[00:01:00] Matt: Hi and welcome to Building Perspective with Matt Riley and Mollie Elkman. 

Mollie: We’re here to bring value to you and your team by exploring all things sales and marketing related, 

Matt: all from different perspectives. Today, our focus discussion of the week is. Back to the basics, how to overcome objections with our guest, Ryan Taft, of Jeff shore consulting.

Mollie: But first, let’s get into our top topic of the week. And of course, our top topic is the same as the top topic globally. we want to talk about the Corona virus because how can we not, right? We have to. 

Matt: Well. Yeah, we have two 

Ryan: for sure. 

Mollie: So, you know, there are lot of news stories about the virus, about things going on.

I think from a business standpoint and a sales and marketing standpoint, there is, there is some that [00:02:00] we can discuss and really talk about, and talk about best practices and how we can be proactive as an industry, not knowing really how much this could potentially affect our industry. 

Matt: Yeah, no, for sure.

I think we know that whether it’s, you know, you’ve got, everybody can have an opinion, whether it’s legitimate, whether it’s, you know, being overhyped. I think it’s a little bit of both. I think it is something that we need to be aware of, whether or not it’s, it’s not like the Spanish flu that came through in the early 19 hundreds, but it is something that’s highly contagious.

And either way, we don’t want it to spread. Right. And so. There’s going to be an impact short term on the economy, whether we like that or not. And whenever that happens, then it goes, it’s going to spill over into our business as a whole. so you know that, that’s just what we have to think about and how, what we need to be doing.

It’s either a, [00:03:00] help combat that or B, how to make sure we don’t put ourselves in a position like that in the future. 

Mollie: Yeah. And I think there’s a way to be aware of what’s going on and not contribute in an alarming way to, the conversation. So. You know, one thing, we all know that interest rates are going down.

This is a really positive thing. So there is a sense of urgency to buy. Now. How can we make it easier for people to gather information, experience what it’s like working with you without necessarily having your call to action to get them to come out to a sales environment more, getting more information, and I’m doing a video call doing video emails, really implementing.

Even more video into your immediate marketing strategy, just so that, you are able to work with people in a way that they are most comfortable with. 

Matt: Yeah, totally. I mean, we are in a business where we want people and they want [00:04:00] to, it’s not just we want and we’re forcing, but we want them to, and they want to eventually come look at the physical house.

Like this is what we do for now is face to face. and I think it will be for quite some time. It’s just a matter of at what extent and at what point in their journey it becomes face to face or eliminate some other face to face. But, you know, there’s some things that we can do to be aware and as far as making sure that people feel comfortable when they do show up.

Making sure that they know, Hey, we don’t have to shake hands. There’s not this awkward phase. You can post signs. Say, you know, handshake free zone. I was actually chatting with, my friend Renee Carlson over at Mattamy homes, and she was saying, they put, they just posted up some, you know, this is a handshake free zone.

and so just to let people know that that’s okay and it’s not awkward and no one’s going to get their feelings hurt if we don’t do the traditional. Introduction, you know, posting hand sanitizer throughout the model home and in the, in more apparent in the sales centers. I think [00:05:00] most sales centers have that kind of stuff anyway, but just making sure it’s easier to see, make sure that people know that we’re being, we’re all being considerate, and I think that in itself is going to go.

A really, really long way. Just showing people that you’re being thoughtful and consider it. 

Mollie: Yeah. And I think being ahead of it is so important. So for example, I had my neighbor came over yesterday and we both kind of waved and said, okay, you know, we’re not going to hug, or we’re not gonna, you know, touch it all because.

You know, whatever. So we, we set that expectation and I think we’re ahead of it. It’s, there’s nothing more awkward than someone reaching out their hand and then saying, Oh no, we don’t, we’re not gonna shake hands. So you don’t want to put the buyer in an awkward position on their end. So by setting the tone of, you know, we respect everyone’s, you know, health and safety, and we’re, we’re not gonna shake hands, I think makes it not awkward.

Whereas, You know, kind of handling each situation one at a time [00:06:00] almost creates an opportunity for a disconnect. So, I totally agree. I love the idea of having a very friendly sign or just letting your team know immediately just, you know, set the tone of waving and saying, hi, I’m not gonna shake your hand, but, we’re so happier here.

That kind of thing. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. so just being aware, being thoughtful, and I think that goes a long way. Now, Mollie, you were alluding to earlier in the earlier in the conversation of, from a marketing perspective, so we just talked about the in-person side of it, but from a marketing perspective, we want to address it, but a DIR, but.

Kind of in a roundabout way, we’re not going to come out and say in my, the, I should say, in my opinion, if it were me, I wouldn’t come out and say, avoid the Corona virus, view our homes online. I would just make sure that I’m resurfacing all of that content that I have, Matterport, tours, video tours, virtual tours, whatever you know, anything and everything [00:07:00] video related that I have, I would be making sure I’m repurposing that content.

And just putting it out there, right? So where people can engage or reengage with you along 

Mollie: the way. Absolutely. People want information and we want to make it as easy for them to get as much of the information that they can possibly get before they come out and meet face to face. So, we do expect traffic numbers to go down.

That means that your walking traffic is. Is very, very qualified. anyone who’s walking in the door is, is there and is a serious buyer even more so than before. 

Ryan: But we also, 

Mollie: we don’t want the industry to be alarmed when those numbers go down, just because the people who are, you’re engaging in conversation digitally are also still great prospects.

Matt: Absolutely. And unlike what you just said, walk into, we do expect walk in traffic to be down and it’s going to be down for a period of time. We don’t [00:08:00] know if that’s two weeks or six weeks or eight weeks, but it will be down, simply because of the situation. Now for me. I personally never liked to use my walkin traffic is a leading indicator of interest level.

I like to use my web traffic and Google analytics to help figure that out. I did that as a builder. I still recommend we, that’s how we look at it with our builder partners now. but that’s, I, I’m looking at online activity as my leading indicator of. If there’s interest level or not. Right. So whether or not they’re making it physically into your houses, that is going to take a dip, but we want to measure the online activity and that we actually may even see a bit of an increase in that because if people are home more, they’re going to be on, they’re going to be online now.

I think that there’s a couple things to consider. One, the sky’s not falling. This is a blip on the radar and just like anything else as a blip on the radar, or it can be elections or blips on the [00:09:00] radar, even in really good markets, presidential elections cause some level of uncertainty. We did it in 2016 we’re going to do it again in 2020.

Shockingly enough, we do it every four years. and. Those are always blips on the radar no matter what because it just causes some level of uncertainty. you know, you’re also used to seeing a super local level of uncertainty or pauses in your market on the East coast. I’m used to seeing that look like our big hurricane that comes through and causes damage.

that is a blip on the radar. You could get a ton of snow and an area that doesn’t get. Much snow or that much snow, or it could come in a weird time of the year and that can absolutely throw you off. We’ve got builders over the past few years that while in a great market, they had really bad winters and it pushed the start of their spring selling season further into the year because people weren’t as active.

And so we have to think about that. If it is a blip on the radar, the [00:10:00] the sky’s not falling. However. If you’ve been listening to our other podcasts and read some of our other blogs, we’ve been talking about something called GMs good markets syndrome, and if you’ve been afflicted by good markets syndrome, you may feel.

A little bit more of the bump than someone who hasn’t. And what I mean by that is, are your, you know, are your processes right? Or, you know, are your strategies right? Is your marketing strategy and sales strategies right? Are you, do you have the right partners? Are you going in the right direction? and if you’ve been going, Oh, we don’t really need to.

Focus on that right now, because will, we’re still selling houses, we just don’t need to do it. Well, that’s what those things are for because it helps take some of that uncertainty or levels out the bell curve. when you have the right processes, procedures, strategies, partners, and team members all in 

Ryan: place.

