Welcome to Reservationless Plus Conferencing. Enter your conference code, followed by the pound or hash sign. Thank you. Defense ready. And, you know, I picked six ploys which we'll look at, but really I think what you'll see is that all of the ploys, all the objections, all the complaints that you face are all pretty much the same or different variations of those, and we just have to be skillful and ready on how to handle those, and that's what we're going to look at today. I've worked with so many dealers, and even recently a lot of them are saying, hey, you know, we're doing pretty good getting market share, pens or whatever you call it, and when we look at our percent of industry sales, we're not doing too bad. We might even be one of the leading dealers for our manufacturer in that. But then when they look at their margins, they start seeing some erosion, and their margins are kind of starting to wane, and that may not be so much a result of the economy as it might be that we're getting lax and that we've got our buddies and the people that we typically deal with, and slowly but surely we're making the deals happen, but maybe we're leaving some money on the table. So that's what this webinar is all about. Let me start by saying it's vitally important to pre-call plan for each sales call, and most of you that know me probably know that pre-call planning your tactical offense is what I teach and what I eat, sleep, and drink. No more showing up and throwing up. However, you can prepare your selling strategy, and you can prepare your pre-call plan for your tactical offense, but, man, at any moment in a sales call you can get thrown onto the defense, put on the spot. And when that happens, a sales professional must be prepared both mentally and emotionally, and this webinar will provide some critical training, and then I'll direct and inspire you and your team to practice. Training and practice will equip you to respond skillfully to any conflict and get back on the offense. I probably ought to qualify this to say that I'm not going to give you some silver bullets, because there are some issues that maybe aren't resolvable. There are some problems that your company may have that, hey, you know, that's the way it is, and you just have to face it skillfully, so you can't fix every objection. But what we're going to show you how to do is face every objection skillfully as a professional and maximize the results and make sure that you're not leaving money on the table. Our job as sales professionals is to turn a ploy, which is really designed for compromise, to turn that into a both-win result. So what we're going to do today is cover six ploys. And I'll give you some typical examples of those ploys, but even though there are many variations of these basic ploys, and these are ones that we hear all the time out on the front line, let's just quickly take a look at these six ploys just as a heads-up. First of all, price ploys. Price ploys are the mother of all objections. You're going to hear all different variations on these with cuss words optional, but you're going to hear things like, your pricing is way too high, or how do you expect to get a rate like that, or, well, you know, I expected with your machine to pay maybe a 10% premium, but 20% or 25%, what are you guys thinking? So we're going to hear a lot of price ploys. We're going to hear loyalty ploys, and these will get you where you go in there and they say, listen, we really don't need to talk. We're very happy with our present dealer, or we've been doing business with those guys for 10 years and have no problems at all, and they're just pushing you away and saying we're loyal to somebody else. I appreciate that loyalty, but sometimes that's just a ploy to get rid of you or to put you in a subposition so that maybe you'll start cutting price to get in. Here's the next one, competition ploys, where they kind of throw you in the loop with your competition and pit you up against each other. Hey, your competitor's cutting price. What are you going to do? Match it, or we're going to have to go shopping. I've even heard some of these competitive ploys where a guy will say, I've been doing business with you for 15, 20 years. You've done a really good job for me. You and I have gone hunting and we've been friends, but now my boss is putting the pressure on me and I have to go shopping. If you don't lower your price and match what those boys are doing, we're going to have to jump ship. How about help ploys? These can catch you off guard if you're not ready for them because this is how we lose margin and our margins erode, and you say, well, tell you what, I'm going to give you this deal, but help me look good on this initial order, and then maybe my boss will consider you guys for some big upgrades that we have planned. Be careful because you may get that initial deal, but then when they come back for that big group of upgrades or those five wheel loaders that you want, they're going to say, well, man, you did that one wheel loader at a good price. You obviously did okay. We're not going to be able to move forward unless you hold that same price on all of them. So sometimes these help ploys can just catch you off guard. You do something initially, and like I always say, today's concessions are tomorrow's expectations. So all that happens when you make a concession is then it lowers the bar and then they're going to expect that from then on. Many of you are facing quality ploys. You may have a premium product that you sell at a premium price and it's worth it, but then they say, well, a skid steer is a skid steer or a wheel loader is a wheel loader. They might say something like, well, everyone says their machine is better. They're all the same. And there's a lot of different variations on quality ploys. They might even say, yeah, that's a good machine, but it's more than what we need. With our application, that would be an overkill and a waste of money. They're not really looking at the value that that machine really can bring long term, the resale value and everything else that's going to go along with that. They're just kind of throwing it at you and putting you in there with all the rest of the people saying, that's the same as everybody, quality ploys. And then time ploys. Many times time ploys can kind of catch you off guard because they don't seem like ploys or they don't even seem like objections. They'll say something like, well, we're buried right now and I have no time to hear a sales pitch. Email me in a few months if you have to. You go, okay, I'll send you an email in July and we'll try to start this up again. And what happens is you just never really make any progress. They're just getting rid of you. Sometimes you even have a major deal happening. You've got a proposal in place and then they say, you know what, we've got so many other fish that we're frying, why don't you follow up with me in a couple months on this. And they just sit this hot deal that you need the revenue, your company needs the money for that month, and they're pushing you away because they're not necessarily desperate at this point and they're thinking, hey, if I push them away, my manager is going to see this job on the list that never did get closed and they're going to start pushing and then I'm going to get some discounts. See, time is money. And if they push you away and they don't look interested, then you may get really hungry and that can cause some discounts. And don't get me wrong. Sometimes a time ploy or a time objection might be legit. This is really important at this point to make this clear. Objections, complaints, and ploys all sound the same. That what's different is the motivation. See, somebody might have a legitimate time situation where they have to put this off for a month, and that happens. It could be a cash flow problem, it could be that they have a new president in their company that somebody quit, or maybe they've got a project that they're using this piece of equipment on and it got delayed by their customer. It could be perfectly legit. But then again, it might be a ploy. They might be jacking you around. And that's the thing that we have to understand. When somebody throws a ploy at us, you're going to see that we have to follow a proper methodology, otherwise we're going to say something we wish we didn't say or we're going to start guessing and selling in the dark. So now that we've exposed these typical ploys that are often used by trained or at least savvy customers, then what I'm going to do is provide a powerful framework and a methodology to help you face that pressure and beat the press. The cell process that I'm going to show you, the cell process defense tool, will empower you to anticipate objections, employees, and then develop effective responses. So today's going to be real hands-on, real practical. I'm going to give you a tool. I'm going to show you how to develop some effective responses with your team, and then I'm going to encourage you and even direct you and show you how to practice so that you can develop highly skilled interactions so that your skills become instinctive and automatic. This webinar is going to really provide you and your team with some help to ultimately create a defense playbook where you identify all the ploys, objections, and issues that are plaguing you that you're facing and then document some answers and begin some ongoing defense drills so that you can act and not react. Our goal here today is to help you protect your margins. Our goal is to help you sell a premium product, a premium service at a premium price, and that's all about selling value, not price. I always say that price is what customers think about when the salesperson gives them nothing else to think about. We do not want these ploys to catch you off guard. We've got to be on our feet, we've got to be ready for the conflict, and we've even got to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. So we looked at six ploys, and I came across an interesting quote by the great coach Vince Lombardi. Here's what he said, and when I read this quote, I thought this really relates to what we're doing here in this webinar. He said, you know, in football, he said, there are only five or six big plays in every game, and you have to make them to win. In a time of crisis, it is