to the best cold callers calls as well, right, to see what can I be doing maybe be doing differently and seeing if I'm actually doing that, with my calls as well? So kinda like cross checking to make sure that I'm hitting what they're hitting because they're seeing success. Right? So I love the fact that you said tribal knowledge. I think that's so important on an SDR team. Right? So use your peers. Use use not use, but, like, work with your peers, collaborate your with your peers, and make sure that you're you're you're working with each other because, you know, 10 brains are better than 1. And if you're all working together, you're gonna come up with the best messaging. You're gonna come up with the best way to overcome objections, and you guys are gonna see more success that way. So that's my best advice too is make sure you're working as a team rather than trying to work on an island. Right? So, Cam, I'd love to get your opinion, you know, on, anticipating or assuming objections prior to running a discovery call. I think you have a different take on this a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I I definitely agree with a lot of what what Colby said, in terms of anticipation. And, like, the way I think about it is that I think, yes, you you can anticipate some objections that might be coming up. But I also think, like, that could be a slippery slope, where you're, like, over prepared and just sort of, like, kind of oversharing what that might be. So, like, for example, when I before I make cold calls or I check-in with the customer or whatever it is, obviously, like, being at Salesforce and CRM space, we look pretty heavily at, like, past emails that might have been shared in the accounts or with that contact past calls with some notes in there that says, like, you know, you're they reached out to this customer 4 different times. Every time they've said, we don't have budget or we're not interested, whatever it is. So I think that's helpful to know, like, okay. This has kinda been their, let's call it, like, temperature over the past year each time we've reached out. So that's helpful to kinda know about. However, like, I wouldn't, you know, over prepare for that so that when they if they do share that, you know, no budget type concern, you know, you just drive right into it instead of really trying to peel back, like, oh, like, do you kinda have a sense of, like, what you're paying already or, like, what Salesforce potentially cost? Just kind of curious, like, how you got to that conclusion. So a lot of the times, I think people, like, as, you know, prospects, customers might jump to conclusions just maybe based off reputation of your company or whatever it might be. So I think, you know, going back to kinda how I talked about earlier that objections are, like, the starting point of, like, selling. What I really actually mean by that is that's the starting point of selling your relationship. So as you might know, a lot of these companies and businesses get, like, you know, dozens of cold calls a week. So those those assumptions actually are a bit of a two way street. Like, they're assuming, oh, you're just another salesperson calling me. Why am I taking this call? Like, are you any different than the others? Versus if you actually leave with curiosity and show you're there to help and be in their team, you're actually selling that relationship. And I think that's the most valuable piece instead of selling your product or your company necessarily or wherever it is. You're really there to sell that one on one relationship you're trying to make with them. Definitely. And I know, you know, my time at Salesforce, you know, we always try to position ourselves as trusted advisers. Right? Or being consultative. You know, at the end of the day, that's what that's what our job is is not to sell someone technology. It's to help them help guide them throughout the process and be there to help, you know, direct them to make the most informed business decision for their business. Right? So I love that, Cam. Dave, I'd love to get your opinion on, you know, prep prior to discovery and what you can kinda find out prior to hopping on a call or discovery call, by doing your your homework and your research and to anticipate some of those objections that might be coming up. Absolutely. Looking you know, every time I do deal reviews, whether it's early pipeline stuff, the stuff that just got qualified in or it's even bigger stage, The rep has to be super on on it around points of view on the account. What's going on in your market? What's going on in the world? What are the top objectives, what are their initiatives, how is your solution tied to the initiative. Right? These are really important things that you need to be able to anchor on. The last thing you wanna do is just, you know, try selling features and functions and hope that you get somebody to buy it. Right? You you you have to be able to tie to a strategic initiative of the company to move the needle, especially if you're selling into tech right now because there are economic headwinds, budgets are tight, companies aren't spending as much money. In fact, they're cutting vendors out, trying to consolidate. So So it's really important that you have a point of view. The other thing is, like, you've got all these great tools available to you. Like, you know, LinkedIn Navigator can, you know, help you identify who's connected to your organization. So