15. How to Overcome Objections for Fun and Profit

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to episode 15 of How to Make More Money. A podcast
that helps you get seriously good at the game of making serious money. I’m your
host Kelly Hollingsworth and I’m so happy you’re here. Today we’re talking
about How to Overcome Objections for Fun and Profit, and specifically, we’re
going to talk about the following things:

·    The first is, why you should learn to overcome
objections. It’s not just one reason. Today I’ll give you three.

·        
The second is, the two kinds of objections that
you will encounter in your business. Some of them are real, and most of them—most
of them–are illusory. Today I’ll explain why.

• Then I’ll share what you should do when
  you run into each kind of objection.
• Spoiler alert—if it’s a real objection,
  you and your prospect should part ways.
• If it’s an illusory objection, then you do
  something else. What is it? You help your prospect dissolve the objection
  so they can get what they really want.

And then what happens? Your prospect gets
what they want—one step closer to the happy ending, by working with you. And as
a byproduct of that, you get what you want. More money.

This is a big topic and a very profitable
topic, so now let’s dive in.

Why you should learn to overcome objections

The first point is, why you should learn to overcome
objections. Too many reasons to count, but today we’ll discuss three. The
answer is, obviously, if your clients have objections, fewer of them are going
to be getting to the happy ending that your business creates.

Here’s an example. When I was raising money for my hedge fund,
people considered the track record too good to be true. It was really good, but
it was also true. So in a meeting I would hand people one sheet of paper with
the fund’s track record on it, which was basically the monthly returns since
inception of the strategy. And they would say, “Have these returns been
audited? Are these true?” And I would say, “I prepared them myself, from
original brokerage records.” And they would slide the track record back over to
me, and say, “We need someone with a solid accounting background to go through
these brokerage statements and compile the track record. Someone who actually
knows what they’re doing, as far as the accounting goes.” And I would slide the
track record back over to them, and I would say, “Do you recall that I’m a
CPA?”

And then, they would pick up the paper and study the returns
more closely. And then they would ask, “How do I get in?”

Notice what just happened. They wanted into the fund. They
liked the returns. They just wanted to make sure that the returns were
accurate. And in one sentence, I told them something that dissolved their concern.
I told them something that dissolved their objection.

So this is the first reason you want to help your clients get
through objections. So they can get what they want, that is on the other side
of their objection. And then you, as a byproduct, will also get what you want.

The next reason you want to learn how to deal with objections
is because every time you get an objection that you don’t successfully address,
it’s really easy to use the objections that don’t result in a sale as a reason
to chip away at your own belief in your own business. This is fatal. If you
don’t believe in your business, no one else will, either. As humans, we have
evolved to know what everyone else is thinking. What you are thinking and
feeling about your business is not a secret. Everyone is onto you. So if you
don’t believe, you won’t make bank.

The third reason is just practical. You go through a certain
amount of effort and expense to bring a prospect to your door. Maybe it’s
advertising. Maybe you purchased leads. Maybe you have an influencer
recommending your product. Maybe you have a podcast or a blog. Whatever you’re
doing to spread the word about the happy ending that your business creates,
there is a cost associated with that. So if people are coming to you, but it’s
all falling down at the conversion stage–they are initially interested, but
they are not becoming customers and they’re not buying — that’s like money
slipping through your fingers. Actually, it is not like money slipping
through your fingers. It is definitely money slipping through your
fingers.

Don’t let these things happen to you. Learning how to address
objections helps you serve your audience at a higher level. It bolsters your
belief in your business, which creates an upward trend rather than a slow slide
into failure. And it brings money coming in the door rather than money slipping
through your fingers.

These are among the many reasons you should learn to address
objections. So now let’s talk about how to do it.

What kind of objection is it? Legitimate? Or illegitimate?

The first thing you need to determine is, what kind of
objection are you dealing with?

For lack of a better term, let’s divide objections into
legitimate and illegitimate. You might also consider them as real vs. illusory
or imaginary.

When an objection is legit–when it’s “real” and not an illusion
that’s invented in the brain, what is happening? The objection comes from the
fact that your business takes people to a place where your prospect just doesn’t
want to go. If I have a guide service that takes people to the top of Everest,
a woman who wants to go to Neiman Marcus is going to have an objection to
working with me. She’s going to say, “That’s not where I want to go.”

This is an objection– she’s telling me a reason that she
doesn’t want to do business with my Everest guide service—and it’s completely
legit. It’s real. This means, it’s not an objection I want to counter or help
her out of. Can you imagine trying to guide someone to the top of Everest who
would really rather be shopping? It’s a disaster.

So the first thing you need to know about objections is that
there are some that you don’t want to deal with or help your prospect dissolve.
If you’re going one place, and your prospect wants to go to a different place,
it’s better to part ways right now. No one’s going to be happy in that situation.

But what about the other objections? You take people to the
top of Everest, and that’s exactly where they want to go, but they are
having illegitimate objections. Objections that aren’t real, but rather illusory.
What do you do then?