absolutely imperative. Maybe in your dealership as you look at your numbers, as you look at your quarterly results, you may say, we're in a time of crisis and we need to improve our margins. Well, what Lombardi said I think relates here. There are only five or six big plays in every game, and you have to make them to win. I think our margins, it's not just a philosophical thing. I think it's a tactical thing where when we get in front of a customer and we've got one of those big plays, you've got to make that play. You've got to be ready. You can't just hope that you're able to deal with it because they'll eat you alive, and you'll get freaked out, and you'll say stuff you wish you didn't say. We have to be ready. When I watch the NFL, and I love football season, it always amazes me. I'll see a play where it's third and three. It's a critical first down. They'll run and execute a play that they practiced a thousand times in practice, and the quarterback gets the ball, the receiver will run a pattern and cut over to the – maybe they even need to get the ball out of bounds in order to stop the clock. And the guy will run a pattern, and before the receiver even turns around, the quarterback throws the ball. It's in the air before the guy even turns around. He turns around right at the last second, catches the ball. Both of his toes are barely in bounds, both feet. He catches the ball, controls it all the way to the ground, doesn't let the ground hit the ball at all, and just falls flat on his face. Beautiful play. Big play. You've got to make those big plays, and it's the same way in sales. But what I wanted you to see with that analogy is that that wasn't just some highly skilled guy. How did he get highly skilled? How did they execute that? It was training and practice, and that's what this webinar is going to challenge you to begin doing. Now, let's talk about self-defense and kind of get an understanding of this before we move into the methodology, and I really give you some practical help on how to deal with these objections and these ploys and how to overcome them. Okay, first of all, in self-defense, we talked about six ploys, but I want you to think about some of the other ploys you might hear and some of the other objections that you might face. You know, besides your price is too high, we're very happy with our present suppliers. You could hear all types of things, like, well, your branch is not close to any of my job sites. I mean, it just could go on and on, or I don't like the controls on your machine, or your service department screwed up so bad last time, I swore I would never do business with you. Now, again, that could be legit. Maybe you really burnt that guy, or somebody did, and it's in his crawl. But then again, he may be doing that just to get a better price. If you've ever heard somebody throw an objection or a ploy at you, and then you stand your ground and say, no, this is our price, this is a great deal, we can't go any lower, and then the guy goes, well, I had to try. See, what that means is that they were throwing a ploy at you, not an objection. So be aware. I would even challenge you as a team to do a little workshop and say, what are some of the other objections or ploys or things that we're facing out there? Now, this question is even more important to be really considering, and maybe you never thought about this before, but I want you to ask yourself this question. Why do customers object? What's behind that? Why are they doing it? See, it's really important that you qualify why they're objecting. So think about this. What are some of the reasons that a customer might object? Well, first of all, obviously it might be a legitimate concern or a complaint. Yeah, that exists. And like I said, you can't always fix an objection or a ploy, but you've got to face it, and you've got to handle it with professional skill. So it might be legitimate, but then again it might just be a test of your ability. They could be testing you, seeing what you're made of. Some of you young salespeople have experienced that where they're testing you. You know what? It might be a cry for more information or for clarification. Maybe they have misinformation. Maybe they misunderstood what your company is or does or the differences of your product. Maybe somebody even lied to them. They could be confused or misinformed. So it could actually be a good thing, a cry for more information. I always look at ploys and objections as opportunities. They're telling you, this is what matters to me. So they're asking for more information. You know what, though? It might just be a habit. They're like, well, I've got to give this guy a hard time. I can't just roll over. It could even be a style of purchasing where this guy is mean, and they get off on it because they like the power that they feel when they abuse salespeople. I don't know. It could be any of that. It could be an excuse or a distraction. How many times have you gone into a store and somebody says, can I help you? And you go, no, I'm just looking. You do need help. You don't even know what you're looking at, but you immediately respond that way just to get rid of them because you're afraid of the salesperson. So it could be any of those things. And you know what else it could be? It could be a ploy, a negotiation ploy, where they're trying to get a freebie, trying to get a discount. They're making you feel weak. They're blaming you for something. They're making you feel subservient so that hopefully they get a discount. Hopefully you say, well, okay, we can work with you, and say some implied concession that's going to give them advantage, just like you do, and most of you probably are like me, that when you go to a car dealer or you're trying to work a deal to buy a car for your daughter or your son or yourself, you go in there and you play the game. You go, well, all we have is $4,000 to spend because he's been saving up this money and I want to help him get his first car, and all he has is $4,000. He might have $5,000 or $6,000, and he knows exactly what he wants, but you're jacking the guy. So here's what I want you to see. Why do customers object? Who knows? What could be behind that? And that's why this next item on this page, I put it in bold letters. Do not respond immediately with your answer or your rebuttal. Why? Well, because you have no idea what was behind that. You don't know if it was legitimate, if they were negotiating with you or testing you or just misinformed. You have no idea, so how in the world could you guess or make up an answer that would be appropriate? You'll probably say something really stupid that you really didn't want to say. So right at this point, I want you to etch that, drill that into your brain. Do not respond immediately with your answer or rebuttal. So when somebody throws something at you, I told you a little bit earlier, hey, we need to be ready, we need to have answers. Rightly so, and I'm going to show you the methodology for doing that. But the methodology is really important to understand that part of that methodology has an answer, but that's later in the methodology. You can't just come flying back with your answer because when you do that, it's adversarial, it creates a negative environment. It almost says I'm right and you're wrong. I'm going to win and you're going to lose. And really, Dale Carnegie says you can't win an argument because when you win, you end up losing. So again, very important, etch that in your mind. Do not respond immediately with your answer or your rebuttal. Now, I'm going to take it even a step further and say, why should you welcome and even look forward to objections? I think the answer to that, now that we've started thinking about it, is pretty clear. Objections equal opportunities. Objections and ploys are clues to what's going on behind the scenes. They're clues to their hot buttons. In some ways, they might even be saying fix this or deal with this or clarify this or confirm that you're not going to go any lower and I'll buy. It means they're interested. They are engaged. At least there's some interaction. I'll tell you what, when you need to really worry is when somebody gives you a deer in the headlight stare and there's no interaction and they don't want anything to do with you. But man, if somebody is objecting, they're saying, hey, this is worth fighting on a little bit because I really do want this. And when you put yourself on the other side of the table, if you go in and you see this car that is sweet and it's exactly what you want, and you go in and you start negotiating, in the back of your mind you're thinking, I don't care what happens here, I'm getting this no matter what. But yet on the surface it looks like you don't want it because you're playing the game. So when your customer is doing that to you, they may definitely want it. And actually when they object and when they're ploying you, they're saying, I'm willing to spar with you a little bit because this is really important and I really want this. Now, this is part of this awareness. Can they occur anywhere in the sell process? Well, absolutely. They can happen anywhere. This is an on-your-feet skill. When you pre-call plan for your offense, you're preparing before you go to the call, before you pick up the phone, and you're kind of tooling out, okay, what's my objective, what am I going to say when they pick up the phone or when we sit across the table after we get past the small talk, what are some of the questions I need to ask, what am I going to present as far as value, if I discover certain issues, how can I relate what our company does? You're thinking all that through. And then you walk in the door and immediately when you walk in, they could throw something nasty at you, or in the middle, or when you get, everything could be going great and then when you talk about price, boom, they throw some nasty ploy or nasty objection. So it could happen anywhere in that dynamic interaction. So what should your attitude be? This is an important question because we kind of looked at the fact that they might be jacking you around, they could be lying to you, they could be just playing a game with you, and that could be very negative and that kind of creates this conflict and conflicting type of an environment. But your attitude can't be I win, you