we always look for, like, does our money know their money? Right? Like, our investors know their investors. Are there are our words connected? Our executive's connected. You know, triangulating and understanding that's really important. It takes over 12 people now in a consensus decision to write technology. Twelve different people off a vote. And any one of those that you're not talking to could veto it because they don't understand the value proposition. Right? So research is so important. Sales intelligence is really important, and leveraging AI to help accelerate accelerate all that is so important. I mean, I think LeadIQ and just to give you guys a plug, like, when we implemented, we had, ZoomInfo as our sales intelligence, and we just did a a brute force trying to do research on the company, trying to understand our value drivers from our 12 different products and a 120 personas that we had to sell them to. That's a lot for a salesperson to take on if you think about it. So we had to go into our, you know, our sales, enablement platform and and remember all that. And then, you know, we what we were able to do is really take the sales intelligence part, of what LeanIQ did, integrate that with LinkedIn navigator, know who the personas that we wanna go to. The, engine would go out and do the research for you based on the parameters that you gave. So I wanna know this about this and that about that. And then you also, mark product marketing spoon fed all our value drivers by pursuing it into the, AI engine, and it automatically wrote a 32nd email that was on script. What's going on in the world today? Who's, like, them, customer story of success that we've had that's similar, why they should take a meeting with us. I mean and it increased our SQLs by 400% on outbound. And to make matters even better, right, I personally wanna empathize and understand what the DVR team and the sales team was going through, so I personally try to do the day in the life. So I try to research a company. I try to research our products. I try to write an email. I give myself a d minus on the email I wrote. It it took me an hour. Right? So the velocity wasn't there. Right? And so and, you know, it wasn't even a good email from my point of view. I got it. I wouldn't even get a look. So, look, there's great tech out there that can help accelerate this lead IQ. I'm I'm a big fan of what they do because they can help with velocity, not just writing a better email on script and on point, but it can truly help free up more time. So if you are reducing an hour for custom email down in minutes where you have to just do a few tweaks and edits, your velocity of sending out more emails is gonna increase your chances of getting more opens, more meetings, and more SQLs because it's the numbers game, and you guys know that. Right? And so, yeah, you gotta invest in good sales intelligence that's integrated with the tools you already use. You know, whether you're using, you know, Outreach or some other tool for automating your your batch processing for doing these outbound, it's so critical. Because everyone's trying to get to the buyer and you're spamming them with tons of messages and they're not opening them because it's not relevant. So how do you differentiate yourself and be relevant? You gotta speak their language. You gotta have a point of view on their company, and you have to be able to talk about in a short customer story of why you're relevant and why they should meet with you. Definitely. Definitely. I think relevancy is by far the most important thing when it comes down to, you know, crafting messaging. Right? Personalization is important, but you need to make sure it's relevant to their specific industry, to their specific persona, and be as specific as possible with your messaging. So I love that perspective, Dave. So what I wanna what I wanna talk through right now is, you know, we we're hearing a lot of, like, status quo. You know, everyone's gonna stick with the status quo. Right? So they have a competitor. They're not looking to change. Right? So that was the number one objection that, the attendees put in to the poll at the beginning. So I'd love to get our panel's perspective on how you overcome we already have something in place and just status quo in general. I know, Dave, you have an opinion on this, but I wanna start off with Colby. Colby, what what from your perspective, how do you overcome we already have something in place. Oh, you're on mute. Sorry. I was in the question and answer. That's great news for us actually. So, because of the breadth of the platform of Mindtickle, you know, we compete in a lot of different spaces. So oftentimes when we're connecting with somebody, they have a piece of the puzzle, but they don't have the whole puzzle. Right? So, you know, when we get something we already have something in place, you know, that's great news. I'm happy that you're taking enablement seriously. And then we're gonna dive into, like, what challenge were they trying to solve when they brought that piece on, and how is that contributing to their bottom line? And can we fit in to that solution that they potentially have? You know, that's what we try to do, from a BDR standpoint. And you have to remember, we have 3 to 5 minutes with these folks. So it's not a 30 minute discovery call. It's not an hour. We have to do this in 3 to 5 minutes, which is can be challenging. So we try to acknowledge it, praise them, and