The first thing you do is realize that most objections
are illusory. This is why you have to learn to get past them. In my business,
for example, if someone says to me, “I really don’t want to make more money.” I
always say, “Really? If a million dollars dropped out of the sky and landed
like cash confetti around you, you wouldn’t want the money?”

I don’t have to tell you the rest of the conversation. They
always the money. They always  want to
make more money. It’s not that they don’t want it. They definitely want
to get to that particular happy ending. What’s happening is they are suffering
from an illegitimate objection. They are suffering from an illusory problem
that is preventing them from getting there, and it is my job to help them get
out of it so they CAN get there.

If you want to help more people in your business, this is your
job as well. So here’s the next thing to know. An illegitimate or illusory or
imaginary objection is an obstacle between your client and the happy ending
that, in your client’s mind,  looks like
an impassable glass wall. Your client is thinking that if they try to walk
through it, they’re going to bounce right off. It’s going to be painful, and
they’ll probably get all cut up. They might even die. But really, that obstacle
that looks like a glass wall is a mere soap bubble. And the act of countering
objections so your clients can get what they want involves the art of helping
your clients see that that obstacle that they think is a glass wall is merely a
soap bubble.

To do this, you say the exact thing that dissolves the
obstacle before their very eyes. It’s like when people didn’t trust that the
returns for my fund were calculated accurately. And I said, “Do you recall that
I’m a CPA?” That dissolved the obstacle before their very eyes. So here’s what
you need to hear. With your words, you can pop your clients’ soap bubbles for
them, so that they can see that there is no obstacle there at all.

How do you dissolve illusory objections? Through Causal Coaching

How do you do this? With the skill of coaching, and
specifically causal coaching. This is the skill of helping someone
change their mind, so they can see that the glass wall between them and what
they want isn’t really there. And then, they no longer feel stuck. They can get
what they want.

Something important to notice here. Coaching is an inherently
positive, ethical skill. When you are coaching, you are always helping the
other person get what they want. That is what coaches do. Helping
someone change their mind so you can get what you want is never
called coaching. It’s called brainwashing. It’s manipulation in the very
negative sense of that word. When we’re talking about coaching, we are always
talking about coming from a place of true and profound, unimpeachable service.
We are always talking about releasing any attachments or agenda that you may
have to or about your own desires or your own goals, and showing up in a place
of pure service where it is only ever about the other person and what
they want. If you are coaching, by definition you are helping the other person
get to their happy ending. Never your own.

This, by the way, is also how you get what you want. If you do
the skill of coaching well, you will be paid well. But being paid isn’t the
point. It’s the byproduct, because the way you make money is to help humans get
to their own happy ending. That’s the essence of commerce. Help other people
get what they want, and the world will beat a path to your door. And then you
get what you want—more clients and more money.

So here, what you need to know is that more often than not, humans
want to get somewhere, but they don’t move towards the goal because they are
thinking thoughts that aren’t true and aren’t useful, and these thoughts are
preventing them from getting what they want.

When you’re an effective coach, you can dissolve a problem for
someone in an instant. And now I’ll tell you a story to illustrate exactly what
I mean.

This story involves, of all people, our next-door neighbors.
Three years ago they moved from California, I imagine because they have six or
seven grown children who live here in North Idaho. Each of these grown children
appears to have six or seven little children of their own. All of the kids are
really little. They are stairstep children. They start at zero and they go to
age one and two and three and four and five and six. So at any given time,
there could be between 10 and 50 children under the age of about six years old
playing next door to us.

This might be fine, except the adults in this family–the
couple who bought the house, and all of their six or seven grown children and the
spouses of the six or seven grown children—they were all operating under the
impression that when the children in the family are playing outside, that it is
appropriate and desirable for them to scream.  

This was a problem even before COVID. My husband’s a
commercial airline pilot. He’s gone a lot. And when he was home, he wanted to
sit on our dock for 30 or 40 minutes and enjoy an adult beverage in peace. He
couldn’t do it. No matter what time of day he went out to the dock, there was
screaming. The kids were out there from 7 AM until 9 PM. He was getting
increasingly frustrated, and during Covid it has gotten worse, because my
husband hasn’t worked since March.

So he’s spending a lot of time outside. He spent an entire
month constructing a building that I affectionately refer to as the Taj Ma
Woodshed. It is elaborate, as far as woodsheds go. People are so jealous of our
woodshed, when they come over, I can’t even tell you. And the entire time he
was out there building this elaborate woodshed, he was subjected to unabated
screaming from next door. And he’s been getting very angry about it, because he
feels singled out. He feels like we are the only people to whom this is
happening.

And here’s why he feels this way. One day in August we went
out to our boat and we got in it, just the two of us, and we decided we were
going to spend a leisurely evening cruising up the shore and checking out
houses to see if we could spot a different house that we wanted to buy. Why were
we looking for a new house, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. Any sane person
would want to escape the noise, obviously. When we pulled away from our dock,
we went right. The screamers live to the left of us, so we didn’t pass them.
And we drove all the way down the shore, for hours. And it was the most
peaceful, idyllic experience. We were boating along the shore of beautiful Lake
Coeur d’Alene, looking at the homes… Waving at the homeowners who were reading
or enjoying a glass of wine on their docks, and we would wave and they would
wave back to us, and for the most part the entire trip was silent. It was a
lovely evening.