lose. It can't be this negative environment. It has to be cooperation through interaction. And I love that word, interaction. What's the last part of that word? Action. And if you want to get action, you have to be a master at the interaction and create this cooperation. See, I'll tell you what, it's a lot harder to be a salesperson than it is to be a buyer or a customer. Because as a buyer or customer, you can say anything you want, do anything you want, you can tick the guy off, you can push him away. As a salesperson, you've got to get the deal, you've got to make the money, you've got to get good margins, and they still have to love you when it's all over. So our job as salespeople has to be this relationship building. And again, you're not going to see me when I talk about negotiation or ploys and margins. You're not going to see me teaching you manipulative, sneaky tricks and techniques, because that never works long term. Not in the heavy equipment industry. That's not going to fly. It might work if somebody's trying to sell you a timeshare and you hate the guy's guts, but you do it anyway, and then you wonder six months later, why did I get sucked into that? That's not the kind of selling that I believe in, or I'm sure that's not the kind of selling you believe in. It's all about relationship. It's all about building trust through communication and listening. All right? That's an important premise. But as soon as I say that, I have to come back and qualify that in this webinar. Is the customer always right? I didn't say that, but that's one of those customer service slogans that somehow evolved. And let me tell you, customer's not always right. That's not really true. Sometimes they are lying to you. Sometimes they are playing a game with you. Not always, but sometimes. And it's hard to tell sometimes which one that is. Here's the objective. Our objective as a professional salesperson is to change their thinking. That's what selling is all about. If you look at the core definition of selling, it's this. Getting somebody else to want to and to actually do something that you want them to do that's really good for them. I mean, that's really what selling is. And that's difficult. But we've got to change their thinking. They're thinking, oh, this is too high. But it's because they don't know that in the long haul it's going to burn them if they don't get the right price, if they don't get the right product. I put new siding on my house because when our house was built 20 years ago, they put some defective siding, so I had to change my siding. And I shopped around. I got all kinds of prices. I got people that were really good at putting up this hardy siding, and they were experts at it. And, man, the price was really high. So I found some guy who did it for a much better price, and I went with him. I have kicked myself since then. It took them five weeks. I had to every day go out and inspect everything they did and pick it apart. It was horrible. They had no craftsmanship. And I'm like, man, I teach this stuff. And I went down that path of cheap, and now I'm paying for it. I'm paying for it dearly. It cost me more in the long run, and now I've got to go back and touch everything up and re-caulk everything because I fired them. They were so bad I took a cut bait. Let me tell you something. We have got to somehow help them not make those kind of mistakes with competitors. We've got to make sure they buy from us and do business with us, and sometimes they don't see it. So we have to change their thinking and change their mind. All right, now, when these objections get thrown at us, it's important to understand foundationally that when they throw things at us, we're going to have a natural human tendency to respond naturally. Now, here's the bad news. The natural response usually results in an immediate answer, and that's especially tempting if you're experienced, knowledgeable, and you have a good answer. Somebody says your price is too high, and you go, no, no, no, it's not. Let me explain. You're totally wrong. And now we're into this fight where we argue or take it personally. Well, no, I'm not the one that screwed up your service. We fired that guy's bud, and we've had all kinds of problems with some of our people in our support service department. It's hard to get good technicians, and we blame others, make excuses, and try to justify ourselves. And let me tell you, that is not going to make the customer feel more comfortable about your company. So fighting is a natural response, but it's not the right response. And then some people kind of take a completely different approach. It's kind of the fight or flight response, natural, fight or flight. But let me tell you, I've seen salespeople avoid issues, ignore them, try to hope they go away and fantasize, not really deal with them, and not charge in there and deal with it head on. I'm not saying that there won't be tension. I'm not saying that there won't be conflict. You can't run away from that. We just have to be skilled at dealing with it, and that's part of what this webinar is all about is to begin giving you that skill, to give you that framework so that you can deal with it skillfully instead of running away and hoping that it goes away, or just kind of saying something silly, or maybe kind of have the Tommy Boy response where you just freak out, and you get nervous, and you say, um, and you say silly things, and things like, well, to tell you the truth, or to be honest with you, which kind of implies you haven't been honest up to that point, or tics or pet phrases. So fight, flight, or freak, those are straight Fs, failing grades. That's not a good response even though it's natural. You know, Vince Lombardi said the most important thing a coach needs is knowledge that his team can or can't play under pressure. He said what I criticize people for is mental errors, not physical ones. We've got to be ready to skillfully respond and know exactly how to respond without freaking out, and that takes training and mental preparedness. I kind of joke and say that I would like to be a sales professional, kind of a Jason Bourne of sales, and if you've seen the Jason Bourne movie series, trilogy, then you'll know what I'm talking about is he was instinctive. He was so highly trained, it was ingrained in his brain. Or like Jack Bauer, I want to be a Jack Bauer of sales, so that when stuff happens, boom, I know exactly how to respond, and that's not natural. That's a trained response. It is not natural. I remember when I was in high school, I had a part-time job in the evening working at a heating and air conditioning company, and I worked in the shop with a guy, and we would do duct work, and sometimes we would get big truckloads of four-by-eight-foot sheets of galvanized steel, like 10, 14-gauge galvanized steel that we would make duct work out of. These things were heavy, and the company I worked for was just a little rinky-dink company, and I worked there after school. They had no forklift, of course, but we had to take these sheets off of the truck one by one, and the guy would say, okay, you just kind of grab a hold of it. I'm on this side, you're on this side of the truck. We'd just kind of flip it a little bit to get some air under it, and then we'd just slide it off of the truck and let it drop down to the ground. Then he said, okay, Buttry, and I'm like an 18-year-old kid. He goes, okay, Buttry, if we lose one of these things, don't do the natural thing. Don't try to grab it. Don't try to save it. Just let her fall. I'm like, okay, no problem, dude. So we started pulling these things off, and it's going pretty good. We're about halfway through, and all of a sudden, one of them caught on the edge of the truck, and it scraped a little bit. It threw it out of whack, and we lost it. What do you think I did? The natural response. I was an untrained kid. I didn't know to just let it go. I naturally tried to grab it, about cut my finger off. There was blood everywhere. It was a horrible thing. It was the same kind of thing when I was a helper on a job site. We'd be up on the roof. Let me tell you, when they throw something up, instead of climbing up a ladder, they'll throw stuff up to you to catch it. Don't do the natural thing to reach out for it. You're going to fall off the roof. Natural responses are not always the right responses. So what we want to have is the trained response. The trained response happens on purpose. Proper responses can ultimately become instinctive and automatic with training. The great Vince Lombardi said this, too. He said you teach discipline by doing something over and over, by repetition and rote, especially in a game like football or sales, I would add, when you have very little time to decide what you're going to do. So what you do is you react almost instinctively, naturally. It starts becoming natural. The unnatural starts becoming natural. You have done it so many times over and over and over and over and over again, the trained response. Let me tell you, when you get to that point, it's a beautiful thing, but it takes time. Eventually you can be poised, gentle, confident, relaxed, steady, and firm and professional, where, as a professional, you're very customer-centered. You're empathetic, not pathetic, but you're empathetic. You're logical, and you're really effective at leveraging your value and locking action, and you know that that's your job as a professional. But you've worked on it. It doesn't happen by accident. It takes time. Understand this. I want you to be aware of something really important at this point. If you've been responding by fighting or proving your point, winning the argument, if that's been your natural response is to fight, or if your response has been to kind of just run away from it or ignore it and hope it goes away and say, that guy's a jerk and just leave or just kind of get out of there as quick as you can, if that's been your typical response pattern, it's going to be really hard to change that to be more effective because you've worn a groove, and you've been doing it the way you've been doing it for a long time. It's going to take dedication, and that's why the last part of a trained response is it has to be practiced. You need to be ready, anticipate poise, anticipate objections, pre-plan your responses, and then perfect