Overcoming The Hidden Sales Objection In Content-Driven Businesses
Hidden objections are the worst. A clear "no" isn't so bad since it gives you a starting point to begin solving the problem.
Here’s the final part of the mini-series on “Sales”. Before venturing on, go back and read the previous parts in case you missed it.
Part 2, where I share my take on how to deal with the biggest and most obvious sales objection.
“I can 100% DIY and get all the content I need for free on the Internet.”
I’ll end the series will a relatively shorter one compared to my typically longer form. I don’t have anywhere close to a “perfected solution” for this one, but I am doing my daily archeology to piece the puzzle together.
Sales Objection That’s Hidden, But Deadly & Debilitating
The sales objection we’re covering today is much trickier to deal with and will make you lose much more business compared to the one we covered in Part 2. Coincidentally, it’s also the most debilitating on the consumer side.
The following is a silent assassin since nobody will actually explicitly phrase it in plain terms — it comes down to a lack of a growth mindset.
“I have enough trust in you and the product, but I don’t believe in myself to follow through and actualize”.
Usually, there’s some inner dialogue that accompanies this statement such as:
I’m not sure I can claim my share of the upside and recoup the investment
I actually don’t want to do the work / want the result bad enough
I don’t want to change my beliefs (or be proven wrong) and change
In reality, the interaction rarely gets to this stage, as false narratives and limiting beliefs usually take months, if not years, of focused work to fully unpack — the chances of it happening during a sales interaction are slim to none.
This is the difficult, but necessary work that’s often done alone, but is easier to solve with examined from a third-party perspective.
Lacking A Playbook To Respond Effectively
For literally every other sales objection, there is something in the playbook that’s mostly within our control to address it — not for making necessarily THIS sale, but for improving our odds of making the next one in a predictable way.
Don’t trust you? Build more authority to elevate your street cred, mainly through proof of work that’s easy for others to discover — show your work.
Don’t trust the product? Do a combination of improving the product's inner workings and/or making it easier to understand and evaluate.
Too much financial commitment? Decompose your solution further and charge in increments, or specifically design a loss leader to remove the upfront friction.
Not the right fit, yet. Not every ‘successful’ interaction leads to an immediate “yes”. Many times, it’s best to point others to where they’ll get the most benefit based on their current situation, even when it doesn’t involve you. They’ll know when the conditions are right to work with you again later.
An explicit rejection forms the foundation for you to effectively respond and begin problem solving.
It’s much harder to solve when things remain implicit and hidden.
Imperfect, Yet Somewhat Effective Solution
As much as I hate anchoring our decision-making on “social proof”, as indicated in Part 2, demonstrating a “look-a-like model” is still the imperfect, yet somewhat effective solution I’ve come across.
In plain terms, we’re obsessed with “case studies” and overweigh our purchasing decisions on them vs. evaluating the merits of the product from first principles.
I’ve experienced it on both Expanded Skills and YorkReno.
Expanded Skills - having helped people with bigger problems and who are further along in their career isn’t as effective as showing you’ve helped someone in a similar (or the exact same) situation and career stage as them — even if their problem is a subset of the bigger problem you already solved.
YorkReno - customers love seeing jobs you’ve completed within their neighbourhood even when the actual work done is not that similar. Let’s just say that we over-index how much we trust our neighbour’s opinion when better decision parameters are available.
In the end, we need mental shortcuts to help us navigate daily life. It’s a critical skill to see the merits in things you don’t like or fully agree with.
Conclusion
After laying it all out like that it’s quite understandable why this is the case, even though it’s far from rational — as we’re not. One of my favourite reads on the subject is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
The key factor to mitigate this sales objection or anything that requires a change in belief is relatability, which is a critical input to determining relevance. That’s why having role models are so powerful.
It’s far from perfect, but it’s a solid first step to build upon.