No matter how amazing a business is, how solid an offer or how fantastic a team is to work with, everyone will face objections. It comes with the territory of the cautious human brain, right? There will be reservations, concerns, and the need to minimize risk. But what often happens is that instead of seeing these objections as normal, we interpret them as rejection, which triggers defensiveness and sends us into a downward spiral.
Kristen offers a way to overcome objections and neutralize mind drama. She wants you to actively expect objections to the product or service you’re selling. Handling objections is a necessary and illuminating part of the sales process.
Kristen’s talking all about how to leverage objections as a valuable selling tool:
- The two forms of thought that tend to arise when facing objections
- Why only focusing on the sale can lose sales
- How to interpret opposition as a neutral and reasonable way to strengthen your business
- The shift of assuming positive intent on the part of the objector
- Exactly when to handle the critical step of resolving objections
- The importance addressing objections with curiosity and exploration
- How using self-awareness as a social seller will save you drama down the road
- The power of story to effectively address objections
- How to set standards in your content to help resolve objections early
Kristen wants to empower you to embrace objections with a clear mind and service focus, and it starts with conquering your fears and defensiveness around objections.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question
Do you have a business full of customers and almost no builders? You’re in need of a reboot! Learn the three skills you can learn that will completely change your recruitment game. Check it out here.
If you’re ready to learn the simple process of running your social selling business online, you have to check out Kristen’s live group coaching program! The Social Selling Academy: www.thesocialsellingacademy.com
Interested in Kristen’s exclusive mastermind for six-figure earners in the network marketing industry? Get all the details and join the waitlist here. Applications open again in January 2022.
Transcript of Episode #33: Overcoming Objectives
Kristen Boss (00:05):
Welcome to purposeful social selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industry. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller, who is tired of feeling and authentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business in today’s social media landscape. In this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you the new way. Hey bosses. Happy Monday, friends listen. So it’s going to be
Kristen Boss (00:41):
Power packed, but super fun. And it’s a topic about, you know, overcoming objections and I don’t care if you are in direct sales network marketing, and you’re a coach. If you sell anything, you need to learn to overcome objections. And I see a lot of business owners get stuck around handling objections, a they freeze up when they’re handling them, or they’re afraid to even go there because they don’t know how to handle them. And they are afraid of the feelings that they will have when handling someone’s objections. So my goal for you today is to reframe your mind around objections and to remove all the negative emotional charge you have around it, and for you to be able to handle them without having a lot of drama, because you really do need to be able to handle objections in your business. And the first thing you need to do is see rejections, rejections will get there.
Kristen Boss (01:42):
You need to see objections as normal as it’s supposed to happen. Objections are supposed to happen. And I think what happens is people think if they, if they do good enough content, if they talk about it really good, and if they’re really consistent and they kind of verbally vomit all over them, that the person won’t have objections. And then when the person does have objections, they’re surprised, they’re shocked. They don’t know what to do. They freeze. And then they’ll kind of try and force it. It gets really awkward. Handling objections could get really awkward, really fast if you don’t have the right mindset around them. So first of all, you need to be prepared and expect objections because everyone has a human brain that is designed to say no to something new everyone’s brain is designed to not like risk, to be cautious and skeptical that’s normal.
Kristen Boss (02:49):
Okay? So when you perceive it as normal and supposed to happen, that means you can immediately dismiss self judgment and shame and not make it about when someone has an objection. It’s not because you didn’t sell them good enough, or you’re not smart enough, or have enough followers or have enough experience in the industry. It has nothing to do with that. But I see people shut down with objections. When they make objections, rejection objections has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the way your potential is thinking about themselves, right? And so they have a brain that’s designed to resist and be cautious and wary of anything new and different. And so when you are selling them something, they’re going to have objections. Their brain is going to have resistance and that’s okay. But as soon as you go down, I’m being rejected.