then try to understand what they were trying to solve when they were bringing that on. I love that. I love that. And then once again, we're seeing you know, asking that question at the end, you know, instead of trying to overcome the objection for the meeting, we're trying to really, really dig in and figure out what's going on. Cameron, I'd love to get your take on this. I'm sure you run, not too much actually with Salesforce, but, but I'm sure I'm sure you've ran into this a few times, maybe against HubSpot. Yeah. No. I mean, it's it's definitely a competitive market, competitive landscape. So, I mean, if someone tells you, like, hey. We're we're all set. We're good with our current solution. Yeah. That that is definitely a tougher objection. I think it also depends, like, the role and who you're talking to. So, like, for example, like, speaking to, like, an end user, whether it be, like, a manager or, like, a sales rep, whatever it is, it's always kinda nice to know, like, their perspective on using the platform so so that you can know if their experience is positive or negative versus if you're talking to, like, a VP of sales or, like, a a c suite type person. They might just be saying that to get you off the phone. So, I think it's obviously very important to do your due diligence on your competitors and the kind of, current solution they're using. And, you know, there might be ways to potentially add on to that. So it's not necessarily always, like, hey. We're here rip and replace. Like, that's usually probably a tougher conversation to have. It's more about, like, tell me about, like, any limitations you're currently having and just, like, what your overall go goals are. And I think that how you can quantify ROI for someone can go a lot of different ways. So there's some departments or people at the company who care more about the ROI in terms of dollars. Or some who care more about ROI in terms of, like, time savings. So I think that if you're able to position yourself as saying, like, hey. You know, I know that you're paying this price. That's great. Have you considered using something like Salesforce, wherever it might be? Typically, we see people who switch from this to this have resulted in, you know, countless x number of hours of time saved. So I think when you're trying to figure out if you can be a better solution, don't just look at comparing the price points, like, who's cheaper, who's the better offer. It's also a lot more factors a lot of times come down like the time savings and ease of use and so many more factors than just that. Definitely. Definitely. I mean, I think you have to impact is really important when you're overcoming objections. What is the impact of sticking with the solution that you have today? I think one of the main reasons why we're seeing this objection come up so often right now is it's a lot harder to buy technology. And when you buy technology, you kinda put your neck on the line. Right? So there's a little bit of fear in terms of putting themselves out there. We already have something in place right now. Right? So why would I go and put my neck out there to change what we're doing? What are you gonna do differently? Dave, I'd love to get your opinion on this objection because I know you you you you said right now we're fighting. You never want your reps to lose against the status quo. You're okay with them losing against the competitor, but not status quo. So I'd love to hear how you how you overcome this. With the, I spent a lot of time as a sales leader, like, looking at lost deals. And now, actually, my VPs and I oftentimes go back and talk to a prospect that we lost you to learn. And it's not because we don't believe the salesperson and they maybe mismarket. It's truly, like, the ones that, I try to learn the most on are the status quo. Like, my philosophy is this. If they are a perfect ICP, you know, you should do do a business with them. Right? They're they're you know, you've got really strong value proposition that lines up. You've got lots of customers just like them in your market or space, then you're in a crappy sales cycle. That's that's just the the brutal truth. Right? And so, I don't I don't say that because I wanna go and, you know, sit down at the sales office, sit here at a crappy sales cycle. I actually wanna figure out, like, what was the miss and how do we coach and make it better so it doesn't happen again. So we actually use it for enablement and, and and learning. And so it's so important. There's really, a couple of reasons in my experience why you lose deals. Right? The first one is status quo. You just fail to connect the dots to the business outcomes. Right? And the the the the framework is is quite simply, if they stay with what they're doing, what are the negative consequences in their own words, right, to that individual that you're talking to, to their team, to their group, to their division, to the company. And maybe they can't answer all those questions, but, again, you're asking questions to try to find out, like, hey. If you live in this world that you're doing things with tools and and, you know, manual processes and you stay there, you know, do you lose customers? Do you churn revenue? Like, they're they're you gotta be able to find those metrics, those negative metrics because that's gonna allow you to be defensible and start to have better conversations. And and by the way, when you do get in front of the economic buyer