Secrets of Hypnotic Influence and Persuasion Virtual Classroom Series

In this lesson we are going to talk a little bit more about objections. And I want to start with an objection that any time I do an objection workshop it is one of the very first things that come up. And that is the objection of, “I would like to think about it!” Let me ask you a question is that actually an objection? And the answer of course is depends on how you define objections! If you define objection is really a request for some additional information then it is not an objection. I guess I do have to accept the criticism though if you’re going to use my definition of an objection, something that happens when part of my sales process goes awry.

Then technically it is an objection, but I actually think of it more as a rejection not an objection. My experience has been when a prospect tells you they would like to think about it, they really don’t have any intention of doing that. Actually what is going on is something is not quite right and often times they may be can’t put their finger on it and they don’t really necessarily want to explore it any further or sometimes they just don’t feel good about you. They don’t feel like you are a good fit and rather than being brutally honest and coming out and saying that they are choosing to let you down gently.

But if that is an objection that you are getting on a fairly frequent basis, I think that is a good way that your prospects are communicating to you that there are a lot of things that you could stand to retool and optimized in your process. Which means you have just got a tremendous amount of upside potential! It is typically though not something that we can solve in a virtual classroom type of environment. But there is help for you in the membership area and some of the more advanced products that we offer.

Now let’s talk about how we don’t want to answer objections

And I hinted at it a little bit in the last classroom. We don’t want to do it in a way that it’s going to make them defend their decision. We don’t want to, in other words, say, “your fees are too high.” There are two ways that they typically teach you to answer that objection is, how much too much are they? Too high compared to what? Think about what you are asking their unconscious mind to do! Because it is their unconscious mind that is going to go on a search to try and figure out, what is the answer to that question? What you are actually asking the unconscious mind to do is to go and justify the answer that they just gave to you.

And ladies and gentlemen all that does is ask your client to dig in, to justify to get ready to do battle. Definitely not a very powerful frame of mind for them to be in. So two ways that we can do that, one is from tone of voice and what we are unconsciously communicating with our prospects. The other is by the actual structure of the question that we are asking them that may cause their unconscious mind to go on a search that is asking them to justify. Financial advisers, but particularly if they work with retirees, are often faced with people keeping the way to much money in cash in the event of an emergency.

And very often they will say, “why are you keeping so much money in cash?” and what is their unconscious mind going to do? They are going to think, “I may have a medical emergency, and may need to buy a new car, transmission might fall out. Many need to buy a new roof on the house. May need to have to bail out my good for nothing son-in-law out of jail.”

They are starting to create a list and they are assigning a dollar value to each of those things and they may end up thinking, “you know what? As a matter of fact now that I am compiling my list I don’t have enough money in cash!” And I was faced with that problem as a financial adviser, that was a common ‘objection’ or hurdle that I had to overcome. And this was one of the first places that I began to put these skills to use.

If you are having an objection that is coming up over and over and over and over and over again, one of the best things that you can do is figure out loads of different ways to answer that objection. We give you more than a dozen on the website to answer any objection without having them go in and justify it. Or to think of a question that you can ask that does a pre-emptive reframe, one of the things that we teach in the jumpstart program, that totally reframes it before it even comes up for them. And with the folks that were keeping gobs and gobs of cash liquid so they could spend it at any time a pre-emptive frame set better use with them was a question. And the question was, ” how soon are you planning on spending your principal?”

Well the vast majority of the retirees that I worked with never wanted to spend all of their principal. They wanted to live as good as possible off of the income, that that money generated but they knew if they started dipping into the principle that was less money that they were going to have working for them which meant their check was going to go down each and every month. And an interesting thing happens when you get somebody to make a public declaration. Suddenly their nervous system and their unconscious minds begins to rewire itself so they can remain consistent with the statement that they just made. What that literally enabled me to do was take that objection, and just have it melt away!

So your homework assignment at this particular virtual class is:

1. Examine the common answers that you have for common objections and see you challenging them? And are you forcing them to go into their unconscious mind to justify the statement that they just made? If you we want a rework that as a strategy.
2. If you have a common objection that you hear over and over and over and over again, we want to begin to work on a pre-emptive frame set to get them to make a statement that is inconsistent with the objection that they are frequently bringing up.

And in the next class we will talk about a couple of different ways that we can actually go in and reframe some of the objections that you may be hearing from time to time.