Kristen Boss (03:55):
That’s when things get weird, because it automatically triggers a defense mechanism in you, right? You get defensive, your feelings get hurt. You start to talk a lot at them. And that’s when you send a barrage of messages like dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And here’s the scientific studies and dah, dah, dah, dah. You know what I mean? It’s just like, it’s like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they’re messages because you got triggered because you felt rejected because you didn’t see objections as, as normal and having nothing to do with you. So that’s the first thing. Let’s just all neutralize objections and realize they happen everywhere. No matter how amazing your product is, no matter how amazing your opportunity is, people have objections, okay? And objections are just reservations. They have about themselves and their investment. It’s never ever about you. So if it’s not about you, how would you then handle objections?
Kristen Boss (04:52):
Probably a lot more normal and sometimes, okay, here’s the thing you have to get out of your own head about your business and product because in your brain, you’re like, my business is the best business ever. It’s the best opportunity ever. I would anybody not want to do this? Why would anybody not want to do these products? And sometimes people handle objections, almost insultingly of like, well, if you don’t see what’s here, clearly, you’re not thinking properly. Clearly you’re not ready. Clearly you’d rather stay in your nine to five. Like we almost shame people for having objections, right? So I’ll see this I’m being rejected or people swing the other way and they just get very aggressive, right. Or they shame people. That’s nothing to do with it. Right? Because there’s so in their own mind about like my businesses, the best thing ever, that they’re not in the mind of their potential, they’re not the mind of their audience and realizing, okay, their audience is a normal human being with rejections or not rejections with objections.
Kristen Boss (06:05):
I’m going to say that a lot today. I think with objections and thoughts and reservations, they’re a human being that has concerns. And that’s okay. Right? And so, because they have concerns there, you have to see their reasons as it feels valid to that person, they might not be valid to you, but it feels valid to the person talking to you. So instead of having judgment about them, I would invite you. You need to get curious with them and assume, always assume positive intent. Like I always assume, yes, people want to be in the academy. People want to be, and of course they want to be sold. And I’m going to get curious about what’s keeping them from saying, yes, you’re going to do the exact same thing with your audience. When, when someone comes to you and they have a, you can assume they want what you have on some level on some level, they want it.
Kristen Boss (07:05):
Your job is to be curious with them and ask, why do they want it? What’s important for them. What gets in the way of them saying yes to themselves. So instead of having judgment on them for not being in agreement with you about your thoughts, about your business and your business model and your product, I want you to move out of judgment and into curiosity with them and start exploring their thoughts without you getting triggered. Most people are unwilling to explore thoughts of their potentials because they are afraid of experiencing rejection or getting triggered or being defensive. So here’s what you need to do before you even enter into a sales conversation with somebody that says, Hey, I’m interested first. You need to assume they’re going to have objections and it’s okay. And you can handle them. And they have nothing to do with you, you and your potential.
Kristen Boss (08:08):
It doesn’t have the same thoughts about your business or product that you do. And that’s okay. They’ll get there. Okay. So I’m expecting the objections. It’s going to remove the alarm and then you need to get out of your own head when you are talking to someone about your business opportunity or your product. And what I mean by getting out of your own head is getting out of all of your own thoughts of like, why would they not want this? This is the best thing ever. This, my, my business comp plan is the best. My team is the best. That’s you being in your own head. And you’re not willing to sit with the thoughts of the potential that you are talking to. You need to remove all of your own personal biases to your business so that you could be fully present with the person that’s talking to you and let them feel that their thoughts matter, that their questions matter.
Kristen Boss (09:05):
But it’s a problem. If you were too busy trying to meet a sale, then there is no way you’re going to be able to, to handle objections in a clean way. And what I mean clean way is you not being emotionally triggered everywhere and feeling rejected and angry or disappointed by everything. They tell you, if that’s happening, you’re too invested in the outcome and you’re too much focused on the sale rather than the person. So you have to detach from the outcome of the conversation. You have to remove judgment. You have to remove your biases and get curious, get out of your own head and realize they are not yet bought into the same vision you have about the business.