[00:11:00] Mollie: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I do think, I have a great deal of respect for the builders who I, and I’ve read some of their internal emails to their teams, some bigger builders, and they are approaching things with an abundance of caution. And that’s how they’re wording it. And I, I do have a lot of respect for that because I think.

Ryan: You 

Mollie: know, people on your team feel differently about it. Some people have people who are high risk, who they live with. even, you know, I know for me, I’m, I’m not concerned about me personally, but I am concerned about, other people in my life who I love, who are, are high risk. So, I think just, you know, having like a natural respect for the fact that not everyone.

Is going to respond the same way you do and that that’s okay. You know, some of the things that I’ve been seeing on social media are just so insensitive to other people. Like, Oh, everyone’s freaking out. This is so ridiculous, [00:12:00] and. You know, that is for you as a human being for someone else, this is a different experience because of X, Y, and Z that you don’t know.

So I think just overall having like a respect for your neighbor and other people and knowing that we are all going to deal with the unknown in different ways. And, I do, I do like this mentality of an abundance of caution just because, Yeah. I think that, I think that that’s how we should 

Ryan: approach it.

Matt: Yeah, no, I agree. And with that in mind, I think this is a perfect opportunity to jump into our focus discussion of the week and, and talk about getting back to the basics and, what better basics from a sales perspective than jumping in and talking about. How to overcome objections. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a quick break, and then when we come back.

We’re going to have and dive into our focus discussion of the [00:13:00] week. Stay tuned.

all right, and we are back and we are going to dive into our focus discussion of the week this week. Back to the basics, how to overcome objections. And we have our special guest with us, Ryan Taft of shore consulting. Ryan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on. 

Ryan: I appreciate, the invite.

Always fun to connect with you. 

Matt: Absolutely. I know we, we kinda were playing pen pal back and forth trying to get this scheduled, but I was determined to make sure that, we had you on the show because I know that this is a topic that is near and dear to our hearts when it comes to overcoming objections.

So you have tons and tons of great info to bring and, and [00:14:00] knowledge and, really excited to have you on so well. But before we dive in and just in case. Somebody is living under a rock and they’ve never heard of you, or maybe possibly shore consulting. Why don’t you just kind of share a little bit about you, you’re a little bit of your history, kind of, maybe you’re the comic, origin story and, and, and, and share share with some or 

Ryan: listeners.

Sure. I was born a small, a small child and no, I, you know. I have an interesting background that brought me to, the industry of homebuilding and, really training. And I could sum it up by really describing my family. my father was an actor so that, you know, leads to being in front of people. My mother was a full fledged alcoholic, which led to the desire to want to figure out why people do what they do.

And, my aunt, who was a big influence in my life was a realtor whose office was right next door to my elementary school that I would. Sit at right after class for several [00:15:00] hours in her office. So when you add all those up, this is what happens in my dad is not Martin short. For those of you who’ve seen my picture, just for the record.

Matt: Well, I’ve been, you are predestined to be a sales trainer 

Ryan: pretty much. 

Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s amazing. And I, I do, I, I bet I, obviously we’re connected on social and I see, I actually, you just posted the other day, the, . The movie trailer of the movie that your dad was in, right. What was the, what was the title of that film?

Ryan: It was the B horror flick called, it’s alive. And he actually had three roles in that movie because they didn’t, couldn’t afford to hire more people, so he literally wore a wig and one scene and yeah, it’s pretty funny. 

Matt: That’s amazing. That’s awesome. 

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. Good times. 

Matt: All right. Well tell. So you’re a sales trainer, you work with shore consulting, Jeff and the whole crew over there, and you guys do such an 

Ryan: amazing job.

Matt: and so tell, share a little bit about, you know, what you guys focus on and, and what your, you know, how you help home builders across [00:16:00] the country. 

Ryan: Well, it’s really interesting cause this dates back quite a ways. You know, I was the national sales trainer for a major home builder, which Jeff shore was actually the national director of sales for that same company.

And we, we didn’t, we didn’t. Actually overlap our time there. But that was where our roots came from and he and I think very much alike, and we actually competed against each other at a point, and it just made sense that we were really singing the same song and had the same philosophy. And the philosophy is rooted in a couple of thoughts.

One predominantly is that sales is a noble profession. And I got to tell you, you know how many books I have sitting on my bookshelf of. Like manipulation, technique and just gross Snus. I mean, there’s, there’s a book, I won’t mention the title, but it literally says as it’s introducing a technique, it says in the, in, in the description, this technique is based off the assumption that your customers an idiot.

[00:17:00] Oh yeah. It’s terrible. And so when you see some of the things, the injustices that have been done. Not just as salespeople, but from a sales training perspective, this really lights our fire to want to fix a lot of that because we believe sales is a noble profession. So we actually have the ethics and you know, believe in doing the right thing by the customer.

So that that’s a, that’s a big piece of what drives the DNA of shore consulting. 

Matt: Well, that’s unbelievable. Well, I’ll share my, I have one quick little story similar to that. It’s not a book. So, I got my career start in new home sales with a company that was very similar to the one you started off with.

my company is called CP Morgan out of Indianapolis, and our motto was more square feet, less money, and very much a similar business model. And, so that is the, the tie in. And so, not with this company, a different company. We had a sales trainer come in and. Off the record, we’ll talk about it. I’m sure you might know this person actually.

You’ve heard of this person, but in a sales training, they said, they were [00:18:00] reading an article on the plane to where they were given the training and it was talking about the percentage of renters. So essentially. Teenage pregnancy to renters and the the, the, the stat was if you’re a renter though, it was X number of percent higher chance that your teenage daughter would get pregnant as a teenager.

And so literally the suggestion was you should ask your customer if they have a daughter. And if they do, then they really need to be a homeowner because the odds will go greatly reduced that they won’t get. Knocked up pre-marriage, 

Ryan: in the words of dr evil 

Matt: or RI. 

Ryan: I mean, that’s crazy. 

Matt: I literally was like, I cannot ever, I was like, I cannot believe the words that just came out of that person’s mouth.

Ryan: Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes you look at some trainings, and this is one of the things I love about what we do at shore is you look at. A lot of the trainings that [00:19:00] have come and gone over the years, and you almost imagine the, the, the person coming up with this technique or this, this way of doing things that is like a mad scientist.

Oh, this is going to be so new and unique, but it’s not necessarily related to the real world. And, and then it’s forced upon people to say, this is how you should do it. But it feels so unnatural. When, when Jeff and I started chatting, our philosophies were so aligned that says, you know, if you look in the real world.

And you have a real conversation with someone you actually like and care about. Two things come out of that conversation and this is the basis for what we teach. One is curiosity, like you actually want to know about people you care about. You don’t have to practice that. You don’t have to script it out.

You don’t have to practice in front of a mirror. You are authentically curious with that person. and secondly is you have authentic empathy with that person. So you, so you get the story because you want to know it. And then you bond more to the person telling it because you [00:20:00] care about them. And that’s why you’ll hear me say often in sessions, the two greatest skills are curiosity and empathy.

It’s not what closing line do you have? Or what’s the silver bullet? Objection, strategy. Everything has to be rooted in those two basic, you know, characteristics. And if you’ve got those, then authentic conversation happens. And I’ve got to tell you, Matt. Customers want authenticity more than anything else right now that I think there, can I say this, their BS radar is so attuned.

That when they hear cheesy sales lines that had been rehearsed over and over, I just, they just kinda, it’s no wonder they want to jump the trap fence and run away. You know what I mean? 

Matt: Yeah. They, they want to ha, people today want to have a conversation with another human being that’s not trying to jam something down their throat that they don’t need, want, or can afford.

And I think the nail on the head, no, no, go ahead. 

