 Welcome to the third video of this series, where Michael and I help you to sell service design with confidence. If you have no clue what we're doing here, make sure you check out the first video in this playlist where everything would be cleared up. I reached out to the service design community to get some of the most common sales objections, sales challenges that you run into, and Mike and I are helping you to overcome them. We do that through a bit of a role play, where I am the client and Mike is the service designer, and we're going to do that as well in this video, and I'm still an HR manager at the large insurance company and I'm trying to improve the onboarding experience for new stuff. We're going to do two scenes as well in this video, and we're going to pick up at the point where Mike already sent me a proposal, but I'm not quite sure if I actually want to move forward with this. Are you ready, Mike? Let's do it. All right. There we go. Mike, good talking to you again. I read the proposal you sent over, and I've been over with this with the team. We sat down and we discussed this, but we have the overall feeling that it might be a bit too early to actually start this project. You helped us to uncover that there are some other things missing in our service that we might need to focus on first. I think we would probably need to postpone this for the next few months. Okay. What was it that you uncovered that you think you need to do first? Well, you helped us to realize that we probably need to align with other internal stakeholders first, because if we start fixing our own problem, and the rest will be still doing the same, we won't actually make the change we want to change. We probably have to realign with our peers and colleagues at other departments. Okay. Well, remember, we provide an entire front-to-end solution where we're going to design the entire package for you. That's awesome. That would be a real shame if you weren't able to go ahead with us right now. But yeah, if it's not the right time for you, just let us know. Give me a call and maybe we'll catch up with you in a couple of months and see where you are. Yeah. Thanks for understanding, Mike, because you really helped us. You really helped us to unpack this problem, and if and when. It's not if. I'll definitely call you on. I think three months would be okay when we're ready for the next stage, and I'll be happy to continue this conversation with you then and there. Okay. Let's try that then. All right. Thanks very much, Mike. Cut. For the people who are just tuning into this video, this is not the way you should do it. Yeah. And we'll get into this, but this is actually hard for me to not close you even on these fake calls. Everything in my body is like, what are you saying? Anyway, let's carry on. All right. So we're going to press rewind and redo this scene, but now we had a masterclass from Mike Killen and we're going to see if we can actually turn this conversation around. Three, two, one. Mike, awesome. Thanks for the proposal. I went over it with the team and we actually realized that you help us to uncover a much bigger problem that we need to solve first. So we're going to sort of, I think we're going to park your proposal and then fix the other challenge first and then come back to you in a month or three, six, something like that. Are you okay with that? So let me just ask you a quick question, Mark. So whenever I try to make a decision, my wife taught me this process. She does a pros and cons list. Could you just, we'll just go through this now because I want to make sure that we've put everything in the proposal that you guys need. And if you've uncovered further problems, obviously it's my obligation to help you guys out with that. So if we look at one side, I'm actually going to write this out now, on one side, what would be one of the pros for going ahead with this project now? And we'll try and list out as many as we can and then we'll look at why we shouldn't. And if we come up with the reasons why we shouldn't there are more, I 100% agree. I just think it's easier to kind of logically to write this stuff out sometime. So what would be a pro that we would go ahead with this now? Yeah, I'll have to do this on top of mind. And I'm not sure if I'm actually ready to do this, but I'll try. One of the pros that we discussed in the team would be that we actually would make a head start and we would learn by doing. So we felt that there was a thing that we actually discussed with the team just going forward with this would allow us to learn fast. Yeah, yeah, no worries. Yeah, I get that as well. I think as well, if you remembered from what I learned, getting your new highs up to speed faster and getting them more productive quicker, that would be a pro if we started now. Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. What would be a con? Well, the obvious con is that we're probably not designing something that is sustainable. So we might be doing a quick fix here and there, but we want to invest our money, of course, in something that will still be relevant in the next two or three years. So that's why we're hesitant to actually move forward. Yeah, no, and it's smart. I totally understand how you feel. A lot of our other customers have felt the same way. What we found is that it's often a case of we start on the smaller projects, but as our partnership grows, we tend to work deeper into this. Let's get back to the pros. What would be another pro of going ahead with this right now? Again, we're not forcing you, but what would be a pro? Yeah, well, the obvious pro is like we already discussed the budget and the budget is available. So we could start quickly. We wouldn't have to go through a lot of rounds. So this also relates to the previous con, and is that we were able to move forward fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, excellent. You mentioned that you tend to find with your staff hires, if you have a better onboarding process, then it actually takes time off your plate. Like when it's, you're more productive. Is that right? Yeah, you know, like we discussed in our earlier calls is our goal is to get people up to speed when in the company as fast as possible, get them contributing to whatever they need to do and actually make the experience more fun for them. So yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that was a big part of it. What would be a con to buying then? Yeah, probably I'll get some tough questions from my seniors about why we're continuing with this project, even though we, yeah, haven't started working on actually the bigger challenge. And they might be questioning if we're spending the resources on the right things at this point. If we could help you overcome some of those tough questions and also start working on the larger project at the same time as we start working on this project, would that be useful? I really doubt if that's actually possible, Mike. I would love to, but I doubt if that's possible. And we sort of in the team already feel that it's too early, yeah. So take me through, we've got these pros of starting now. You wanna get a head start right away. We'll actually start learning about these new processes. Would that be true that actually the larger goal, we would actually probably end up doing a better job on the larger goal if we started learning about the processes that we've got to build now? We might, we might. So guys, I'm just going through this. We also have more productive staff. You said the budget's already available and we wanna make sure that your department has a fair share of that so I know how other departments can eat into that. We'd also be able to start today. We've already