your wording, perfect your attitude, your tone, and your delivery. And that only happens by repetitive practice of taking small elements of your game, just like pro athletes do, and then working it. Just like, for example, I don't know if any of you saw the Masters this year, but, oh, my goodness, some of the shots that happened, it was just phenomenal. There were three hole-in-ones on the final day, or I think on just one particular hole, there were three hole-in-ones on a par three. Amazing. You know what? I know that some of that has an element of luck, but you've heard it said the harder I work, the luckier I get. These PGA golfers that make me feel sick when I see how good they do and how pathetic I do when I go out on the golf course, these guys will hit five, six, seven, 800 balls a day. They'll get their wedge out, and they'll hit chip after chip after chip after chip. You know, most pro golfers will hit 600 balls a day, and that's how you do it. You practice. Here's the question that comes to mind. How do you do that? How do you practice? How do you prepare for these objections and these ploys and these complaints even that are going to happen? How do you do that? Well, let me give you a great analogy. When I was in high school, I played basketball, and I loved the game, and I learned a lot from different sports that I played. But I remember in my junior year, we had a pretty good team, had some good shooters, pretty good ball handlers, had a great point guard and some good power forwards. I mean, had a good team. So we had a winning season the year before, but then when we went into this next year, we had, because of the, I guess because of the amount of kids in our school had grown and our attendance had grown because of people moving into the district or whatever, they put us in a different league. And so this year we were going to play against different schools. So in our first game of the year, we go out, and this other team attacked us and put the full court pressure on us. They put the pressure on us, kind of like you might feel when you get objections thrown at you. I mean, they put a full court press, and our response was ugly. I mean, we threw away the ball. We were fighting amongst each other. They got a couple easy layups off of us. We just – it was horrendous. We were so unprepared for that that it was awful. And we never recovered from that game because we got so far behind at the beginning, it was just a downhill battle from then on and we never recovered. So what do you think we worked on in the next practice? Exactly. In our next practice, the coach said, okay, we're going to learn how to handle the pressure. When they put a full court pressure on us, we're going to learn how to handle that full court press and we're going to learn how to respond. But first we're going to go into the locker room, kind of like what we're doing today. He took us in the locker room and he showed us the methodology. He went on the chalkboard and he kind of broke it down and he showed us the methodology. He walked through, he said, okay, when the ball goes here, you go here, you go here, you slide over here, and he kind of walked us through it. Then we went out onto the court, out onto the field so to speak, and we walked through it real slow. This is something that I do when I do sales training is we learn the process, we learn the methodology, and then we walk through it real slow to get it under our belt. He said, okay, when the ball goes here, you go here, and he just walked us through it in slow-mo basically. Then we continued to pick up speed. By Thursday he had set up another team to come in and full court press us and put the pressure on us to see how we were doing the practices. You know what, it was a beautiful thing. We got that methodology and we did way better because we knew what to do. We had the methodology. But I do remember at one point he goes, stop, stop, and he blew the whistle. He goes, don't anybody move. Stay right where you are. He walked over to me and he goes, Buttry, why are you standing here? He kind of pushed me and reluctantly pushed me to the other side of the court. I felt like an idiot, but I'll tell you what, I'd rather mess up in practice and get it down than to mess up in front of a customer. This is the thing that a lot of salespeople are adverse to. Nobody sees them. They're like lone dogs, they're out there selling, they're dealing with objections, and they could be doing horrendous things, but they've never been shown the methodology. They've never really practiced it, and they're kind of adverse to that. So how do you prepare? Well, I teach salespeople the sell process. It's a framework that is used for pre-call planning. That's your offense. Good news is the more you practice that, the better you get at defense because that same process that I teach, and I'll show you that today, that same process can be used as a methodology for preparing and responding to objections. Your defense, and that is good news. See, in sales, your best defense is a good offense. All you have to do is swing back to selling. You've got to get back on the offense. You've got to get back to your sell process, which I call start, evaluate, leverage, lock. Let me show you a real simple tool. This looks very similar to the sell offense tool that I teach salespeople. When I do intensive training in AED events or in private events with dealers, we'll spend an entire day learning the sell process. I've even written a book on it. If you're interested in that, it's on my website. I'll teach them how to prepare and execute highly effective offense to figure out, okay, what's my objective for this call? What will I say when I walk in the door? What are some of the questions that I'm going to ask? And really prepare that offense. The cool thing about that is the same process that you use to prepare to get in control of the call, when somebody takes you out of control and when somebody puts you on the defense, all you have to figure out how to do is to get back on the offense, to get back to selling. See, in sales, your best defense is a good offense. We've got to go back to selling. We've got to do what we do best. We've got to be able to ask questions, find out what's going on, and leverage our value. And that's what this process is all about. So what I'd like to do here is walk you through each step of this. And the first step is very important. Because when you get put on the spot, when somebody puts the pressure on you, they throw something negative, some nasty ploy, some objection, some complaint, some issue that puts you on the spot. Oh, now your brain's gone and your heart's pounding and you're thinking, I've got to defend myself. They just blame me for that service problem that we had. When I talked them into buying this machine and to doing a service agreement, and now the guy's mad at me and blaming me for that, or whatever the case, or I'm head-to-head against a competitor, and they went and cut their price $10,000 and make me look like I'm gouging the guy, and now he's telling me that I'm jacking him around, and I've got to defend myself. He just balked on my price. He put me on the defense. I had a great plan when I went in there, and it just got foiled because he put me on the defense. I've got to defend myself. No, you don't. What you have to do is you have to get back on the offense. You have to get back in control. And you do that by restating the objection. No matter what it is, you restate it as a question. Now, I know that sounds a little bit oversimplified, but, man, it is a sweet maneuver. This is worth the price of admission on this webinar, just this, because when somebody throws some issue, a ploy at you to get back in control, you don't come flying back with your answer yet. You need to have an answer. But you don't come flying back with your answer yet. What you need to do is get back on the offense. You've got to get back to the start step of the process. So to restart, restate. Let that sink in. To restart, restate. You might even say it out loud as you're listening to this. To restart, restate. Drill that in your brain. To restart, restate. Let me demonstrate. This is a beautiful thing. Somebody says, your price is too high. And that's just a basic objection. I know there's different variations, but let me just demonstrate this. They say your price is too high. Well, I want to defend myself. No, no, it's not too high. We carefully looked at our price, and this is a completely different machine has got this and that may be going to this big you know presentation to get diarrhea of the mouth no don't defend yourself restate to our but there's a lot i don't want to sell a pair of those so you say my prices do i think i could help pick your ears but but you just real simply just pick out a key word or something and just throw back so you can't go way higher than everybody else and he may come back at that point go well uh... not not necessarily way higher see what happens where you say to hide it was yeah i would know what we had uh... i don't know we've been doing business with you guys a lot but i had i have to go up for three bids now we just got bought out uh... and merged with another company and the owner of the company is forcing us to go up for three bids lowest price wins uh... i don't agree with it but that's what we have to look at all the information i got and that guy's defending why he told me my price is too high simply because instead of answering it yet i'm going to answer to that uh... what i know what's behind it but at this point i just restate and i'm back in the office i'm not looking in control i'm on the offense they're on the defense with one beautiful move to restart to get back on the start of my process and to get back on the offense i'd simply restate or or if the guy says you know what every time we've ever done business with you guys you've screwed it up and i come back and say every every time that you used our service department there have been problems and the guy hears that it's like well i guess not every time i think we're going really good there for a while but the last couple weeks i don't know what happened but something just fell off the face of the earth i gave him a playback so he heard the validity of that objection and here here's a very important aspect of