Ryan: Well, I was just going to say, if you’re, if you, you mentioned my Instagram a couple minutes ago, you probably saw a post I put up a while ago, which speaks directly to what you’re saying. It [00:21:00] says, customers are tired of salespeople solving problems that are not their actual problems.

Matt: Yeah. Absolutely no question. And I like to, one of the a saying, I don’t know where I got it, so I’m going to just claim it. but, but it’s, I like to say the definition of a sale is the transfer of emotion from one person to the next. And. When, if it’s, if it’s just a canned , uncaring interaction, it is impossible to transfer the amount of positive emotion from you, the salesperson, with the home building company to your potential customer.

Because like you said, their BS meter is so attuned right now over, you know, because they have more, they have more information at their fingertips than. Typically the salesperson does. Yeah. Right. They’re going to walk in there knowing more and they are going to be able to sniff anything out that may not be [00:22:00] accurate or, you know.

True. So I, I totally agree with 

Ryan: what you said so, well, you even hear lines where like, so for example, you know, you and I know each other pretty well, you know, we’ll have a lunch, a coffee, whatever the case is. Could you imagine if we’re sending down a coffee and I’m going to get up and go get a refill and I look over to you and I say you’d love another refill.

Wouldn’t you agree? 

Matt: Why? Yes, Ryan, 

Ryan: you’d be like, you’re a weirdo. We are never having coffee again. So for the listeners, write this down. This is very important. Don’t be a weirdo. There 

Matt: you go. Step number one of the sales process. Don’t be a weirdo. 

Ryan: I say that very often, actually. 

Matt: Yeah. Well, you should. You should.

Oh, that’s, that’s, that’s amazing. I love it. Okay, so we’re talking about today how to overcome objections. And I, when we were talking about what we were going to talk about, 

You know, I, I put in there, back to the basics because to me, one of the things that’s really easy to lose sight on [00:23:00] are the basics.

And, you know, I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago. We just finished, we did a podcast on it. It was w I call it GMs good market syndrome. And because of the old saying, or the old analogy of, you know, sales solves everything. There are no problems when things are being sold. A lot of things. Everything gets swept under the rug and we don’t realize that we’re losing sight and losing track of some of the most important skillsets simply because we’re in a good market and we don’t have to pay attention to them.

So. I love the tall talk about how we want to focus on the basics and going about going in, thinking through. You think about a professional athlete. I’m an old baseball guy, so I use baseball analogies all the time. There is a reason why. Professional baseball players hit off a tee on a daily basis, right?

I mean, when you think about when you’re five years old, four years old, and you’re going to go play. If you go, if you played tee ball or you know, that’s a baseball that young was tee ball, [00:24:00] they put it up on a tee and serves it up for you to try to hit and. As you started out, you didn’t hit the ball, you’ve knocked the tee out from underneath of the ball and the ball just fell down and rolled off.

And it took practice and practice and practice to where you could hit the ball cleanly off the tee. And that is a skill that was learned over a long period of time and actually to do it really, really well and hit it really cleanly, it’s a really difficult skill. And so as then as people move on in a professional professional sports and the MLB, they go back to the basics and stay focused on the right mechanics that allow them to get to where they are.

and, and I think that as PR, as sales professionals, as professionals in general, we can easily lose sight of. Those are the basics. And so that’s what, for me, it was all about back to the basics. How do we overcome objections? So I know objections are something that are near and dear to your heart. so let’s, let’s [00:25:00] start off by first talking about what objections are.

Ryan: Well, this is a really great question and I love what you said about good markets. You know, I’m in sales solves all. I think sales often actually creates. Problems. And I’ll give you an example of this and then I’ll come back to the question. I had a, I was doing a training pretty recently, and I had a guy come up to me on the break and I don’t know, I can kind of guess where he was going with this, but it was sort of out of left field.

He walks up and he says, Hey man, how you doing? I said, I’m good, I’m good. How’s things going? And he says, I just want to let you know I made 10 sales last week, and that was it. That was like his big thing. And I read between the lines that basically was like, I don’t really need training. That’s kind of what I, how I.

Took that, and I see this kind of often, I’ve had this happen a few times where somebody thinks that their results is a, is a good metric of their skillset. And you know, mind you, I’m talking to somebody that’s in Southern California and one of the hottest markets in one of the hottest communities with some of the best [00:26:00] pricing, I mean, with competitors that are not really stepping it up, if you will.

And I just think a good market often makes us lazy because we tend to look at the results and we think, Oh, I’m, I’m great, I’m good. So I tend to tell people, you need to be results. You need to be results blind. Forget about how many sales you’re making. Stay focused on those basics. Like you’re talking about the T.

I don’t care how many sales you’ve made, so that’s. Crucial. All right. So yeah, and to get that out, cause I just agree with what you said so much. and then your question again one more time. I’m sorry, I just had to say that. 

Matt: No, I love it. So first it’s kind of like squirrel, rabbit hole. I said we were going to do it.

right. No. So before we dive into objections, like what are they like, what do they actually mean? Because sometimes people just, they really confuse objections to thinking someone actually doesn’t want to buy something. 

Ryan: Yeah. In fact, I think that, there’s, the mindset game here is really at play.

And so I, if you get an objection, you can tell what [00:27:00] your mindset is based off of your, physical response to that objection. So when I watch a video shop, for example, I actually watch it with the volume off. Just to see what the physical reactions are in the conversation, because you might think you’re doing a great job handling objections, but if you’re rolling your eyes when they say, Oh, power lines, and you go, well, look.

Right there, you’re done because you just got defensive. So the mindset cannot be that objections are a bad thing or I’m going to lose the sale, or Oh, this means they don’t like it. The mindset has to be that objections are great. I mean, they’re healthy. These are, these are arguably buying signals because why would they be talking to you about this?

If it wasn’t in play. I’ll give you kind of a, an example of this, and I throw this out to students all the time. I’ll ask them, have you ever had a customer where everything was perfect, right? Like they, they, they, the home you showed them is perfect, not one objection. They love the [00:28:00] exterior options. In fact, they, they like all of them.

they love. The price point is perfect. They didn’t come in and say, I want 50,000 and none of that just, Oh, it’s all good. It’s all good. It’s all good. And I ask them, I say, if you get somebody who’s got no objections all the way through the whole thing, what are you thinking about this person? And you know what?

I get back most of the time, man, is they’ll say it’s a shopper. It’s gotta be a shopper. It’s gotta be because shoppers never have real objections. You know what I mean? It’s it. It’s either a shopper or a cancellation waiting to happen, and anyone who’s been in this industry or in any professional sales for awhile recognizes that there is no such thing as perfect, but we’re not after.

Perfect. We’re after best. And so if anybody doubts this, just go watch an episode of house hunters, right? House hunters. It always starts off the same as like, you know, John and Gina currently live in a two bedroom apartment and they’re six kids in them are feeling a little outgrown in the space and, they need to do a little, upgrading of their life, you know, and then it says the [00:29:00] wishlist, they want an eight bedroom home on the Lake and Beverly Hills and their price points $140,000.

Right? And then it’s like, he’s an Uber driver and she sells quilts on the side and you’re like, wait a minute. What is going on. But nonetheless, if you watch the show, the show is not about buying a home. The show is about compromise. And that’s where objections live is in that gap between what they, what the ideal is and what you’re offering them.

And here’s the clue is the mindset has to be, when I get an objection, first off, this is a good thing. This tells me they’re a real buyer. It tells me that they’re trying to work it through. And there’s a good distinction here, and the distinction is, is the objection a deal killer? Or is it a deal? Pauser and if you can figure those two things out, that’s going to give you the confidence to carry through that conversation.