Kristen Boss (09:54):
And so when you expect the objections, when you see them as a human being that has reservations, it helps you handle their objections like a normal human being without you being emotionally charged and upset or feeling rejected or feeling wounded. Okay? So here’s what I see people do. When they talk themselves up to go handle objections. What I see them do is they will touch it and the person will give the standard objections, time, money, husband, not a sales person. Those are, those are the main ones. Right? And if you, in your mind, let’s say, say for example, someone’s like, my husband would never go for this. I really need his approval. I need him to sign off on this. If you are in agreement with that, meaning like, oh, of course she needs her husband to sign off. Of course she needs his approval, then you’re not going to explore further.
Kristen Boss (11:01):
You’d be like, okay, great. Well, we’ll get back to me when you can. Or instead of exploring more of like, well, why would your husband not be okay with it? What do you think his thoughts are on it? Right. Just getting more curious, being like, oh, tell me more about that. Have you done this before? What, why do you think your husband might have reservations? Oh, okay. What do you think aside from what your husband thinks? What do you think if your, if your husband was a yes. What would your answer be? Because then what that does is it removes the husband being an objection and it gets, it gets to her thoughts, more cleanly, right? Because just she’s defaulting to, I have to talk to my husband and we’re saying, okay, bye. Get back to me. You’re not, what would happen is here’s what usually happens is a lot of times, a lot of women have a really hard time trusting their own decisions and they don’t realize it, but they will default to their spouse.
Kristen Boss (11:59):
And I’m not wanting to shame you for this. Like, I really trust my partner, my husband, I, I discuss things with him, but I very much make my own decisions and we make decisions together. But a lot of times women will default to let me go talk to my husband. And so what’s really important is for you to first explore her own thoughts before you send her off to talk to her husband, be like, okay, great talk to your husband. Okay. But I want to know what your thoughts and feelings are before you even talk to him. Because if you don’t even want to do this, like just save yourself, the conversation, go into your husband, but it helps you get to the real reason. So if you say, okay, if your husband was a yes, what would your thoughts be? Now you’re getting to really hear her thoughts about herself and the business.
Kristen Boss (12:47):
And you’ll get down to the root of what she actually thinks. Then she might be like, well, I guess I’m a little nervous. Oh, okay. Well, what, what, what are you nervous about? I’m not good at selling. Oh, why do you think you’d have to be good at sales? Well, I mean, you’re selling a product you’re selling business. And I, I just, I just think it’s gross. I feel yucky and like, oh, I can understand that. I felt that way. Why, why is, why, why is selling gross to you? What about it is gross? Do you see how now I’m in, I’m just in a conversation with, with a lot of curiosity and interest in the person seeking to better understand them without trying to like force the sale. This is especially important in business. When you are pitching the business opportunity, it’s really important for you to be able to sit with all of their objections and explore that thought. Because if you don’t now
Kristen Boss (13:43):
You will have to later. Okay? So we’re going to take a quick commercial break. And because I had a massive spastic coughing fit and recording the first half of the episode, I actually had to come back and record the second half a different day. So in order to change for, to adjust for the different audio sounds, I decided to do a quick commercial break. Just to give you a little pep, talk about the academy. Cause I know a lot of you are wanting to join and you have questions. I get messages about it all the time. So here’s some things I want you to know. The academy is a one-time payment, two thousand dollars for you to join and you have access for life. You make the decision. Once you have access to all the new materials I create. So even as the industry evolves, the academy does too.
Kristen Boss (14:29):
You get to learn with me. As the industry continues to evolve and grow and change. You’re always going to have access to the most up-to-date marketing strategies that work in today’s social media landscape. You have access to a member portal where you have videos, where that are prerecorded with all the training on things like organic marketing copywriting, building relationships, mindset mastery, because it’s more than just knowing what to do. It’s knowing what to think, because as you know, the number one reason people don’t get results in their business is because of an unmanaged mind in the academy, you learn how to think in a way that guarantees your results. Not only that you also have a private member podcast so that if you can’t make the calls and you want to listen to the live coaching you can in the private member podcast, while you’re driving in your car, while you’re folding laundry, I literally have my three-year-old daughter in here as I’m recording this.