this salespeople it lets them know that you're listening it slows it down a little bit and shows that you're trying to understand you're standing under you're humbling yourself you're not trying to prove that you're right and somebody else is wrong you're not trying to validate yourself you're you're slowing it down and i'll tell you what customers are sick of people trying to defend themselves and prove that they're right because they don't give a rip about that they're thinking about themselves when you slow it down and say really what happened and you you you start uh... you just throw it back and put put it back on them and then eventually move into the next step what'll happen is you're going to get more response uh... from them you'll get more info and find out what's what's really going on and it kind of gives you a little bit of time to think it gives you some time to regroup while it lets them not feel threatened by you and really allows there to be some dialogue instead of you know you'll see me do my thing you just pulled my string and then we just go after restate get back on the offense and then this is beautiful and then almost seamlessly you're in the next vitally important step of the process the evaluate step start evaluate leverage lock S-E-L-L cell the cell process this is systematic and logical it's in a logical order because you can't really prove your value or change their thinking unless you find out what they are thinking so you evaluate by probing to understand facts and feelings this way you qualify the objection is it legitimate or is this really a ploy were they just trying to see if they could get a freebie or get free shipping or free delivery or or a lower ten percent discount or something what's going on it qualifies them you start asking questions and when you're asking questions about the way this is something that i teach salespeople and i drill it in their brains ask more questions and shut up when i do a training event i always anytime i say ask more questions i have the group respond and shut up because i hope that whenever you do training with me you'll leave with a little don buttry on your shoulder going shut up you have no idea what that guy's thinking quit guessing and sometimes we just guess and we shoot from the hip and we sell in the dark because we don't know what's going on you've got to ask questions and so once you restate and get back on the offense and maybe you get a little bit more information then you come back and go what led to this so are we really comparing similar machines they may look the same on the surface and they may have the same overall weight but have you compared dig force talk to me a little bit about what you're using this machine for so now we can uncover some of the facts some of the specs some of the details and i think as we do this we're not just looking for specs we're not just looking for you know what they're using equipment for uh... how much of the competitors price was or anything even though that's important factual details that we need but what we're doing is we're revealing their emotion we're finding their personal connections maybe even the politics that are going on in their company see and if we don't find out this stuff there's a high likelihood that we're going to come back and give the wrong or maybe even in the and inappropriate answer we might say something that we wish that we never said uh... and that's the beauty of asking questions first before you spill the beans and and and say what you were thinking because many times when you ask these questions afterwards you're like oh man in your brain you're going man I'm sure glad I didn't say what I was going to say because I was way off I admit I missed that's the beauty of this let me give you an example I was I was working with an ag dealer uh... and uh... brand new salesperson he he got with a customer and the customer threw this objection at him and he was a young kid okay brand new in sales and the customer as soon as he walked in the door and I was with him the customer said you're like about the third person I've seen from your dealership and I I saw the kid he kind of freaked out he came flying back with his answer that he'd been thinking about he goes I I know uh... you know we we've had a lot of turnover and I'm so glad that they hired me in in this company and I'm going to work my tail off for you man I believe in this company I believe in what we do I believe in in our product it's the best in the world and and I'm going to take care of you and I know we've had a lot of turnover and actually my predecessor may have done you dirty I don't know but they fired his butt and now I'm in here and I'm I'm your man I don't know a whole lot about equipment right now but I'm learning and I've been going to school and I've been going to product training and I I'm I'm going to I'm I'm your man the customer looked at him and said whoa I didn't know all that stuff was going on uh... I you know I said you're like the third person that's been in here I your your sales manager came in uh... your product support salesperson came in here we even one of your owners came in I did obviously you guys want my business but I didn't know you were having all no wonder these guys were coming in since you guys were obviously having serious internal issues all because instead of that kid coming back saying I'm I'm the third person that that you've worked with and then just looked at him and the guy goes you may say well yeah you know uh... and he would have told him that instead the guy the salesperson automatically thought that he was talking about his three predecessors who had because you know a lot of times a new sales guy takes over a junk territory that hasn't been covered well or that's had all kinds of issues and it's the biggest challenge because all the older sales people have all their buddies and they have these established territories and this kid was unprepared and untrained and he gave the wrong inappropriate answer you know what if you want to be a professional salesperson and you truly want to exemplify a sales professional consultant then you've got to do step two see this is a systematic and logical process you restate to get back on the offense to your start step and then you evaluate by probing to understand facts and feelings then then it's set up because the information that you find out in the evaluate step in this very dynamic interaction it will help you know what the answer should be so that you can provide an answer that persuades using customer benefits now again features and benefits and value selling that all comes into play but that's more than just a philosophy it happens in the heart of the sell process see I've always believed in features and benefits and selling benefits and value and and and uh... you know your value proposition and all that stuff but that's all just hype that's all just philosophy if it's not done in the dynamic interaction so if you restate you get back in control you start asking questions you find out the reality what's really going on their emotions their facts their their their what you know how they view things or what matters to them what their hot buttons are then you can come back with an answer and the nice thing is you can prepare these answers ahead of time you can work with your sales team to draw on some prepared responses uh... and some of your veterans have great answers for some of these ploys and some of these objections we need to tap into them we can even utilize some of the technical expertise of support people and support information even from our manufacturers they'd be happy to give us some support as to why this machine is better and and even though the controls are different why in the long haul it's worth making the transition whatever that is so you got all these resources that we need to tap into and then document some responses you could even have some stock responses for some objections there are some objections that there's only one answer and it needs to be approved by management uh... not all but some ploys some objections you know if they try to get uh... uh... a hundred and twenty day terms you don't want to come back and say no that's not our policy dream on see that that's come out of the answer but what you want to do is say you're requesting a hundred twenty day terms why would you expect that what terms do you give your customers help me understand why you would think that is is critical to this are my competition is my competition doing that you start asking some of those questions and then when you get the specs you can come back and say you know we don't want to be the bank because if we're the bank for you then we have to add that that's real money so we have to add onto our price and we don't want to pass that on to you we we can help you with financing you know and that you've got some answers to deal with that objectively and and keep this in mind and this is really important about the leverage stuff you want to make sure you include your company and your product benefits in your answer because you're not going to change their thinking if you don't show them how they benefit either by convenience long-term satisfaction uh... less hassle see i had all this hassle with my siding and i have five weeks of stress that i really wish i didn't have and if somebody who was selling me the other options for siding said listen let me let me talk to you about this let me tell you a couple stories about some people that have used other companies and here's what happened uh... because you gotta know what you're doing with it if they would have told me that i probably would have ponied up a little bit more money but that's what sales people have to do you have to leverage why are you better if you don't know why you're better they don't know why you're better you know we're the ones that have to somehow let them know that we gotta bring it forward we gotta bring those those those problems they would have if they go with our competitor we gotta bring that forward so they go yeah i can't risk it i'm going with you guys now if you don't know how to deliver your answer how to write one out uh... just uh... this is just uh... one of the techniques that you can use feel felt found uh... sounds a little hokey but it's a great technique let