Well, how do you know the difference. Well, if you’ve ever been sitting there and someone walks in and says, Hey, do you, do you guys have any homes that don’t have slope lots? And you say, as a matter of fact, know that all the remaining homes have slope lots and they go, okay, thanks, [00:30:00] bye. And they get in their car and speed off the out of the driveway.

That’s a deal killer. They leave. But if they go, Oh, no, homes next to slow plots, or they’re all by slope lots. Oh my gosh, I just, Oh, that’s really too bad. I can’t go. What are they doing? They’re still, they’re still standing in front of you. Which means they’re willing to talk it through. So that’s the mindset is this is a good thing.

It’s a real buyer. There’s not a real buyer that doesn’t have an objection because there’s no such thing as perfect. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things we used to talk about often was, was this an objection or was this the, you know, the deal killer, meaning that, you know, the injection is, I don’t know if this, this room size is going to work.

I’m not quite sure the deal killer would be, I can’t purchase this home physically until my other one is sold and close in. My current home’s not even on the market. Yeah, right. Like, yeah, those are, those are immovable objects, right? Though that is not an objection. That is a deal killer. Something has to happen in [00:31:00] order for this new thing to be able to come to fruition, and I love it.

I think. I have you. You actually don’t, you haven’t sold anything until you’ve come across some objections, because if you haven’t come across some objections, you’ve just been doing a presentation. 

Ryan: 100% right? 100% right? Yup. Yeah, and I think this is the skill, and I think this is arguably one of the skills that will make a huge difference as.

Markets are improving and competition heats up because buyers will throw out objections just to kind of figure out which is the better offering. And, and they’re going to be more vocal about them and they should be. But it means we’ve got to make sure we’re open to receiving those objections. So that mindset piece is huge.

if I can, one of the mindsets that I deal with quite a bit, and this is usually with the veterans, cause there’s a lot of stuff that we teach. That really challenges, some of the old school training techniques. And I’m happy about that by the way. And one of them came up just the other day, I was in a class [00:32:00] and I said, you know, when we look at, objections, there’s this old school philosophy that says, you should not fish for objections.

And I, you know, I’ll ask a group of people, how many of you heard that before? And it’s usually everyone, but maybe the millennials and. You know the, the, the, the idea there was you don’t want to create an objection that doesn’t exist. But here’s the thing, I always tell people, I go, listen. If you ask somebody like, Hey, how are you feeling about this whole thing?

Like if your spider senses, as I call them, start tingling, and I don’t know if you do this, but like in my mind I’m rating what, what, what’s the percentage chance that this is gonna going to cancel? Like is it a 25% chance? Is it a 10% are we at a 90 where are we at? 

Matt: Right. 

Ryan: Right. And so if my spider senses start tingling, like, Hey, I’m feeling like they just went quiet.

Like they just said, yeah, we love the home. And then all of a sudden they stop talking. I’m going to just do a little pulse check, and this is where veterans freak out a little bit. I’ll ask, Hey, how are you guys feeling about all this anyways and what the veteran thinks [00:33:00] is, Oh my God, you’re fishing for objections, and here’s my belief.

My belief is you not knowing what the objection is, does not make it go away. It just makes you ignorant of the objection. And this is what we ended up following up with people for months after months and they go in the witness protection program. We never know what happened. 

Matt: Oh my gosh, I couldn’t agree more and I totally, I couldn’t agree more with that.

We all used to say that you want to bring up the objections because like you said, it’s not going away. There’s still going to have it. Now the difference is if you don’t bring it up, bring it to the forefront and talk about it with them, then you’re not going to have a voice in that conversation because when they go home, they’re going to still have the same concern and the same objection.

But if you bring it to the forefront. With you there, you at least now have the ability to talk it through with them 

Ryan: and then collaborate versus control. Totally. Totally 

Matt: agree. That’s good. Now, you mentioned something earlier, you, you briefly, and you mentioned watching video shops [00:34:00] on silent one. I’ve never watched them on silent.

I think that’s brilliant. I’ll have to do that. Sometime. you know, cause who doesn’t love watching video shows? Secret 

Ryan: show. It’s, it’s, they do it on an airplane often enough. You’re gonna get some weird looks. 

Matt: Yeah. Right. Oh, I can only imagine with, Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah. like what is, you’re going to get reported to the air Marshall or something really 

Ryan: quickly.

The audience right now is like, didn’t he just say a minute ago? Don’t be a weirdo. Like what, what is this 

Matt: totally going down the weirdo path? 

Ryan: But 

Matt: so do you feel like video shops are a really important tool for a sales team? Sales person, sales manager? 

Ryan: Yeah, I do. And I just had this conversation with another sales leader yesterday on a coaching call.

I did. And they said, well, we don’t, we don’t really do them because we don’t find them very effective. And I believe that a video shop gun, well, it gives you a snapshot and people say, well, I knew I was being shopped and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I, you know, at the end of the day. if you are looking at even the minute [00:35:00] reactions and responses and communication techniques of your sales person as they engage with this buyer, it’s very telling.

I mean, even if they know it’s a shopper, I mean, you know, maybe they figure it out 10 minutes in, 20 minutes in whatever, but I want to see how they’re greeting them. I want to see, you know. Or do they sound like every other sales person in the world? You know, because my belief is that a video shop gives you insights that you wouldn’t have known.

You’ve, you’ve spoken on many stages before. You know how you watch yourself? You think you killed it on stage, and you watch your own video and you’re like, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe I said the word excellent 17 times in five minutes. Like I need to shut up. Right? So we have this superiority bias that thinks we think we’re better at things than we.

Than we actually are. And so it’s actually a humble spirit that allows a video shop to speak to you to say, Oh, here’s where I need to get, you know, improve. Most people get defensive and to salespeople’s credit, part of the reason why is because a lot of managers out there have [00:36:00] used this as a punishment tool versus a coaching tool.

And that, that’s something I, I constantly harp on is, you know, if you’re going to do video shops. Take the time to put together a coaching plan for performance improvement. Not for, well, you suck, and here’s proof. 

Matt: I totally agree. And so the other reason I think, to echo, you echo what you’re saying really, but from a video shop, you T I take this back to, you know, if, if there’s a crime that happens and they have witnesses and their interview, the police interviewing witnesses, and the reason they have to ask.

14 different people that were all there, and 14 different people are going to have a different version of what happened, even though they all were standing there at the same time. And so with a, with a shop as a salesperson, we play through in the head, in our head after the buyer leaves, assuming that we didn’t.

Sell them the hell they didn’t buy the home that day. while they were there, we in our head play [00:37:00] through what we did, what we covered, how we’ve covered may have done something differently if, if we had earned the right to ask for the sale at that point, because I think that’s a key point. You have to earn the right to ask them to purchase.

But we play it through in her head a little differently. And what I think was great about the video shops is it really allows that salesperson to see how it actually went down. A quick story. I, so I had a salesperson one time and, one of the tool, one of the things that we did when we, when we shop was.

After they got shopped and we got the shot back and we had some, allowed the opportunity for some followup to happen or attempt to happen. we would send them the link to the video and a score sheet. And we said, you know, I want you to watch this and you know, and then before we come together, and then we’re going to watch it together.

And, and one of the things that salesperson said right out of the gate was, Oh my gosh, I know who this customer is. I actually thought they were a customer. And. I mean, I, they just wouldn’t buy. I thought I was had them, they weren’t going to buy, [00:38:00] they wouldn’t buy no matter how many times I went down that path and I was like, okay, great.

Well, let’s talk about it when we get together. Watched it together. The salesperson didn’t even ask for the sale and she, her jaw hit the floor. She was like, I cannot be in my head. I thought I asked for that sale at least four times and I never once directly asked them to to move forward with the purchase agreement.

And I think that that’s really what is a tool, not a gotcha tool, but it’s a self learning tool is impactful. And I can remember the first time I ever was video shop and it was one of the most impactful things that has ever happened to me and my sales career. 