Kristen Boss (15:27):
And I’m like, don’t say anything mommy’s trying to record. But it allows you to go about and feel like you’re not missing anything and still have access to the calls. The weekly live coaching happens once a week inside the academy where you can opt in and get coached by me, live to troubleshoot what you’re going through, what you’re frustrated with. And I help you get results. A lot of people, they get results in their first two weeks of joining. They have people messaging them saying, Hey, I am interested in your product. I’m interested in your service. So, and not only that, not only do you get the metric of results of people reaching out to you and saying I’m interested, but you also feel different as a business owner. One of the biggest things we work on in there is your confidence and how you show up in the online space. And it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed when it comes to how we want to show up online. And in the academy, I solve that for you by teaching you how to show up and how to think this is why people get results. So if you have any more questions on that, go to the social science academy.com to learn more, and we will throw a party when we see you in there. Okay. Now back to the program,
Kristen Boss (16:41):
Don’t work through them before she starts the business. You’re going to hear about them later when she wants to quit the business, which is why it’s so important that when she wants to start the business, you need to get all the objections out really early on. Explore for them. Don’t be afraid to go there. Don’t be afraid to bring it all up and be like, tell me about your thoughts on time. What do you think this will need to look like for you to balance your time with your kids or your nine to five job? Or what will your husband need to see in you? Like, will he be upset if you’re working nights? If not, do we need to work mornings? But a lot of times people are afraid to go looking for objections because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose a sale or the person’s going to quit.
Kristen Boss (17:25):
But here is, what’s so much better is it’s so much better for you to handle every possible objection that they could have down the road before they even sign up with you to begin with. I’m going to give you an example of that. So in the coaching world, we have something where people will be on the call with us when they’re interviewing us. If they want to work with us as a, as their coach. And they’ll say, yeah, yeah, I’m in totally. I want it sounds good. And we’ll say, great. We’ll send you the invoice and we’ll get started, right? Here’s the, I’ll send you the contract and the invoice and what happens is, and the coach, a lot of times we’ll be like, oh, it’s awesome. They’re a, yes, they didn’t have any objections, any problems. And they, an inexperienced coach. And I learned this earlier in my coaching game is to challenge even challenged somebody who’s like, yes, yes, totally want to, I’m going to do it.
Kristen Boss (18:20):
And what would happen is I would take them at their word. I’d send them, you know, I, I book something out. I’d send them their contract in their pay, pal, PayPal invoice or whatever. And all of a sudden they’d be gone. They’d ghost. And I would never hear from them again ever. And we in the coaching world, we call this a false positive, which sounds like a pregnancy test, but we called it a false positive is someone who said yes. And their enthusiasm to us on the call. Because some people have a really hard time saying no. And they tell us what we think.
Kristen Boss (18:59):
They tell us what they think we want to hear. That’s what I was looking for. So they do that when really all of their real thoughts are hiding below the surface. And when somebody goes to you, when somebody says, yes, I’m all in. I want this business, or yes, I want these products. And they ghost you. That means that you didn’t dig deep enough to really understand their thoughts and their objections in order for their yes. To make sense. So let me tie that back to coaching. So now, if someone were to say, yes, yes, I’m totally in, I actually pause people and say, wait, wait, hold on. I, I love that you’re in. I love that. You’re excited, but listen, this is a really big decision. What are your thoughts about spending this money? What are your thoughts? You’re going to be with me for six months.
Kristen Boss (19:47):
What are your thoughts on this? What’s going to come up for you if we work on this, or if we deal with this and then I’ll hear the real thoughts like, oh, well, yeah, you’re right. I guess I’m nervous. I guess I don’t trust myself. Right? So I want to encourage you, even if someone’s like chomping at the bit, have the self-awareness and the presence of mind to pause them and say, hold on, like, I love your enthusiasm. I love how excited you are. But listen, this is, you said, you want this business and you want to make a couple thousand a month. I really want you to know what you’re signing up for. Like, how do you feel about working a couple hours a day? How do you feel about balancing this with your nine to five? How do you feel about these things?