written out the proposal. So we would be able to start helping you guys today. You'd also be more productive if we were to start today as well. Does that sound about right? Yeah, that sounds about right. The thing is just we can only spend our budget once. We figured that if we spend it now, we won't get the same return on investment if we sort of postpone it for the next three or six months when we have the fundamentals in place. So we would be able to sort of get more value out of this investment. It sounds like the return on investment side. So just to kind of go ahead, was there any other cons to the reason why we shouldn't start now? Hmm, nothing yet comes up on top of my... Yeah, and that's fine, yeah. We've got, so I've got here one, two, three, four, five, six. We've got seven reasons why we should go ahead and only two reasons why we shouldn't. I understand that those are big reasons. I completely understand that. I think what we found in the past though, is that when we do get started on a project like this, the larger projects, and if you'd like, I can send you over. Okay, study, the larger projects that do happen end up going smoother and easier, and we end up being able to find the budget. I wouldn't worry about the budget for a future project. We've already assigned it to this one here. Like I said, we can get started today. It's only a 5% deposit, and we can take that and get started today. So if you wanna go ahead and sign here, we can actually get started on this right now. Cough. Ha ha ha ha. I made it, I tried to make it a bit more, to squeeze you a bit more in the first video, so. All right, let's unpack. Yeah, so, okay, so. We mentioned on the call that I don't believe that any objection, you don't have to learn what the individual objections are. Now that helps massively. When people say, oh, there's a larger project at stake, or oh, we've uncovered a bigger problem, or I'm not sure if my wife is on board with this, or I'm not sure if my manager's on board with this, and I think we're gonna talk about that in another video. There's always a reason to not buy. We want to find the reasons why someone isn't buying, because those are the reasons they want to buy. So we look at that. I don't get it. Right. If someone says, for example, your one, look, we've uncovered a bigger problem. Help me understand why we should go ahead with you now, because I want to buy from you, otherwise I wouldn't be giving you this reason. Help me understand how we can get over this. The hesitation is usually an excuse. It's a bit like when you've got a kid and they get really grumbly and angry and they're in a bad mood, and they start having little temper tantrums and stuff. It's not the thing that's giving them a temper tantrum. It's not the TV or whatever. It's probably because they're hungry. If we can understand why someone is actually annoyed and actually irritated, it's much easier for us to sell to them. I didn't do it so much on this one, but I would have perhaps repeated the close a bit more just saying that we can get started today, which is require a signature or a deposit. But the objection can be turned and the two main closes that I use were first of all, feel, felt, found. So I totally understand how you feel. A lot of our customers have felt the same way. What we found is that when we do start on these smaller projects, the larger projects end up costing less and end up working out easier because we've got kind of a great foundation in place, for example. And the other side was a pros and cons list. I love the pros and cons list comes because you end up selling. I end up saying, well, we've got seven reasons why you should buy and only two why you shouldn't if we could help you overcome those reasons. Now, you played really hard ball there. You were like, yeah, I'm not entirely sure. And I had to work extra, extra hard to kind of push past that, but I wasn't gonna lose that sale just because you're afraid of a few tough questions. So I would have kept going with that line of reasoning. And what do you see usually happening when you do, when you continue this line of reasoning? Because this is like a common dynamic. There's usually multiple people involved in a team over the proposal process. And the guy or girl calling you is often also not just a message, I will talk about that in the next video, but they're not in the position to commit to something. Yeah. So as, and we'll talk about, we will talk about this in the next video. All of these assume, all of these closes, all of these objection turnings, all of these sales tactics, assume you're talking to the decision maker. I call it, I only wanna talk to Batman, ever, ever. I never wanna talk to Robin. I don't care about Robin. I only wanna talk to Batman. And a lot of the time, think about this, right? The manager who does hold the purse strings, right? In my case, it's typically the sales manager or the sales director to deliver sales training. They go, well, they're very busy. I talk to my assistant, talk to the sales manager, talk to whoever, and I'm like, I need to talk to Batman. So when I go, okay, well, I actually really need to talk to Mark, is Mark available? And like I said, we will talk about this in the next video. They say, well, he's in a meeting right now, and I go, okay, look, I really wanna help your company, but I need to have the decision makers on the call. And it actually has to be as clear as that. You say, look, I'm happy to reschedule if he's not available, but I only talk to the decision maker. And that's on you as a business owner, as a service designer, you have to be confident enough to say, I have to talk to the decision maker. That's critical. So let's get into that in the next video, but first I wanna ask the people watching, have you ever been in a similar situation where a client is giving you objections and you're just not getting through? Let us know what are the things, what are the common objections you hear and how do you respond to that? What are the most tough objections that you got and listening to Mike? It doesn't actually matter. You wanna say something, Mike? Yeah, just one last piece. The other question I would ask when they do seem very hesitant is say, okay, well, why are you having a conversation with me right now? Why were you looking to buy? Because if they genuinely weren't interested, if they had said no internally and in their team, they would have just sent you a message or called you up and said, we're not going ahead, thanks very much. That's it. They would have given you the reason. Definitely not, definitely not. You've asked them, why are we having this conversation? Why are we sat here now? Why have you asked to buy from us? Get them to sell back to themselves. But anyway, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, so that's the takeaway. If they just say, no, we're not moving ahead, that's end of the line. If they are starting to give you reasons, that's an opportunity to actually... Yeah, I mean, it depends how far you wanna go into it. Even a no, I won't take face value to start with. But yet predominantly, if you just ask them why you're having this conversation, most people will actually... Most people actually won't get back to you. Your problem is not a no, your problem is people never getting back to you at all. That's typically the rule of thumb, so. All right. Next challenge, we wanna move into the next challenge. And that will be about what we already touched upon over here. How do you make sure that you actually get in front of the right people, the right decision makers? That's what we're going to unpack in this next video. So make sure you click over here and Mike and I will see you there.