“I get it, it’s hard. It’s like lining up to get kicked in the stomach. But if you know that the opportunities on the other side of that activity [ are worth it ], you gotta have the faith and push forward.” – Dan Martell, Serial Entrepreneur
This may sound harsh, but rejection is often the best teacher in innovation.
If you power through rejection and iterate on value, you’ll learn extremely quickly. This is one of the key reasons why serial entrepreneur Dan Martell prefers month-to-month subscription models.
He says: “Every month, I need to earn the investment. Every time I pay $89 for Trello or $250 for my email marketing tool, I’m asking myself “Did I get that kind of value out of the product?”. I just love the honesty and purity of that exchange. Sometimes enterprise products don’t get that. If you’re three or four years in two to three million ARR, it’s actually really bad for you because you’re not getting the data set that you should be getting.”
There’s something to be said for opening the door to rejection and welcoming complaints.
Even if you’re selling an app or a consumer product, it’s a good idea, at first, to spend time selling it face-to-face. You’ll be able to uncover objections faster this way.
As ConvertKit co-founder Nathan Barry says: “When you ask someone to buy, they’re socially obligated to give you a reason.”
This means that unsuccessful pitches should generate at least one objection. If you go through the process enough times, eventually you will have heard all possible objections.
If you don’t make efforts to hear all objections, you’ll limit your ability to grow your product.
Questions to Make Product Objections Come Out
Be proactive. Beyond trying to close deals, you can start collecting objections by asking prospects:
- What’s your biggest fear or concern about [ Product ]?
- What’s preventing you from [ Buying / Upgrading ]?
- Why do you buy from [ Competitor ] and not from us?
Or new clients:
- What’s the one thing that nearly stopped you from becoming a client?
- Why did you hesitate to buy [ Product ]?
Questions like these will help you learn what objections customers have. Then you can find ways to overcome them.
Objections can help fuel your marketing copy, develop your Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and improve your product.
Although objections will sometimes be clear and direct, you need to learn to read between the lines when dealing with more indirect objections. For example, pricing objections tend to be more about value than price. These generally mean that you haven’t properly communicated the product’s value.
When dealing with price objections, ask prospects to rationalize why the product is too expensive. Try to get to the root cause.
If you are proactive with your search, eventually there won’t be any objections that you haven’t heard. The information you gain will help you improve your messaging and better meet customer expectations.
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This post in an excerpt from Solving Product. If you enjoyed the content, you'll love the new book. You can download the first 3 chapters here →.