Kristen Boss (20:29):
It’s literally presenting the very objections that they’re going to have when things get hard and it’s going to be so much easier and you’re going to be so glad you had the conversation before they said yes to you. Because then when that inevitably happens, you know, the kids get sick or, you know, they’re going a rough season at their nine to five. You can revisit that and say, Hey, you know, I’m remembering when we onboarded, when you onboarded and joined, like we, we talked about this and some thoughts you had on that, tell me, remember when you said this and remember that, right? Because when we don’t handle objections on the front end and then the real objections come out, we’re scrambling on the backend and it just looks like we’re saving the sale and it gets messy. It’s so much harder to sale to sell.
Kristen Boss (21:18):
Excuse me. It’s so much harder to sell on the backend of your offer if they’ve already decided, no, I don’t want it. It’s really hard to work through the objections. If you don’t do it really early on, I want to encourage you to handle the objections before you even make the offer. And here’s a great way to do that. Talk about time, talk about money. Talk about the husband. Talk about doing this while balancing a nine to five, before you say, Hey, do you want to do this? Right? So another example is on day four of my three-day experience, I spent an entire day, not an entire day, an entire hour. I spent an entire hour doing nothing but handling objections that I knew my audience would have about joining the academy and spending a thousand dollars. And I was able to do that from a really clean place, because a I first normalized objections.
Kristen Boss (22:19):
I didn’t see it as rejection. I just saw it as like, Hey, this is a big investment. They have a lot of thoughts. They have a brain that is freaking out. They have a brain that feels unsure. So my job is to help them feel safe and secure and address all the things they’re thinking. So I literally wrote down on a piece of paper before we got on the call and I asked myself, what is everything? Someone is thinking that’s getting in the way of them joining the academy. Like what’s in the way for them. And I wrote every single thing that could possibly come up down on a piece of paper. And then I worked through every single thing so that when I came to the call and I talked to people about the opportunity, it was just like, Hey, let me tell you, let me tell you why waiting is the worst idea in the world to join the academy.
Kristen Boss (23:01):
Right? And I would say, Hey, let me tell you why saving up to work with me actually is a disservice to yourself. Hey, let me tell you about my, if you are afraid, you can’t make the live calls. Let me tell you about my student, Melissa, who totally earned a trip. And she has not made a single live call or Ben, a live coaching with me once. And she still had her results. Oh, you haven’t made any money in your business. Let me tell you about my, my student, Susie, who joined before she hit, hit her rank and she was struggling in her business and she didn’t have the money to join. And then after she joined, you know, she, she ranked up and made her full investment back, right? So it’s really, it’s telling stories that speak to how your potential is thinking about their investment or even the product consistency time.
Kristen Boss (23:48):
How long is it going to take how much work is going to be involved, right? But most people just want to know that you can help, that they can have success and that it will work. That’s really what you need to handle. And I want you to think of something. I want you to think. If you knew that you could not get into conversation with people in your messenger and you had to sell them strongly enough without them messaging you, what would you say? Want you to think about that? This is what I do with the academy. So different. I’m not going into people’s DMS. I’m not answering, like if you were to direct message me and ask me questions about the academy. I likely wouldn’t answer because I believe everything you need to know is on these podcasts and my, on my sales page.
Kristen Boss (24:38):
And I really want you to do the work to coach yourself, to making that big decision. Right. But I know I have to provide enough value on the front end and talk about objections and tell stories about my students in order for my audience to feel comfortable making the next step and joining the academy, you have to do the same thing. I want you to ask yourself, what does your content need to speak to in order for someone to feel comfortable, invest in their business, right? What objections do you need to address? So that by the time someone says, I’m in, they’re telling you, they’re working through all of their objections for you. They’re going to come to you and say, I’ve already talked to my husband. I’ve already calendared out my time. I’ve already put aside the money and I’m ready to do this.