because your champion finally got you there, if you're not talking that language, they're not they're not gonna buy. Right? You're just not gonna buy. You have to be able to build a business case. And then once you've documented and qualified all of the kind of the day in the life and the negative consequences, they they stay there with some, you know, metrics, then you gotta think about what does the promise look like. Right? Describe the promise of the future state. And and, of course, you're gonna work with your champion to kinda paint a vision, a picture, and how your capabilities gets them there. What are the positive business outcomes of that? The positive business outcomes. Right? We're gonna retain more customers. We're gonna increase our revenue. Guys, we're we're and some of us are selling technologies today that are not budgeted. Right? It's like new category creator not budgeted. That's called discretionary budget. You know where discretionary budget comes from? They have to figure out on the p and l where they're gonna drop some other project or not hire a person from an operating expense and reallocate that budget to find your solution. You're asking them to do a lot in order to do that. So you have to build a really strong business case. So the status quo, quite simply, if you lose to it, especially if it's, like, the perfect fit ICP, you just ran a poor sales cycle. The second competitor is competing priorities for the economic buyer. Now that's out of your control, but then that's okay. But the economic buyer says, yes. We like this. We're gonna pick it up in q one next year because we're in the middle of a merge right now. Right? It just it's from a priority and resources. It's a problem for us. Okay. Well, at least you can go back to your sales leadership and say, hey. They're gonna buy. They down selected to us, but, you know, timing is not right. There's absolutely every bit of chance of risk of losing it because time fills deals. But you didn't lose the status quo, right, which is great. And then the third is, finally, the competitors that you deal with every single day in your space. Right? And understanding why you lost, whether it was on features or price, really relevant. And you wanna feed that to the management team so they can understand, like, are there gaps in your capabilities where your competitors are leapfrogging you? That's really good feedback for the product team. Right? So it's so important, right, that that as a team, right, whether you're BDR, you know, a solution consultant, a salesperson, you know, we need to have this data and this information. So logging it in your CRM, being honest about it, and asking for help. Don't be afraid to ask for help and say, man, I've lost a lot of deals to status quo. I can't get this thing going. Where am I falling down? Look. They don't teach sales in college or high school. Right? You have to learn it hands on, and it's hard. You guys are paid a lot of money for a reason. Right? Because you're professionals, and your job is to connect the dots for people to make better business decisions. It's take that latent need from the back of your brain to bring it forward so they wanna buy. And it's hard, guys. It's really hard. So that that's why you're paying the big money. Exactly. And I think the best way to kinda think about it is putting putting yourself in your prospect's shoes, right, and putting your prospects and your customers before your commissions, you know, and really caring about their business. We keep talking about being genuinely curious. If you don't care, you're not gonna be genuinely curious. Right? So it's so important to to show your buyer that you're working with them, you know, not against them. Right? We're try we're try we're working towards the same goal, and it's a seller's job to point the star to where where we point the ship to where that deal should be headed. Right? So very, very important. So I know we had a ton of other objections that come up. So I kinda wanna come through with a few of the other ones that were brought up. So I Colby, I'd love to get your take on a no budget, you know. I I think that's something that's coming up right now just naturally with macroeconomics. Dave just mentioned discretionary budget. So no budget, I think is one of the and timing are the 2 other ones that I wanna dive into right now. So, Colby, why don't you kick us off with no budget to start off with? Yes. And, again, we're coming from a a BDR perspective. So we're talking about cold outreach, 5, 10 minutes of talking to this person. We like to acknowledge, like, budgets are consistent moving targets. Right? Ultimately, what we're trying to do is figure out if there's a potential technical fit and if we can achieve positive outcomes for you and your business. Right? So we kind of had it, hit it head on. You know, And most people we talk with don't have budget right now, but after, you know, a couple of discussions with a company like Mindtickle or any enablement company, you know, we can actually help save you money through tool consolidation or just by getting more out of your individual reps. And usually, you know, we we will continue the conversation from there. So, again, assume that they don't have budgets and just be prepared for that. Be prepared to to get that that that res that answer and have a response for it. And just remember, you know, in a software sales cycle, typically, we don't even price out till