me let me demonstrate somebody says your price is too high so you restate you ask a bunch of questions you find out what's going on and then when it's time to do your leverage when it's time to provide an answer that persuades using customer benefits you can use feel felt found i know how you feel and initially when you see a higher price that's your reaction is man i'm not going to pay that extra money to get the same thing a lot of people felt the same way and i felt the same way when i see something that that the price is higher i'm like well i'm not going to just throw an extra thousand dollars at that person i want to keep that in my pocket but here's what we found it ends up costing more in the long run when you don't do that and and then you can get some real reasons why doing business with your company is valuable i know you feel others have felt how you felt or i felt how you felt but here's what we found feel felt found you know and with practice and with perfecting the wording and everything you can perfect your attitude you can perfect your non-verbals and and your practice can be extremely valuable in helping you to on the fly when these things get thrown at you boom instinctively and automatically you're ready ready and then you lead right into the next step of the process start evaluate leverage and then lock by trial to confirm resolution or acceptance you know when you do that it might surface another objection then you just deal with that the same way it just might force a restart where you restate the restart and go right back through it again but a lot of times what happens is when when you've done a good job at the start evaluate and leverage those benefits lead to a positive change in customer thinking and resulting action is logical you're not twisting their arm you're not jacking them around this is helping them you're giving them something they need and something that they want and that's logical it's part of our job it's what we do but i want you to understand another aspect of this locking is imperative you don't want to just answer the objection answer the ploy deal with it find out a bunch of information prove to them the answer and then not get any action you want to get action you want to move forward and get at least confirmation on the specific issue so say does that cover it for you uh... do you see now that maybe it is a little bit of uh... higher price but it's not higher cost it's actually lower overall cost better resale value and and you're going to be able to get higher uh... bids and go after different contracts that you never could before because of this machine or whatever you confirm resolution on the specific issue and then maybe even proceed to your ultimate action that was your sales call objective when you went into the call or when you picked up the phone whatever your objective was for your sell offense when the when the defense comes at you you just turn it around confirm resolution on that specific issue and then hopefully proceed to action on your objective you don't want to just deal with an objection then leave it hanging or leave it floating you want to be able to nail it down and get the results and the action the margin the the deal that you went in there to get now doing that again i want to emphasize that's your framework that's your process the sell process it's a simple but profound methodology that helps you prepare and execute highly effective interactions both for offense and as we're looking at today for defense only with a trained response can we execute consistently and brilliantly under pressure what i want to help you do is not just uh... react to people you know somebody throws something at you and you go no no and you just kind of jump back and and some of you this may be going on even in your relationships at home with your your spouse or significant other where you or even your kids or they say something and you react to it this is one of my favorite phrases that's kind of been uh... something that i remind myself all the time don't react act don't react and it's easy for us to react to stuff and many times that's a trained or an unprofessional response we want to do what we do on purpose we want to act not react so how can we do this let me give you uh... as we're kind of winding down the last segment of this webinar i'm going to give you a specific follow-up assignment then i'm going to give you just a little example of a filled out cell defense sheet and then i'm actually going to give you another assignment to challenge you to do some practice and if you're listening to this as a sales manager uh... i'm gonna i'm gonna show you some defensive drills and some practice that you can do once your team learns the cell process uh... you can actually do what i call defensive drills and do some practice so we we've got some some uh... really practical things that we're going to give you in this webinar okay so your assignment is as follows first of all first thing i want you to do is get together with your team you know maybe at a sales meeting uh... maybe you could do this in a monthly meeting that you have or if you have monday calls with your team uh... get together ideally it would be nice to kind of get together around the table over lunch or something but uh... get a flip chart put it in front of the room or a whiteboard and say okay what are you guys hearing out there what what are some of the negative things that are derailing you what are some of the things that are killing deals or hurting our margins and list all of the objections and complaints that you face as a sales team and this will be exhilarating for your people it'll be like ah... that got that off my chest because they're hearing some nasty stuff and sometimes they feel like they're the only ones getting them and it's really interesting when you when you ask the whole team they go I'm hearing that exact I heard that yesterday they'll all start realizing that they're hearing five or six and uh... maybe i hit on those six ploys that they're hearing but there may be a few others there could be some that that are very specific to your team so make a list and and one little note on this uh... when you make that list and you can brainstorm but when you finalize that list or type it up and and share with everybody uh... make sure that you put each of the ploys or objections in in quotations don't just say object on price or uh... reject our price or or complain about price or something put it in quotations like you would typically hear it you guys are way too high compared to everybody else uh... you know you guys are new on the block and we've been established with so-and-so dealership for many years we we really don't have the time or desire to change so if you're hearing it with certain words and i know there could be a lot of different variations on those but there's there's some real value in trying to put it in quotations as you typically hear it because as you practice this you'll realize that doing it that way putting the ploys and objections and complaints in in actual verbiage and words uh... teaches you to pick pick up on key words to restate so if they say you know we're we're very happy with our present supply you can come back and say very happy i mean i'm really happy because now that that doesn't mean they're not happy but now i'm trying to zero in and they go well you know i i guess that's what that's pushing a little bit i mean they they they've been pretty good that we haven't had any problems i guess and we you know the problems we've had every dealer has what problems are you having see it almost seamlessly because i did it that way because i picked on a couple key words it begins this dialogue begins this interaction so that now we can we can go into the evaluate step and start asking questions so list them and list them in quotations the next thing assign individuals that's one option or work as a team so you could take each one one by one and say okay uh... how do we restate this objection and you could come up with three or four different ways you could restate it there's there's no one way to do this but you just want to follow the methodology and get skilled at that and then say what are some of the questions that we need to ask to get behind this to get to find out what's really behind it what's really going on so you could do as a team i kind of like the idea of of assigning individuals because uh... sometimes uh... when you're in a group one person dominates and you really don't get a lot of the uh... sometimes maybe even a really skilled veteran will just kind of be quiet and take a back seat but if you assign one to each individual or assign uh... each individual a couple of them or whatever uh... or the same one to two or three people you're going to get and just say next week work on these figure out how you restate what are some questions what are your answers and then bring them back and then we're going to go over them together and we're going to review them and you can even get them typed up i actually have a tool 4.6 which uh... is available you can get them through AED or you can uh... contact me uh... through my website and i will make sure that you get that download uh... when you registered uh... for this webinar or when you do the uh... the live feed or the uh... the recorded feed uh... all you have to do is download that tool or get it from AED or myself so that cell defense tool is available and it's a word document with text boxes so each of your people can actually type them up they can go over make some changes and revisions as a team and then you could consolidate them all together and send them to everybody to create a playbook uh... which has some of your nastiest objections and some fantastic skillful responses that were developed by your frontline veterans man what a great assignment so i really want to challenge you to do this now the next part of this and i'll show you how to do this in just a bit do defensive drills don't just write them down uh... it's easy to do that book learning is one thing but if you can actually do it on the field and be able to practice these kind of like a scrimmage uh... you play like you practice and unfortunately salespeople don't don't scrimmage and practice enough and so i want to challenge you to do defensive drills and