And then we turned around and for a few more hours we boated
back up the shore towards our house again, and when we were close to our own
house, we could hear the screaming again. It was the only sound we heard from
any of the homes on the water over the course of hours, and it was coming from right
next to our house.

So my husband was immediately frustrated again. We got off the
boat and we went inside and he was so unhappy. And then a couple of weeks
later, we were sitting outside enjoying a bonfire and there were three or four little
children on the beach next door, all screaming together for no apparent reason
that we could discern. My husband was speaking and I was sitting right next to
him, and I could not hear a word he was saying. So he leaned over and said,
right in my ear, “Would you do something about this? Because they are not
listening to me.”

Since the neighbors moved in, my husband has been pleading with
them to, “Please, be good neighbors. The noise is bothering us. Would you
please keep it down?”

These pleas had been falling on deaf ears. So I got up from
the bonfire and walked over to the fence and said to the children who were
screaming on the beach, “Children, that is too noisy. You need to stop
screaming now. Now is not a good time for screaming.”

And when I said this, one of the grown-ups, sitting way up on
the deck of our neighbors’ house, away from the beach and away from the
screaming children, stood up and yelled at me from across the neighbors’ yard,
“Don’t you talk to my children.”

And to this, I responded back, “If you are not going to talk
to them, I am going to talk to them. This unabated screaming for hours on end,
from morning to night, is unacceptable.”

So then, everyone was yelling from the neighbors’ deck. And my
husband, who at that point was still standing by our bonfire, got really mad
and he was yelling back at the adults. And then the woman who owns the house
came down to the fence and told my husband to come over to the fence and talk
to her, which he did. And the two of them were just going round and round and getting
nowhere. And then I heard one of her adult kids say, “We like screaming.
We like people to scream and it’s fine with us. We want them to scream.”

And to this I thought, “Really?” So I leaned towards the fence
and I let loose. I screamed as loud as I could for as long as I could. Have I
mentioned that I’ve had voice training? I can scream really loud for a long
time and I didn’t hold back. This scream was startling in its intensity.

And when I finished screaming, I looked at the children on the
beach who had all been screaming before, just for the fun of it, and they were
silent. They were looking at me with eyes as wide as dish plates, and I could
read in their faces, “Wow. Screaming… Not so good.”

Then everything was pretty much silent. My husband and I went
back to our bonfire and resumed our evening with our guests, who were being
very good sports about this whole thing, and we didn’t hear much else from the
neighbors that night.

And when our friends left, my husband and I went inside, and
that’s when I realized he was really upset. 
He said, “I am so angry with those neighbors. They made you so upset and
unhappy, you had to scream like that? This can’t continue. We have to move.” He
was all upset because he was thinking I was all upset.

And I said, “I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t angry at all. I was
helping them to shift their thought.”

And he said, “What are you talking about?”

And I said, “They were in a thought error. They were thinking
that screaming is both useful and desirable, and so I was screaming to offer an
opportunity to reconsider their position on this matter.”

And he said, “What? You weren’t upset? Because you were
screaming like you were upset.”

And I said, “No. It was clear to me that the only thing that
was going to disabuse them of the notion that screaming is useful and desirable
is for them to experience screaming from the receiving end of it. So they could
reassess and determine if their thought is actually true, and if screaming is
actually something that we want a lot of in this neighborhood.”

And guess what? It turns out that when the lunatic lawyer lady
next door started screaming, they realized they were wrong. Screaming is NOT
something that we want a lot of in this neighborhood.

So notice what happened. In the span of  a scream, I shifted their thought. In about
ten seconds, I was able to help them see that they were having a thought error.
For three years, they were thinking something about screaming that isn’t true,
and that isn’t useful. They were thinking screaming is good and that we want a
lot of it. And in a very short period of time, they no longer thought that. Three
years into the relationship with the screamers living next door, they are no
longer screamers. When the kids scream now, you can hear an adult admonishing
the screaming children, “Kids. Don’t scream. That’s not necessary.”

So what happened in this story of the screamers who are no
longer screamers? What happened is a thought shift, and it occurred in the span
of a scream. And then what happened? Then, everyone got what they wanted. The
neighbors got what they wanted—I no longer have any need to talk to their
children. And we, in turn, got what we wanted—no more unabated screaming for
hours on end.

This, my friends, is the magic of causal coaching. It takes a
protracted, years-long divided highway of a conversation about an unresolved
matter, and it resolves it in an instant.

So now let’s think about you. Are you experiencing these kinds
of results in your conversations in your business? They’re available to you if
you have the skill of causal coaching. If youre not experiencing these kinds of
results, here’s what to do now. Book a consult with me to discuss joining us in
my one-of-a-kind coaching program, Gateway to Seven. You will learn the skill
of causal coaching, so you can dissolve objections in the span of a scream, plus
the other skills that you need to take your income to 7 figures and beyond. kellyhollingsworth.com
is where you need to go to book this call. And thank you so much for joining me
today. I’ll talk to you next time.