the 3rd call. Right? So, like, we they don't even know what it costs. So at the end of the day, no budget shouldn't even be a conversation because you have no idea. This could cost $1. This could cost nothing. Dave Dave always Dave said yesterday, the my solution costs $0. Like, if if everything else fits, you know, like, then we can have the pricing conversation. Right? So I think it's so important to realize when when you're when you get no budget, it's like, you don't even know what it costs. Same with no interest or right? It's like, you've never seen the thing. How do you know? Right? Like, how are you how are you gonna know? So just remember that usually they're not real objections. They're just trying to get you off the phone. So be logical with it. At the end of the day, you know, they should be wanting to do their due diligence to see what else is out there and make the comparisons and make sure they have the best tools for their organization. And you know you have the best tool for their organization. So just remember, lean on your research as well. You know? Stick to your point of view. Reinforce that point of view if possible, and you should be able to overcome those objections pretty simply. Cameron, I'd love to get your opinion. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that, like, Colby said was, like, how consolidating your tech stack, like, could actually be a way of saving you money. So I think that whether you're selling software or kinda whatever industry you might be in, I think shifting that mindset of, like, just because you're purchasing something doesn't have to be an expense. Like, it actually could be a way to to bring money back in your organization. I see that James in the comments had a great comment about, like, don't sell on budget. One of the great, comments or slash feedback I've heard is that price is what you pay, value is what you get. So, really, like, what you're trying to preach here is that you're not they you should try and get them away from just looking at price as a number and, like, yes or no. It should be before you even get to price, you have to get to value. And, paying that picture just kinda depends on what's important to them and figuring out, like, what value is most important to them and and how you can actually save them money. So there's a couple different ways to go about that, but it's really more about understanding what their actual needs are. Exactly, Kim. And I didn't know you're, like, Aristotle or something, you know, having you on here. But very great quote. I love that. I think one of the quotes of of the webinar so far. Dave, I'd love to get your opinion on this as well. Yeah. Look. I mean, I think I covered quite a bit of this, but, you know, you're gonna run into objections all the time and you're gonna want to really just establish that business case of value. If you don't have a point of view on the company and what I mean by that, and I'll I've said point of view a couple of times, what's going on in their world today? What market conditions? Is it helping or helping them? Is it geopolitical issues helping or hurting your business? Are their competitors leapfiring? Did they just close a round of funding? There's, like, all of this information. And you guys are so lucky because this didn't exist in my world when I was doing your job. Like, it was brute force getting on an airplane and going to walk in the halls and talking to people to collect this data. Right? And that was just at your fingertips. And even better, it's at your fingertips with these powerful AI agents to go and assemble it all for you. So, like, have a point of view. Do your research. That's gonna make you so much better because you're gonna be able to handle objections. You're gonna be able to address things like budget and, you know, I have no budget. Well, I can give it to you free, but, you know, CEO is saying x, y, and z needs to happen for you guys to be able to, you know, turn the corner or turn around the company. If we could help turn the company around with our tech technology. Here's why and how. We've chosen we've done it with others. So really get good at research and get good at understanding your customer stories of success. What have been the value outcomes of your customers? Can you just recite those snippets quickly? Because those are the things that are compelling. Right? People want the gifting going second. They want to know who else is like them that's done this with you. And whether you're building pipeline or you're just handling an objection to different parts of the sales cycle, you have to feel that it's your real stories. 