Ryan: yeah, I mean, I, I can’t tell you how many people think they ask for the sale, but they actually are saying things like, so, do you have any more questions.

Thinking that’s asking for the sale. I literally have had this conversation like, well, well that’s actually, that’s a, that’s a presentation under, that’s not a close. So we need to, and you just uncover a lot. So I, I, [00:39:00] I, I’m a fan. I know that some people own, I’m a, I’m a fan because it, look, if professional sports teams are gonna use game film, then I believe we should too.

Matt: I totally agree. Okay. So we’ve talked about a lot of things actually around the going down the path of what objections are and are they good? And we’ve talked about how they’re buying signals, but what are some actual steps, like when we talk about how to overcome objections, what are some tips? What are some steps that you have that you teach, that can, that can help people overcome those objections?

Well, you 

Ryan: know, I, I have a friend of mine, who has this phrase, he says, half of being smart is knowing what you’re dumb at, which again, is why video shops are important. But, what I, what I realized in overcoming objections just through my own, failure and watching other people and seeing other people do this, and frankly, some teaching, part of the technique is knowing what not to do.

So I have to start there because when you look at. [00:40:00] Techniques that have been taught, like let’s just use the, we want, we need to think about it, right? That the, the, the, the classic, just, ah, not that one. We need to think about it. The training on that in the past has been. Well, what’s there to think about?

And the, the problem is I’d have never, ever found anyone in the history of sales who said, yeah, I landed that question. And the customer looked back at me and said, Oh, well now that you put it that way, let me purchase. No, it starts a fight. It starts a fight because there’s a silent word at the end of it that says, dummy.

What would sort of think about dot, dot, dot. Dummy. You know, you can pick this up in your marriage as well. By the way, if you’re listening to this and you’re married. And your spouse comes home with a problem and starts giving you some stuff and you go into solve mode and you go, why don’t you just tell him this, this, and this, and there’s a dummy at the end of it?

I’m 

Matt: raising my hand. That’s me too many times. Like, what do I need to talk about? I don’t understand. 

Ryan: Yeah. And so the first thing to remember is, is be slow to solve. Because my experience is that when you get an objection, [00:41:00] you usually get a what? Objection. Not a why. Objection. And I’ll give you an example of this.

I was in Houston working with some folks in the objection popped up about power lines and it was, ah, not power lines in the salesperson went into solve mode really fast, and he said, Oh, well listen. That cell phone that’s in your pocket right now, that cell phone emits more radiation than those cell than these towers do.

And so you know, you don’t have much to worry about and the person looks back and goes, wait a minute, I have to worry about radiation from these. I just think they’re ugly. And that’s an example where we jumped too quick. And this is why this turned into a don’t fish for objections. It’s not, don’t, don’t fish for objections.

Just don’t solve them too quickly because you probably don’t have the real why behind the what. So the first two things that has to happen when you get an objection, first off, don’t get defensive because if you get defensive, you validate it. Like, if you take a half step back and you get in a fight stance, or you do a little hip pop and roll your [00:42:00] eyes, which I call the teenage eye-roll, you’re, you’re validating this and you’re starting a fight.

So you just gotta be like, Oh yeah, I’ve heard that. And then you gotta you gotta get them talking. This is the first thing is ask them. Okay? So when you, when you, when you say that you don’t like the power lines, I absolutely heard it before. Can you. You know, expand on, what specifically is it that you’re, that you’re not liking?

Because it could be that they don’t like the look of it. Like we just said a minute ago. Maybe they are concerned about health concerns. Maybe they think it’s going to affect property value. There’s a lot of different whys behind the what of, I don’t like power lines. So the first step is you gotta get them talking, get them to talk it out.

And once you get, you know, something like, well, I just, I just think they’re ugly. What you want to do is to get the why behind the what is I love future pacing people into the objection and ask them what the struggle they imagine they’d be having. So for example, I say, all right, let’s just fast forward and say, this is the home.

This is the home site. This is the community you live here. It’s two years later. [00:43:00] What are you seeing as the biggest struggle you’d be having with those power lines if you lived here. And this is great because they literally transport themselves into the future and tell you what the problem is, what, and you usually get a story.

So what I’m looking for on this is not just what it is, but what’s the story behind it? So those are the first two things that have to happen. And this is where you’re going to get things like. And this, by the way, is true when you’re asking customers why they’re moving to I’m renting is not, that’s not a why.

That’s a what a, an objection of the secondary bedrooms. Too small. That’s a what, that’s not a why. Like I need to, I need to understand why is that a problem? What do they imagine in going wrong? Is that, is that making sense? Absolutely. Yeah. I love 

Matt: one of the things that I love, I’m gonna, I’m gonna that I’ve heard you say before.

and it. I might get the exact verbiage wrong, but it’s along these lines. When someone says something, it’s interesting. 

Ryan: Tell me more. Yes. Yeah. [00:44:00] Well, we, again, this, this is the idea of not being the one who is solving the problem is getting more detail from them. It’s kind of a, a customer service approach to understanding, and it’s a great communication technique.

Now, what I will tell you is that when you say, tell me more. you gotta you gotta make sure you word that right, because you don’t want to just keep saying that over and over and over. Every time something comes up, you’ll sound a little bit like one of those dolls with the string that you pulled, that it gets stuck on the same phrase.

Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. Like, you don’t want to do that 

Matt: weirdo alert. 

Ryan: Yeah. Weirdo. There it is. So things like, and here’s a way to really get into the, tell me more is, when you look at someone who is a master communicator. One of the things that that person does is they listen with the intent to find the words or word that they don’t know the other person’s definition of.

So I do this example in my seminars where, you know, you know me, I’m five foot four, I weigh 140 pounds, right? I’ll find the tallest person in the [00:45:00] room, and the taller, the better. If they’re six foot eight fantastic. My buddy Andrew in Las Vegas, he’s like six eight, six nine. And I’ll bring them up to the front of the room and have them stand next to me.

And I’ll say, if I say to you, this space feels a little small, and he says, this space feels a little small. Do you get the sense we might have different interpretations of the word small? And of course the answer is yes. So when they say I’m renting, or when they say, Oh, I’m struggling with the idea of this or that, we’re downsizing, there’s not, I don’t even know what the, I’ve been in this industry 20 years.

I don’t know what that means. You ask a hundred people, they get a hundred different definitions. So tell me more about what you mean when you say downsize or what do you imagine struggling with when you downsize? Like these are the deeper curiosity questions. Does that make, I’m just making sure that we don’t just repeat.

Tell me more. Tell me more. 

Matt: No, absolutely. Because downsizing, you may be downsizing from 6,000 square feet to 4,000 square feet. 

Ryan: I’ve had people downsize from 3,500 up to 4,000 

Matt: right. [00:46:00] And the other thing about downsizing, side note, squirrel is nobody ever wants to downsize right there because they don’t ever want to actually get rid of their stuff.

Ryan: Of course. 

Matt: So yeah, nobody actually ever downsizes. 

Ryan: Yeah. So those are the first two things that have to, you have to get them talking. And then in that, as they’re talking, you have to get that why behind the what. So you get the real objection, the emotional one. And I’ll tell you, usually how I know I’ve gotten it is they start telling me a story.

It’s either a story of something that they’ve experienced that they think is going to repeat or it’s a story they made up in their head about what they think is going to happen. So I had one where, it was a slope lot and as opposed to try and, you know, fix it somehow and tell them all the things that would, that they could do or how it wasn’t going to be a big deal.

We dove in and said, well, when you think about living with a slope lot, what are you imagining going wrong? If you lived here? Like what would be the struggle? And the lady says, Oh, well, you see that road up at the top of the Hill here over the slope plot? [00:47:00] We said, yeah. She goes, well, I just, I’m certain that some 16 year old kid is going to get a hold of his mom’s liquor cabinet drink, get in the car, crash through that rail right there and land on our home.