before we end this webinar uh... i'll give you some real simple directions on how to do that as a team uh... before we get into that though let me just look at an example with you sometimes people when they take their first shot at actually documenting a response uh... it's kind of difficult because they're not used to doing that they're used to just winging it or pulling it out of their back pocket or somewhere close to there and uh... writing it down is a bit of a challenge but man if you don't write it you can't fix it see when you write it you can fix it so i just put one together just real quickly and there's a lot of different ways you can handle this but i just wanted to give you at least one example of what one of these cell uh... objection response defense responses would look like so let's kind of zoom in here so the objection is the customer says uh... we were happy with our present deal so now i'm like oh man those guys are terrible and i i know how crummy they are and so i'm starting to think about this other dealer because i know who he's been working with and the rinky dink and and i know he's been buddy buddy with some guy that he went to high school with and and he's getting burnt and you know whatever so i just come back and i say totally happy now some people might come back and go yeah that's what i said so i don't really need to talk to you they could be a jerk about it but that's going to tell me a little bit about their personality and what they're like uh... most people won't do that but if they do then the restate still worked because it kind of gave me some feedback it gave me some time to think and try to remember some of the questions that i wanted to ask and so i just say totally happy totally happy you know in kind of an inquisitive tone and the guy may say well yeah i mean overall uh... we've been doing business a long time uh... their their lead times are pretty good uh... you know i've kind of bounced around with who i rent from because we do quite a bit of rental uh... and they don't always have the equipment that we need boom now the guys fasten up that's what i want i wanted to get some rental and so this is a this is a goldman opportunity but yet he still likes this guy and i'm not sure if it's because because this this uh... customer uh... or this uh... dealer that he's working with is so great or if maybe it's because he has known him for a long time and he feels guilty pulling the business away because he's such a nice guy or is it because he really is getting i don't know i don't know what so i'm gonna ask this question i'ma say instead of saying why do you like them because then that's just going to put nails on my coffin and he's going to be the wrong guys selling they're going to be telling me how great my competitors i don't want to say why why you like them or why are they bad i'm going to try to ask a more general indirect open-ended question what are the main factors that drive your loyalty uh... to a brand what what what are some of those uh... main factors uh... sorry i missed a slide here what what are the main factors that drive your loyalty loyalty to a brand or to a dealer what a great question because now we're not necessarily talking about my competitor but we're talking about the customer and what matters to them and he may say well one of the things that drives my loyalty is is is uh... trust and friendship and and and somebody who's been there when i need them uh... when i had an emergency at christmas those guys were there uh... you know that they've dropped the ball a few times but you know i've i've had forgiveness of because because they've been loyal to me and and they've hung in there whatever or you know i'm loyal to a brand because my dad always drove around uh... this kind of attractor when he was uh... when he when he first started his business and so on but i've been very loyal to them what are the main factors that drive your loyalty now we're talking about his motivations that's the only way i'm going to be able to sell value if i found out what his motivations are here's another question and and by the way i'm not just asking a series of questions this is very dynamic but i've got a cheat sheet in front of me or i've practiced this so much that i have an inquisitive mind and so that then then almost naturally i'm saying well what were you doing before you made the switch to them well what a great question the guy may say well eight or ten years ago i switched to them uh... i guess the dealer that i was working with before uh... was okay and and i was pretty happy with them uh... but man this guy came through for me when i had this emergency that my other dealer couldn't do and i realized what i was missing and so i switched over well can you see the opportunity here i'm saying well then i'll tell you what you ever have another one of those kind of situations where these guys don't come through and test us out and prove that the same scenarios existing and you're hurting yourself if you don't at least take a look at us that question is such a well-worded question and it's so non-threatening that it kind of opens up some rationality when your company needs a rental service or a new machine how do you go about getting what you want and need and you could tap into that question for fifteen minutes what what do you expect now we're going to get personal what do you expect out of me what do you expect out of a sales rep like myself describe the kind of service that you expect or or better yet wish for do you see what's happening here i'm not defending anymore i'm on the offense they were telling me that they didn't like me they like somebody else better than me and all of a sudden we're talking about this guy's needs and wants and i'm like what is your philosophy or your current plan for how long you typically keep a piece of equipment now what's happening now i'm a consultant i'm helping this guy i'm giving him support i'm proving to him that i know the industry and we're talking about his equipment his needs how long he keeps them and his turnover and his acquisition for gear and what he's doing that's consultative selling in a negative defense situation now i'm in control so as i lead through those questions and i find out those answers once i understand what's going on now and this is where you have to be able to be on your feet but i need to have some practice answers in my back pocket i need to have them ready so that when he gives me the information that i need then i can come back now this is just a standard answer but uh... this is this is the answer that i kind of came up with that i would do on the fly so you indicated that you have a few rough spots with your current dealer and and and i respect your patience and you know in your forgiveness there there are some notable things that our dealership offers that sets us apart from the rest and it would just be wrong for you to miss out on access to our extensive parts inventory you indicated that you just kept running out of parts and that they just didn't have the resources to have them in because they're a small dealership were huge we've got millions of dollars with inventory just sitting there waiting for you to use it and me i i've got twenty years of experience in the new underground pipe work that you just said you started bidding on because of the economy our new branch and service shop is near most of your job site now because of the stuff i found out in the evaluate step my leverage has power and then i can move right into the lockstep and say once you prove us out you'll be glad you did can can we get that undercarriage repair schedule so that you can get that machine back into action and not lose any more of this good weather now we're getting action now i'm getting results we're not talking about price anymore we're not talking about how much he loves my competitor we're talking about his equipment his needs his problems that's the beauty of cell defense this is a great tool it's simple but it's profound because this tool can give you a framework kinda like you know walking through beaten the full court press having a methodology that the whole team uses that everybody's on the same page so we can help each other and share best practices and actually practice something that salespeople don't do very much they just go out and wing it and this is going to help your team go to another level the cell response tool evaluate leverage lock based on the cell process so let me show you how to how to do some practice once you've identified the ploys and objections and issues that you're facing and you develop some really good responses and craft them you know share best practices pick them apart and really perfect them then you need to practice it's been said you play like you practice and role playing is essential to develop instinctive automatic skills kind of like doing it in a simulate what you're going to do for defensive drills and I'll visually show this to you but but first let me just kind of give you an overview you're going to line up as two opposing teams on on each side of the table or each side of the room each person is going to be role playing an objection or a ploy that they worked on that's usually the way i like to do it i don't want to totally shock them in front of all their their peers so they're going to work on one develop an answer kind of have it in their brain and then they can even use a cheat sheet during this practice uh... so having notes in front of you is encouraged and then each person plays a customer and then the sales professional uh... and then they they play the sales professional with their partner so they they kind of switch roles and do some practice and I'll show you how that works then the group coaches provides positive and constructive input and critiques uh... as you do this i usually suggest you keep your your cell sheets in front of you and then if you say oh you know what i probably should ask this question i i never realized that but that'll really open this up add that question to it you'll make corrections make additions to your written cell sheets so that you can perfect them after the team input and then i would suggest that the manager sales manager uh... kind of as a coach would collect all those uh... sheets and then that are updated make sure you make