Listen to Customer Objections - They May Help Grow Your Business

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Let’s dive in….

The one reaction that salesmen the world over just hate:

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But wait…

We all know that overcoming objections is key to sales - but do you really perk up your ears and listen to them? 

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It’s easy to play a little dumb.

It’s easy to have pre-programmed responses to deal with objections. But could they be telling us more than we think?

In some cases, they can actually help shape your business - and take it in a completely different direction.

We found that out a while back when we started out with The Influencer Project as a couple of hopeful consultants.

Forgive the length of this article but I think it’s worth going into some detail with this story…

We didn’t always think LinkedIn was king

We started out with a very small consulting digital marketing business called Evolve in 2015.

It was just the two of us working out of a bedroom in Andrew’s house. He was in a part-time consulting role and we’d nailed some excellent systems for building business sales funnels and branding.

We didn’t have a huge budget and certainly didn’t have the means to bring in coaches or to spend big on advertising through AdWords.

It was a case of “how do we make the biggest impact for the lowest budget possible?”

We’d plundered the first and second-degree relationships within our network of contacts over the first 6-12 months of running the business.

Now what?

This is an actual picture of me next to my greatest love in life at that point… 

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Just kidding. But Facebook ads really ticked the boxes for us initially.

Like all businesses, we needed leads. But it was just the two of us and a micro-budget. We could generate some leads on Facebook with an ad budget of $10 a day!

We started doing webinars for leads garnered through the ads. We’d get 15 people registering and three would turn up!

Then we noticed something…

Andrew was doing sales calls about Facebook marketing and getting the same objection repeatedly:

 “Yeah…I don’t know. In professional services, our clients are mainly on LinkedIn.”

It wasn’t what we wanted to hear at all. We knew nothing about LinkedIn back then.

Truth be told, we thought it was pretty useless for businesses. It seemed like a recruitment platform.

Andrew had a profile on there with 400 connections but logged in once every couple of weeks.

After loads of sales meetings with the same response, we were forced to start listening closer to the objection.

We knew how important it was to overcome objections. But we couldn’t overcome the LinkedIn objection with what we wanted to say:

“The platform’s crap and you’ll never make any money or get any business from it…”

So we had an idea.

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It was time to get the test tubes out.

We decided to experiment by replicating the system we were using on Facebook (Like, Lead, Sale) on LinkedIn.

The idea was to prove once and for all that LinkedIn doesn’t work for lead generation.

We could run the system for a few months and use the results to overcome objections from prospects by demonstrating that LinkedIn doesn’t work.

And there was nothing to lose as at it would cost only our time.

Proving ourselves wrong

It was a humbling experience.

After an initial 4-6 weeks of action, we started to see the error of our ways.

At first, somebody came back and asked for our help on LinkedIn. We told them it was an experiment and tried to convince them to move over to Facebook. But they insisted they wanted to give LinkedIn a crack.

We walked away!

We felt that a lead was only a lead if it came from a landing page - with a name, email address, and phone number.

But, as interest started to grow, we were forced to pay more attention. We started to slowly build a community on LinkedIn.

As a sales guy, Andrew would normally pick up the phone and talk to leads. But because he didn’t see LinkedIn leads as ‘real’ leads, he was emailing people back.

Then, one day, we had another idea….

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We started treating LinkedIn leads like other sales leads. Andrew picked up the phone and, all of a sudden, BOOM! We had enough interest to run our first workshop 14 days later.

That’s when we knew we were onto something.

From Like Lead Sell on Facebook, we started with the Connect Engage Convert strategy on LinkedIn.

And in an effort to prove other people wrong, we ended up proving ourselves wrong.

From an objection to an eight-figure business

From a customer objection, we found the direction we needed to go in.

We discovered that business development in the social age is about building a community through nurturing and engagement.

But without the original objection, we would never have found that out.

We’d never have been able to help so many businesses monetise and generate millions of dollars of revenue through LinkedIn.

We certainly wouldn’t have built an eight-figure business ourselves.

And I wouldn’t be writing this article now.

So, what are the main customer objections you hear - and how could they help you develop your own business?

P.s. Whenever you’re ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow your business with LinkedIn

1. Join the Influencer Boardroom and connect with other advisors and consultants who are scaling too: It’s our new Facebook community where smart advisors and consultants learn to generate more purpose, profit and power. - Click Here

2. Join Our Implementation Program and be a Case Study: I’m putting together a new consulting case study group inside The Influencer Project this month… stay tuned for details. If you’d like to work with me on your client-getting and business growth plans using LinkedIn… just send me a message and put “Case Study” in it and I’ll get you more info.

3. Work with me and my team privately: If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take you from 6 to 7 figures and level things up… just send me a message and put “Private” in the first line… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details.