100%. I think storytelling is by far the single most important skill a seller can have. Right? Because you need to be able to paint the picture. And when you're explaining someone that's like them, they start to listen. Right? And once you have their ear, they're gonna start to understand. They're gonna be like, oh, you work with them too? Okay. That makes sense. You know, it won't make sense if you just tell them the value. So, Cameron, I saw you come off mute, so I I think you have you have something that you wanna bring up as well. Yeah. Dave definitely inspired me with some good wisdom there. I, you know, I just think back to some of the cold calls I've had and, honestly, like, you know, the budget conversation's usually pretty common. And if they are asking you, like, how much is this gonna cost me? That's not a bad thing. But, you know, if if they say that a minute in your call, that's actually a sign that they're actually showing some interest to you. And you you have to be prepared to not have to directly answer that on the spot. So, like, overcome that objection in my experience has really been if they say, how much is this gonna cost me? I'd say, look. You know you know, I'd love to get to pricing with you. However, it really makes more sense to talk about what matters most to you. So it goes back to, like, what Sean was saying about, like, the consultative approach because, you know, you could have pricing on our website. They can just go and find anytime they want to if they really care. But if you're talking to someone and you wanna really figure out, like, how to demonstrate value to them, you have to kinda get to know them better and say, like, look, this is you know, we've got pricing on our website. If you care to see that, however, in talking to you, usually people in your role have seen challenges for leads something through the cracks, wherever it might be. I'd love to know if that really matters to you and that we can talk about some pricing after that. So I think you have to kinda use as a segue to get into what matters to them and try and avoid pricing as early as possible because, you know, they might just get some sticker shock or not fully understand the value of, like, what you're talking about. Yeah. I hear you. You get to insert your, your statement. Right? Your Aristotle statement. It's like, hey. It's not what you're the price you're gonna pay. It's the value that you're gonna get. You're asking me the wrong question. You should be asking me what value will I get. Right? Me, my team, my company. That's the question they should be asking. Exact it doesn't matter how much it costs if it's not gonna do anything for them. Just remember that, guys. Like, it doesn't matter how much it costs if it's not gonna solve a problem. Right? So so it really isn't a pricing conversation. But I think I think, Cam, I think I think your advice is great. Right? I think it's great, but you there are some times. Right? Like, the first time, try to overcome it and try to not give pricing. I think the second time because you might get asked it again. Right? I'm sure everyone on this call gets asked it again. Give a range. Right? Price conditioning is what I like to call it, a a range of what it's gonna cost. And then lastly, you can go into the specifics of the license count if you want to. But, usually, if they're asking 3 times, like, there's something you're missing there. Right? Because they're already thinking about cost and they're not thinking about value. Right? Just wanna give give the attendees another way to think about it because I think you oftentimes get asked that question multiple times in a row and you need to sometimes you do need to give your prospect or your customer a little something. Right? So they don't keep asking that question over and over again. So I wanna pull up one more poll. I know we've got we've got 7 minutes left. So, typically, how many no's are you seeing in a, how many no's are you getting before you get a yes? So how many no's are you taking? So I'd love to hear from Colby what your perspective is on this. How many no's are your how many no's is your team taking? And what is a good threshold do you like to set for them if there is 1? Yeah. Absolutely. So, again, BDR realm here. So we're casting a wide net. I would say, you know, on a given day, if we're making 80 calls, let's just say we have a connection rate of 10%, maybe half of those are gonna be noes. Right? They're just gonna be hang ups, noes for some other reason. The other half of those, we're actually gonna probably, get past the intro and have some type of conversation. A lot of times, you can avoid some of these pitfalls too just by creating a really good lead list. We all do prospecting in some realm. You know how you feel when you do that prospecting list. You know, you've had some where you're like, oh, money, money, money, and then somewhere that face exactly, Sean. Alright. Let's see where this goes. But also doing your research, I think, a lot of people have said this. I I I read this I have this little book that I always refer back to the little red book of selling, and it's if you, if you don't plan to to to win, you're gonna lose to somebody who does. So, like, what is your plan to win? Right? Your plan to win is really to try to uncover your soft compelling events and your hard compelling events. Right? So soft compelling events. Hey. Dave wants to increase the his, sales team's revenue by x amount. Hard compelling event, His current vendor's contract is ending at the end of this year. So if you can marry both of those into, and plus a well constructed lead list, you're gonna be reducing your nose by a lot more than if you're just throwing stuff at the wall. Yeah. And, Colby, how many on, like, a given cold call would you say that specifically, how many knows you're asking your reps to get before they hang up or before they say, okay. I'm done. This isn't gonna go anywhere. 