And you know, in the world of psychology, this is called catastrophizing, where we just spin it out of control. But here’s the thing. Whatever they believe to be true is true for them and you, you can’t judge it. You just have to look at it and say, okay, fair enough that I, if that happened, I’d be concerned too.

So now you understand what’s really going on and now you can approach the emotional why and not just the what. Otherwise you, you seem insensitive. Just like we wouldn’t our marriage doing the same thing. Oh 

Matt: yeah, absolutely. 

Ryan: Yeah. This is a question. Don’t come to the marriage podcast. It’s kind of, I know, 

Matt: I’m like going through flashbacks of my own, what conversations with 

Ryan: my wife like, Oh my God.

Yeah, no, don’t do it, man. I’m going to sort of make you feel great and terrible at the same time. now, now, once you get that, why, this is where the, the big piece of the puzzle comes in. Now you, now he met you. You understand. The emotional [00:48:00] piece and the why. Now you can start to apply technique to collaborate on how to solve those issues, not control.

You see, I believe that as a salesperson, regardless of how great your relationship is with your customer, when they walk in and maybe yours as what we call coffee worthy as possible, they like you. Maybe they even trust you a little bit. But here’s the thing. If you wear a name tag or as some like to say a name badge.

That name tag doesn’t have your name on it to the customer. That name tag actually says, I get paid when you buy. And so your, your solutions have a little bit of skepticism attached to them from the customer, which is why I’m not a fan of the, I know how you feel. Others have felt this. I don’t know how they feel.

I’ve never lived with a slope lot. There’s a lack of credibility there. So one of the techniques that I really love is under this. Under the umbrella of collaboration. You see, we, we tend to think that we need to have all the answers. And the reality [00:49:00] is not only do you not have all the answers, but you don’t need to, sometimes you don’t even need to overcome them.

They just are what they are. But I want to share one specifically that you can, once you get this why behind the what, that really, is such a great one. And this is something that happened with my wife and I as we were looking to purchase our last vehicle. So I’m really cheap when it comes to cars.

Anyone who’s in my sessions knows this. I talk about how much I just not a fan of spending money. and it nonetheless, we needed to go buy a car. So we’re driving to the pre owned certified BMW dealership, and we, as we’re pulling onto the lot, my wife Melissa looks at me and she says, no cream colored seats.

And I’m like, okay, whatever. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. We walk in into the showroom and we were both fairly independent. and so she goes off one direction. I go off looking at another car across the showroom floor, but I love watching my wife in these environments. I learned so much about communication and sales from her.

She’s a life coach and she’s just, she’s [00:50:00] amazing. So I, I’m, I’m watching her and she hones in on this 2011, five, 28 eyes is kind of a gun metal, gray color. It was really, really pretty. And she leans into the passenger side. No, I’m all the way across on the other side of the dealership, and there’s other people in there.

She leans into the window, leans back out and yells across the dealership to me. She goes, Oh, it’s perfect, but it has cream colored seats. And I’m like, don’t be a weirdo. Like this is the first thing that comes to mind. So she throws her arms up and then something fascinating happens. She walks to the back of the car.

And she folds her arms looking at the back of the car. And in this moment I realized the cream colored seats are a deal. Pauser not a deal killer, cause she’s still standing there looking at it and she walks around to the driver’s side seat, pokes her head into the driver’s side seat as though the seat colors may have changed.

Apparently, I don’t know. Poked poked her head in back and she [00:51:00] yells again to me. I can’t believe it. It’s got cream coming in. So I’m like, all right, got to go find out what’s going on here. I walk over and I go, all right. Talk to me like, what? What’s, what is with the cream colored seats, right? I gotta get her talking, and she says, well, you know, they’re just a hassle.

Well, there’s the word, I don’t know her definition that I go, when you say hassle, what do you imagine in going wrong? We had this car. What’s the struggle you’re envisioning? There’s me uncovering the why behind the what. And she says, well, you know, they’re just hard to clean. And I’m the one who has to deal with it.

And then, you know, they see every, everything shows up, every little stain. And it’s just, you know, just a real pain in the butt. And so she’s envisioning all of this work she’d have to do. So it’s not the seats, it’s the amount of work she’d have to do. And I said, okay, huh, that’s fair that that does sound like a lot.

And then I pause and I said, you know what? Let me ask you a question. I said, let’s just say this is the best car on the lot, and it drives perfectly and we get it at the right price. What would you do to make the cream colored seats work. And it was so fantastic. Matt, she, she shifts her weight, puts her full term one arm up [00:52:00] and puts the other arm on her chin in that thinker pose.

And she goes, well, and right in that moment, she got out of the complaining into problem solving into creativity. And she says, well, you know, we’d have to get really good, like industrial good. See covers, not pretty ones that aren’t functional but good ones. I’m like, okay, anything else? She said, well, if we could agree to get it professionally cleaned like twice a year, that’d be helpful, so, okay.

Anything else you can come up with? She says, well, if you’d agree not to bring like coffee or any, you know, stain type kind of drinks in the car that then that would be good. Deal-breakers. So she, right. Yeah, right, exactly. I’m like, that’s not gonna happen. Well, so I just sat back. I said, okay. I said, and then I went to the next part, which is confirmed that she’s, that she’s good with those solutions.

I said, okay, so if we did those things, are you feeling those would be a good fix to this? She said, yeah, I think so. And then I said, great, let’s test drive the car. We may have found our car and I closed on it and they say, I should’ve gotten the freaking commission cause this is the car we [00:53:00] walked. By the way.

Yeah. And we test drove it. The guy sat in the back seat. He barely did anything. I think he was scrolling Facebook the whole time and I was the one leading the whole conversation while she drove it. And, that’s the car we bought. But she solved her own problem. That’s, that’s one of the things that I think really would help people is get people talking about what they would do to fix it.

Cause there’s no such thing as perfect. 

Matt: No. And people will support what they help create. Even in a manager. That’s a management motto. Right. But it’s the same thing with people want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold 

Ryan: to go. Yup. 

Matt: so yeah, I mean, and the other side of that is the guy who really despises spending money sold.

Himself a car. 

Ryan: It’s exactly right. It’s the, it’s, it’s kind of unlike the worst customer ever. Cause I want to sell, but I don’t want to buy 

Matt: now I have a, I have a question. Who’s the better sales person? You or your wife? 

Ryan: Oh, see that? Yeah, that’s [00:54:00] a good question. I’m actually going to say her. she, yeah, I’m going to say her.

She, and here’s why. She’s more curious and more empathetic than I am. I have to work at those things. Like I F I actually have to practice curiosity because I’m usually like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get to the point where she actually wants to know we were at a restaurant and a, you know how they give you those little buzzer things that scare the bejesus out of you when they, when it’s time for your table to be ready.

Right. So we have one of those, it’s probably a 12 minute wait, no big deal. We go over to the bar, she orders a glass of wine from the bartender. And as we’re sitting there, as he’s pouring her drink. In a, in under 10 minutes at this point, she finds out from him that he’s celiac. His sister is gluten intolerant.

he’s quitting his job, looking for, investors to open up his own restaurant and his parents just got divorced in intended that she found all of this out. We sit down at the table and I look at her and I say, what [00:55:00] is your secret? She goes, you really want to know? I said, yeah. She goes, I actually care.

I was like, okay, I get it. Yeah, yeah. No, I have to work at it. So she’s arguably the better salesperson for sure. 

Matt: Well, I mean, going into it, I mean, I think she worked you over on that car. 

Ryan: Yeah, I do. And I, I dunno, I, I, there she, she might be an evil genius in the background. I just, I, I’m just rolling with it.