all changes to them and then put them into your cell defense playbook uh... let me visually show you uh... what this role play method looks like so let's let's just say you're at a table so you put the coach in the manager uh... the coach or the manager or the sales manager or whoever the team leader is up in the front of the room and then on on one side of the table uh... you you put and this could be three four five however many people you have in your team put uh... a few people on one side of the table and then a few years sales people on the other side of the tape we start by having what the first person role and objection or ploy at the other salesperson one that they worked on so that they they cannot at least for practice kind of have a little bit of anticipation is what's coming as you practices more you could even surprise them and throw any objection adamancy how well they handle it on the plot but initially i'd like him to kind of know what's coming so that they can be prepared and and have a decent practice so that they throw that objection and then they'll spar for you know five ten minutes uh... and go through the cell process so the guy with the the salesperson the x guy would restated ask some questions and then ultimately give their answer and then hopefully lock action after that's done than the whole team will critique it okay, how do you think they did it? uh... probably should ask a couple questions that you know you left it hanging at the end you really didn't lock it down and finalize the deal and i know it was just a role play and you're making up but don't forget to do that don't leave it floating you gotta lock it so you're going to get this back and forth critique from the whole team and the manager what a great exercise i've done this in so many dealers and it was outstanding they said so many dealers have said this is the best training we've ever had because it was so practical i've learned from my from my peers man this was great it's it's an excellent exercise and then now that person can take a breath and then they're going to throw the objection at the other person on the other side of the table so they they responded to one and now they're going to throw one as the customer and the other guy is going to handle that as a sales professional and then the team critiques and you just move right down the line throw an objection respond to it team critique throw the other person an objection they respond to a team critiques and you just move right on down the table and follow that procedure it's an excellent sales meeting excellent practice session here's the best part of it not only is it a great learning experience it's great for team camaraderie and unity of the team but then when they get out there in front of a customer they're going to be able to respond skillfully so do this continue individually and as a team updating and improving your defense playbook and practice practice practice developing the right skill and having game you know when you see somebody who's really good at what they do is like man that person's amazing they've got game they're so skilled at this that takes practice it takes training and practice until it becomes instinctive and natural I heard a a hilarious comedian and of course he had some natural skill but I guarantee his delivery is practice and I saw a couple videos of this guy he's hilarious his name is michael junior and I saw some different videos of this guy in every video his delivery was exactly the same you know I see all these youtube videos in different venues and it was exactly the same why because he trained and he practiced he perfected it and then if he didn't get the laugh he wanted he made some changes it's the same with sales it's the same you come out and say man I didn't get I didn't get the price I wanted on that I need to work on this winners execute fundamentals skillfully by habit it's all about training it's all about practice I call it that small margin of excellence if you and I'll tell you what if you have that's that extra little bit I mean you could be good but your competitors are good too but if you want to win if you want to get a huge reward a small margin of excellence equals a huge reward you know I think of a baseball player who is in the major leagues and if they're batting two hundred it is back to the minors they're going to get cut but if that guy says no I'm better than that and so every day when everybody else is hitting the showers they're practicing and they're working on their swing, their follow through, their stance, their grip they digitally videotape themselves and they have a coach working with them and they're working it for months until they perfect their swing and their follow through and then all of a sudden they start hitting an average of three hundred average and they start doing that now they're going to end up in the hall of fame if they can be consistent with the three hundred average and people are going to name their kids after them and they're going to be a superstar and everybody is going to scream when they get up to bat what's the difference between those two averages all it is is one hit out of ten can you imagine what would happen to your margins if you got one more hit out of ten when they threw a nasty ploy at you you handled it skillfully because you were prepared and you had practiced it and that small, that extra little bit, that extra margin of excellence is going to produce a huge reward your numbers are going to be amazing you're going to see much better results no guarantees here but I promise you the harder you work the luckier you're going to get and you're going to see those those huge rewards but just one little warning on this that small margin of excellence that extra little bit when you, you know, you may be good you may have a great personality you may be very persuasive you might be a great salesperson you may have, you may make six figures and beyond and be a great performer but if you want to get that extra little bit I don't care who you are it's going to come the hardest it's kind of like Jerry Rice one of the greatest receivers in the NFL the guy set records and he's amazing but you know what, and he had talent he was born gifted with talent but you know what he had the hardest workout schedule in the NFL that extra little bit that I'm talking about it comes the hardest it comes the hardest but it produces a huge reward so here's how it works folks and this is something that I'm a firm believer in in my training training is foundational training is foundational kind of what we did today is foundational so you know the process so you understand the process but then you've got to practice and you've got to work it and work it until it becomes natural and that's where management comes in management can help that practice by reinforcement by yelling it on the sidelines by really making sure that the salespeople have it in the tip of their brain I know that my coach always had to yell Buttrick get back on defense, get back on defense, box out and I'd say okay okay but it took a while before it sunk in and as a manager if you are a manager listen to this uh... you gotta work it you gotta work your people you gotta reinforce it and perpetuate it ongoing otherwise it'll just peter out and fall by the wayside training practice reinforcement and then a beautiful thing happens individually you become a pinnacle of your profession at the top of your game a sales professional and as an organization as a dealership you become a landmark of sales professional organization you know what we're all facing nasty stuff okay you're here employees that that will erode your margins and my objective today was to help you to first of all be aware of that heads up and then to have a methodology an awareness and then begin practicing so that you are defense ready that's not gonna happen just in this hour and a half webinar that's just the beginning if you take what i showed you simple stuff but if you work it uh... it'll take you to a new level uh... so this cell defense tool is available just email me and i'll send it to you uh... my email is below here it's don buttry make sure you do b-u-t-t-r-e-y not e-r-y don buttry at sales professional training all one word dot com email me and say i want to sell defense tool or maybe even so offense tool and i'll be glad to send it to you what one last thing if you're saying man hour-and-a-half but this was some good stuff on defense and i'm kind of intrigued about the idea of pre-call planning instead of just winging a sales call how can i prepare for a call uh... i wrote a book on this very topic called the cell process so if you want a detailed easy to read how to book on today's topic you can get my book all you have to do is go to my website sales professional training dot com uh... slash store and it'll pull up you can get the e-book or the hard copy it'll be sent to you in a couple days via u.s. mail excellent book and everybody who's read it we've gone through uh... about six thousand copies of it already it's a it's a simple but powerful book so if you're interested in uh... and really taking your game to another level uh... get a hold of that book thank you everybody for a great session together i hope this not only gave you a heads up but i hope it inspired you to work on your game uh... if you want to get better you gotta work you gotta build strength and confidence and clarity and that takes training and practice so i've given you some tools i've given you some methodology now it's up to you getting better thank you again i'm don buttry with sales professional training uh... keep in mind AED offers intensive full uh... two-and-a-half day training camps sales training camps that i that i run uh... two or three times a year there's one coming up august nine to eleven if you're interested in that uh... check the AED website and and register for that training we've got some resources to help you AED has resources use them get better at what you do again this is don buttry thank you i appreciate your time

handling objections

negative feedback

sales calls

preparation

practicing responses

systematic approach

restating objections

asking questions

well-crafted response

developing a playbook

practice and training

small margin of excellence

continuous improvement