3 or 4 at least on a cold call, right, before they absolutely hang up on you. Right? And, you know, it's it's surprising. You know, you you you handle 3 objections and all of a sudden somebody could open up. Right? And we've seen that a lot. And then all of a sudden, it's a 16 minute call booked in same week or early next week. So, you know, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but also not every call is a booking. You gotta remember that. Right? Not every call you should be booking. Not every call is for booking. A lot of times you're just trying to figure out information or figure out who the right person is, especially if you're trying to break into an industry that you don't have a big presence in. Exactly. And that comes down to just in general. The goal of a cold call is not to book the meeting. It's to learn to see if you can help their business. Right? It's it's to learn and to understand. It's not to book the meeting. That's just a result. The goal of the Gold Coast to uncover information to see if we could be a fit for their for their team. Right? So, Cameron, how many no's would you say you take on cold calls and throughout your your long careers in SDR and BDR? Yeah. I mean, it's it's definitely pretty frequent. I mean, my first job after college, I was making a 100 plus cold calls a day, and I would say maybe 90% of those were noes, but the ones that you got more out of them was was very exciting. So, I think there's also different types of nos. I mean, there's, like, no not now or, like, there's no not ever. So I think kinda we're going back to, like, timing plays an important role. And, also, like, at the end of the day, as as a lot of people probably heard, time is, like, really important to salespeople, like, potentially your most valuable asset. So, it's important if they're telling you no, you figure out why that is. So that way, they're not stringing you along and, you know, you're booking an empty meeting that they don't care about. You're really trying to, like, get an interest in them. It's like, is this no because you all have time today or is it, you know, can we set up additional time to talk when's a better time for you? So, definitely, it's it's very common on most a lot of the calls I make, especially cold calls. But, if I think what matters most is, like, what that no means and, like, if it's no not now or or what you can do around that. And then on a given cold call, how many no's would you take typically? Oh, goodness. Prop yeah. I mean, I think 3 to 4, and then, you know, if it's not a good fit, then you might have to to try the next call. But, yeah, 3 to 4 at least, I would say. Exactly. So that guys, you're it's it's human nature, right, for for folks to not wanna be sold to. Right? So your immediate reaction is gonna be no. It's always been my reaction when someone cold calls me. I'm like, no. No. What what what are you trying to sell me? Right? So, like, just know that you're probably gonna get a no, but they probably weren't even freaking listening to you in the first place. So they're just we're just trying to get you off the phone. So restate your value, restate your point of view, and try to go back into it. Right? I tell my team to take try to take at least 3 steps before you give up. Right? If you're taking 3 stabs, I know you're trying. I know you're trying to overcome objections. So try to take at least 3 stabs before before giving up. So now, Dave, I'd love to hear your opinion. You know, throughout deal cycles, you know, objections get, get thrown in like, wrenches get thrown into the deal. Objections come up throughout the entire deal cycle. Are is your team ever overcoming those via email? No. You're not Why not? Over email. You wanna get into the meeting. And and, again, you're paid you're paid to ask great questions. I mean, 20% of the questions should be 80% listening. And so just do a really good job of asking those questions that qualify, Like, what's the issue? Right? And it could be, like, you gotta deal with the finish line when you're working on red lines, and it and it's not getting over the finish line by the end of the quarter. And, you know, you've gotta figure out, like, what's it gonna take to get it done. You can't do that over email. People don't close deals on email. K? My order takers do, but not professional salespeople, which you guys are, you know, obviously, either striving to me or you are today if you're on this call. 100%. And then, Colby, I'd love to get your opinion on, like, your team. Are they overcoming objections, via email, or you're having them once they get that objection via email calling those folks right off the rip? We we wanna call these folks right off the rip. Right? We've we've messed around with trying to overcome objections, via email, and, you know, I think Dave kind of alluded to this without saying it. It can get messy pretty quickly, and you could you could tarnish stuff. So it's it's really about just trying to understand and, like, what's coming at us and then trying to talk to them, like, literally over the phone. Right? You know, we've we've we've handled a couple of them, but I'd say a grand majority of them, you know, it's very difficult to handle an objection via email. Yeah. I totally agree. Try to get those folks on the phone when you get an objection. Right? It's so much easier. Tone gets misinterpreted. I'm sure you've read a text message from time to time and been like, wow. That person hates me. And they're and you call them up and they're like, totally relaxed. Right? So I wanna thank you all for joining. Colby, Cam, Dave, thank you so much for your time today. It was awesome having you, and I wish I hope everyone has a great rest of your day. Thank you, everyone. Great flight. Thank you. Bye, guys.