I don’t even know what to do anymore. It’s 10 years. It is what it is. 

Matt: Yeah, that’s right. You’re, you’re, you’re in it to win it. It’s fun. All right. Awesome. Now that was, those were some amazing topics and, and talking points for sales people. Now. Kind of go in the other direction, not the other direction, but taking a different, different track from a management standpoint, as a sales leader within your organization, how are some of the things, or what are some of the ways that you can work with and help implement some, you know, some of these things that we were just talking about, you know, with your [00:56:00] team as a whole.

Ryan: Yeah. And I work with sales leaders on this all the time, with, without the accountability and driving this mentality of practice when you don’t need to, good luck because for whatever reason, human nature. You know, being busy, managing more backlog than before. Life sort of gets in the way. And if you don’t have someone really driving the performance improvement aspect of this, it’s very difficult to have a team be advancing their skill development or creating habits that, that will take them through a normalized market or a downturn.

So sales leaders really need to make this a priority. And I w I, I stood in front of 400 sales leaders at our sales leadership summit last year and said, you know, I don’t care what your title is in the room. I don’t care if you’re a CEO. I don’t care if you’re a division president all the way to the front line sales manager and everyone in between you.

If you’re interacting with salespeople and you’re responsible for that, you’re a [00:57:00] coach, you are a coach. And so this means really, helping them fine tune their skills. And I’m, you know, my three favorite words when it comes to working with sales leaders are do it again. Like, I want them to learn those three words more than any other one.

It’s funny story. I have, a sales leader I work with out of Austin. And, she, you know, she just wants sales manager of the year and all this stuff a while back. And, she’s great. She was at the, at our summit and she heard me do this, talk on, you know, do it again, do it again, do it again. And it was hilarious because she, she ran into a veteran who had been in the industry for, you know.

30 40 years. There’s some guy who’s been around and knows. He’s seen every training and everything under the sun, and you could tell he’d kind of was like, yeah, you know, Hey, listen, I get, you want me to practice? I’ve been doing this for 30 years. And it was sort of the mentality that says, because I’ve been in the industry a long time, I don’t need to practice, which is insane to me.

And she said, Oh, you’ve been doing this for that long, great. Do it again. And I just was like, [00:58:00] yes. Because that’s what sales leaders need to do is they need to. Push sales people out of their comfort zones so that they can be better at their jobs. This is what a trainer does with someone going to the gym.

This is what a, what a financial advisor should be doing with their customer is pushing people out of their comfort zone so they have success. And, That. That really is the first thing is how are you doing that? And I can tell you this, if you’re sitting in a, in an office in the ivory tower every day, and you’re not getting out to the field, you’re not coaching your salespeople, I can look at your calendar and I can tell whether or not you’re actually coaching people or not.

Oh 

Matt: yeah, I completely agree with that. But no, no sales happen from the corporate office. 

Ryan: No. And you know, I always looked at it as the black hole. I, one of my mentors in this industry, Marcia Dylan, she’s had a DFW area. Marsha. one weekend she came to our division office by herself, by the way, and packed up all of our [00:59:00] meanings.

The management team packed up all of our stuff from our desks or cubicles, if you will. She put them all in boxes and she had them shipped out to different communities around the Phoenix Valley where I live. And she said, you no longer are allowed to come into the division office except for sales rally days.

And you know, when we have our, our, you know, our team meeting as management, and that was it. We, we literally, she kicked us out. It was the best thing in the world because once you go into that office said, Hey, you have a tendency to get sucked in, right? This meeting and that meeting and the next thing you know, you’re quarterbacking your coaching from an email, and that’s just not the way it works.

You got to be out there working on it. Do it again. Try this, tweak this. And I believe that it’s a, it’s a more valued skill to coach someone for performance improvement than it is to manage the numbers that come from sales, like managing numbers. Great. We can look at the spreadsheet. But if you build the person, the person will build the numbers.

It’s kind of [01:00:00] like if the build the church that build the people that people build the church, I’ve kind of concept. 

Matt: Yeah. I mean, Ryan, I think that you , you even said this before, when you’re talking about the, with a sales person in the field with their customer, we’re talking about collaborate, don’t control.

I think that can also go along with. The sales leader, the sales coach with the salesperson. So collaborate with them on working through the process. That’s great. Do it again. Collaborate, don’t control, help. Guide them through it. Help them get there. Get to the end result of where they need to be. But that repetition of.

Doing it over and over and over again is, is really that the focus on even full circle of back to what we were talking about, the very beginning, which is back to the basics. It’s the repetition. It’s hitting the ball off the tee over and over and over 

Ryan: again. Well, I want you to think about it this way too, because you’re, you’re 100% right.

You [01:01:00] know, I remember as you’re talking, that tee ball story, I remember. Learning tee ball and how our coach, would, I think his name was coach Jensen would basically tell us like, this is a baseball, this is the tee. And he would walk us from when you hit the ball and you go to first base, and he’d walk us all down to first base and say, what’s this called?

And we all say, first base, they say, great, let’s go back to home plate. What do we do? And we did that over and over and over again because he didn’t want us during game time to hit the ball and start running. The third. Which you’ve seen happen, right? That’s kind of embarrassing. 

Matt: You will, 

Ryan: you get all excited.

And so I have a client who, his name is Lee Whitaker. You probably know Lee. And Lee, every time. You know, when I first started working with him and his team, he would get up and he’d say to the class, he’d say, we’re, we’re practicing for, not for today’s market, but for tomorrow’s market. And there’s a lot of wisdom in that because you can get faked out, right?

Going back to that idea of, you [01:02:00] know, riding the high wave and we’re making all these sales, and then all of a sudden we distorted get lazy. And I think that’s the sales manager’s job to really. when you say get back to basics, I have a quote that I love. It’s from the TV evangelists to Joyce Meyer of all people.

And she says, she says, don’t get prepared. Stay prepared. And that is my philosophy. You know, at some point you’re going to see the market shift. It’s the way of the world. It happens. It happens. Regularly. And so when we say get back to the basics, my philosophy is don’t leave them to begin with. Constantly be working on those things when you don’t have to.

So here’s one idea for sales leaders as it relates to objections, is have your team compile their top three objections, their top three, whatever they might be, and have them practice. Getting that, like get them paired up and have them practice getting that customer talking. Like, and by the way, I should mention this, here’s how you know that [01:03:00] you’re doing a good job of this is, is you’re actually asking milestone closing questions throughout the conversation that actually elicit objections.

So for example, if I say, is this the right home for you guys? Is this the home you want to live in? That might elicit an objection right. That’s, that’s, that’s the pattern of it. Most salespeople don’t do that because they’re afraid of getting a no. And they ask only yes questions. And here’s the problem with that.

That’s an abusive relationship. If you look at abusive relationships, there’s one person forcing the other person into the answers that they want the whole way down the line. And that’s, that’s an abuser, whether it’s physical or emotional. That’s how that starts, is someone controls everything. So we’re getting deep here, Ryan.

We’re, we’re getting word welcome to the food therapy radio show. No. but it’s true. If you, if you look at it. If you study the patterns of abusive relationships, old school sales training models, it perfectly what is right. What do we use to teach people when that buyer walks in, you want to take control of them and never let it go.

Well, that’s the definition of a [01:04:00] hostage scenario. Come on. It’s ridiculous 

Matt: to buy 

Ryan: or I’m not letting you leave. Well, and you hear, I actually, there’s a trainer in our space who I heard. Was training a team, and I, again, I don’t mention names, but was training a team that if that buyer says no to you, you follow them out to their car.

And you keep asking until they drive away. And I would immediately just envision like the walking dead with like as one of the zombies on like the windshield and I’m like, that is terrible. Anyway, so back to the practice is get them, get them practicing these steps, right. Have that objection of if it’s power lines or it’s the taxes or whatever it might be.