Kristen Boss (25:26):
And here’s the, here’s the date and time that I can do it. If you think that sounds insane. That’s actually what happens. I eventually got to a place in my calls as a coach, when I had, you know an insanely long waitlist, I literally had people on calls with me saying, I’ve already talked to my husband. I’m already sold. Like, I’m already ready to go. Like, it was like they were coaching through their own objections. To me. They’re like, no, I’ve already worked through them all because I set that standard in my content. And you can do that too. So I really want you to, if you can handle objections, that really means that you have been able to remove all of your own thoughts and biases about the person. And you’re able to just be present and give them your ear and help them see how they’re thinking and be of service to them without you being triggered and in your own brain, like, oh my gosh, she’s she?
Kristen Boss (26:24):
She must think this of me. And, oh my gosh, I think I’m upsetting her. And oh my gosh, what if she doesn’t like me? And oh no. What if, what if she thinks this and be like, so many of you are such, I don’t want, like, I don’t want, I feel like a headcase is really insensitive to say, but I say it in love. Like some y’all turn into a straight headcase when you’re selling to somebody because you’re so in your own thoughts and your brain is just running a muck saying, okay, don’t say this wrong. Don’t say this wrong. Don’t make sure to do this. Make sure to say that, make sure she doesn’t think this, oh, make sure you close it this way or make sure you do that right. That’s you not getting your mind clean before you approach the sale. Right.
Kristen Boss (27:10):
And having a clean mind means you’re not in your own head about like how great your business is and why everybody should do it. It means like you are able to hear whatever objection they say, and you have no triggers about it. You don’t get defensive. If you are defensive, you are not selling from a clean place. You still have your own biases and your own agenda. Like I truthfully can get on a call and have someone tell me, like, if I was to get on a sales call with somebody and I could hear somebody say, I think coaches are the most toxic manipulative, manipulative people on the planet. And I think it’s like the next scammy business. I would not feel triggered at all. If someone were to tell me that not even in the slightest, because I’ve managed to remove all of my thoughts, get really clear in my head and clear out my own brain and just be really present with my, with my potential and hearing her thoughts.
Kristen Boss (28:14):
I wouldn’t be triggered at all. I’d be like, oh, that’s really interesting. Tell me more about that. I’d actually be really curious. I’d be fascinated. Be like, oh, that’s so fun. Tell me more. But if I didn’t have, if I didn’t clean up my own thoughts, I would be super triggered and be really emotional. Like, oh my gosh, what does she think of me? She thinks I’m in the worst business industry ever. She thinks I’m manipulative. She thinks I’m out for the sale. No, my brain would be so fixated on that story. I wouldn’t be able to hear my client and hear their needs and hear where they want to be in life. I’d be so in my own head. So when you’re handling objections, get out of your head and be really present with the person you’re talking to and just realize it’s never about you. And it’s always about their mind, their thoughts and their decision-making. And when you can confidently handle objections, you will seriously
Kristen Boss (29:08):
Shift how you close sales in your business and you’ll actually love it. But you’ve got to clean up your thoughts first. So go out there and handle those objections this week because now, you know, they’re not rejections. We’ll catch you next week. That wraps up today’s episode. Be sure to leave a review and share with your friends so we can continue to elevate the social selling industry together. Listen, if you want to learn how to show up on social media, without having to hustle for the results and outcomes and learn how to attract people to you and grow a sustainable business without the burnout, confusion or overwhelm, I’m inviting you to join the social selling academy, where I teach you how to organically grow, nurture, and sell to your audience in a way that has been coming back for more. So whether you are making your first $100 in this business where you were going through your first $10,000 a month, this is the program that will meet you exactly where you are at through live coaching, community feedback, teaching modules, and more, and you can start seeing results in as little as 30 days go to w WW dot the social selling academy.com to learn more.
Kristen Boss (30:24):
We’ll see you there.