Get them talking. Get that why behind the what. Throw out an appropriate technique, and it may be, it’s that what that technique I threw out that transfer of ownership as we call it. Or maybe it’s a story about another buyer who solved that problem themselves and then conf have them confirm that it works, that they’re cool with [01:05:00] it, and then reclose on the thing that.

Got that objection to begin with. In this case, it was the floor plan. If I say, is this the right home? You give me an objection. I go through these steps. I have to reclose on the home, make sure we’re good before I move on, and so I would have them practice that until they could literally go through all of those steps and there’s five of them.

Again, get them talking, uncover the why behind the what. Use the appropriate technique to help collaborate and solve that problem. Confirm that, that that solution works for them, and then reclose on whatever got you into that conversation. If, if someone, literally, if a sales leader had their entire team practice all of those steps with their top three objections to where they could just rattle them off like no, nobody’s business.

Then what ends up happening is that team’s confidence builds and now they’re taking the sale as far as it will go. But if they don’t, if they don’t have a plan for how they’re going to handle objections, then they say, Oh, you don’t like the power [01:06:00] lines. Okay, well, you know, we’re going to have another phase release that’s going to end.

And what ends up happening is we kicked the can down the road to another phase release, or maybe do another community or worse to another builder because we don’t have a plan. And we think this objection is the end of the world. So. 

Matt: And I, I think it’s worth noting because you talked about early on, you know, having the, the canned scripts and, and collaborating and, and, and versus collaboration and not control, but there is a distinct difference of not having something that can, that you say without any emotion or any level of caring versus practicing the five different techniques and styles that you just, that you just.

Rattled off because each one is the, you know, it’s still the technique. However, each individual customer is the, the response around that technique is going to be unique to them because their, their [01:07:00] life and their situation is unique to them. And it can’t be just this one size, one size fits all. You know, you, you’re holding a hammer in your hand, therefore everything looks like a nail.

Ryan: You know, Matt, it’s like a, I’m sure you’ve had this happen before where you’ve gotten this resume and you, I mean, it was like, Oh, lately nearly the perfect resume, this person’s going to save the division. And so you schedule them for the interview and they come in and you’re all excited and you get them sitting in front of the chair in front of you.

Within about. I don’t know, a minute to a minute and a half, you’re kind of thinking, Oh, heck no. I’m not. I’m not hiring this person. Right. And what you realize in this moment is that. It’s not just the skill level, it’s who they are as a human being because they’re adding to the culture, they’re representing the brand.

And so when, when we think about scripts, and I know there’s a lot of people who are big proponents of scripts out there, I’m not, [01:08:00] because I can, I cannot think of a bigger lie told in the world of sales. Then you need the, there’s something wrong with you. So I need to control what you say. And I could not imagine being someone different all day long.

Then I then who I actually am. So we teach people to be authentically, you know, like I speak in movie quotes all the time, so you won’t hear me say, tell me more about that. You’ll hear me say, talk to me goose. Like I’ll throw a top gun quote out there. I love it. I’m even, yeah, I’m even sitting here with a back to the future coffee cup in front of me right now.

So. Because that’s who I am. And so I want people to operate in the technique and flow with their authenticity. And the whole point is, if you’ve got, you’ve got to get out of your head and get into your customer’s life, and that’s only gonna come from repetition. If you’re too busy trying to figure out what you’re going to say next.

Yup. You’re focused on the wrong person yourself. And that’s what practice does. And that’s, that’s where managers come in to really help. Yeah. 

Matt: Cause you’re not listening to what their, what their story is and what they’re saying. So you can help them. [01:09:00] You’re literally waiting for them just to finish, so you can say what you’re supposed to say next.

Ryan: Yeah. Can you please shut your mouth so I can speak? 

Matt: I really need to get through my presentation just. Paul’s all questions until the end. 

yeah, no, it’s, I love it. Cause you said you loved to speak in movie quotes and when you were mentioning the, the person, you know, the, the, the person, the salesperson’s going to save the division.

The first thing that popped in my head was the moment out of national Lampoon’s Christmas vacation. The where Chevy chase and his family, Clark, they’re standing there and. The middle of the field and the giant family Griswold Christmas tree. The light has shot us like, Whoa. And then like, this is it. And he’s like, do you, would you have the acts dad?

Pompom 

Ryan: chop the tree down. That’s the best. The best. Yeah. 

Matt: Awesome. Awesome. Well, Ryan, that was absolutely amazing. I think I w I wrote a ton of stuff down from our notes from [01:10:00] notes, and I loved to two things. Collaborate, don’t control. While I love more than two things, but these are the two things that I starred.

Collaborate, don’t control. And I love the imagine that you’re living here. Let’s fast forward into the future and then let’s talk about. The perceived problem that we have right now, and let’s see how that’s affect going to affect us after your F, you know, let’s just imagine you’re living here for two years.

How is that going to affect? How are you going to deal with that then? I think those are two really, really powerful things. If you think someone could implement right away and, and have an impact with their team or with their, with their customers as well. So that was really good. All right, so absolutely.

I don’t like to let anybody go unless we can do a couple quick things like the old, real fast questions here. So, one. And if these don’t, these things don’t apply to you, that’s okay, but what? What are you reading? What are you binge watching? And then what are you [01:11:00] listening to? 

Ryan: Okay, so what am I reading?

I’m reading two things right now. One of them is unshakeable by Tony Robbins, which is a financial book. 

Matt: It’s impactful. I shouldn’t say it’s great. It’s hard to read. 

Ryan: Yeah. Fair. and the other one is a millionaire success habits by Dean Graziosi. So I’m reading both of those at the same time. Okay.

Binge-watching, you know, I’m not really finding anything very terribly worthy of binge watching right now. So there’s nothing I’m really watching. I, I, my wife and I look and we’re like, this is lame. This is lame. So we ended up just talking or playing with our dogs. Yeah. And then what am I listening to?

right now I’m geeking out on the bigger pockets, money podcast. So if you, if you’re, if you know the bigger pockets crew, they’re real estate and business and money and all this. So I’m nerding out to that. I love 

Matt: it. Good stuff. I’ll have to check that one out. I don’t, I’ve not, I’m not familiar with them.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s a good one. 

Matt: Awesome. RI Orion. Well, as always, it has been an absolute pleasure [01:12:00] chatting with you. The conversation always goes and fantastic places and I always learn lots whenever we chat, so really appreciate you coming on and sharing your wealth. Of knowledge with every one of our listeners and just our industry as a whole.

You make a make a huge difference in a huge impact on our industry. So thank you very much for all of that. And if anybody wants to connect with you or follow you, or you know, just reach out, drop on and have a conversation, what’s the best way for someone to do that? 

Ryan: A couple of ways. One is a email isRyan@jeffshore.com.

So that’s the easiest way. but if you want to follow, anything that, that I’m doing, they can go to Instagram and it’s just at Ryan Taft. you know, I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah. You can search it and so forth. And then, in addition to that, you can always go to see what we’ve got going on@jeffshore.com and click on the events tab and we’ve got lots of lots of stuff going on there.

Matt: Yeah. You guys are always have, different events going on throughout the country. [01:13:00] Your, your four, two formula events that happen throughout the, throughout the country as well as, didn’t you guys just bring on a new team, a new team member as well, a new trainer? 

Ryan: We, we did, yes. Michelle, Ben Dean. She’s a, she’s out of the Illinois area and she’s amazing.

So we’re excited to, to have her a part of the team. 

Matt: Hi, Michelle. Awesome. Awesome. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on the show and, as always, can’t wait to chat again soon. 

Ryan: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, man. It was a fun, fun time. Thanks for it. 

Matt: Absolutely. Thanks so much. .