Marketing Corner — How to Get People to Do What You Want
“Hey Dave! Are you free to help me move on Saturday?”
It’s hard enough to ask someone for a favor.
It’s a hundred times harder when you know your request is actually a chore.
But there are subtle ways to drastically improve your chances if you push the right buttons.
Today I’ll demonstrate one way that I personally use when trying to convince someone to do something for you, and that is “bringing up objections first”.
In marketing, this is very similar to the “pratfall effect” where you bring up something negative about your product or service that’s obvious and turn it into a positive.
(I think I just heard some salespeople fall off their chair).
If that seems counter-intuitive when you’re trying to convince someone, it is…but that’s why it works.
But be careful with which objection you bring up. Bringing up the wrong one can destroy your chances.
So how does mentioning the downside lead to the upside?
Let’s explore the why and how.
Choosing a Fault
What do people usually do with their faults?
They try to bury them, of course, hoping that other people won’t notice.
Those of you that have ever used a dating app will know this.
But it’s okay to bring up your negatives. When done properly, it’s actually to your advantage.
So what’s a proper objection to bring up?
First, avoid bringing up faults that the other person won’t ever have a way of knowing, otherwise you’d just be shooting yourself in the foot.
In sales, for example, you DO NOT want to say: “To be transparent, our IT Manager just quit so some problems are taking a bit longer to fix but….”
That’s not something the prospect will know off-hand or something they even need to know.
Stick to more obvious ones like price or company policy, etc.
Secondly, you don’t want to pick something so drastic like, “You must’ve heard, our CEO was just fired. We still don’t have a replacement yet.”
Even if your CEO firing was public, it’s still best to avoid bringing up a problem like that. Your product or service will already bring up objections in the prospects mind, no need to pile on with others.
How to Overcome
It’s a really simple formula when it comes to bringing up an objection gracefully and using it to your advantage.
You already know that you want to pick an objection that is obvious.
You also don’t want to bring up anything too drastic and scare the prospect off.
Finally, when it’s time to bring up the objection you’ll want to follow it up with one of the items below:
- An excuse or reason for the objection/favor
- Something that the prospect will gain in return
- Limiting the objection
- A combination of any of the above.
So that means:
BRING UP OBJECTION + FOLLOW UP = YAY!
Let’s see how this looks in action.
The Price Objection
In sales, probably the most common objection to a product or service is: “your price is too high”.
So naturally, one of the best ways to ease a prospect from the price objection is to bring it up before they do.
However, when you tell some salespeople this, they go into convulsions.
It seems like the majority of salespeople prefer to keep a wide berth from any and all objections. They don’t want to plant any possible negative seeds inside people’s minds.
But nowadays, prospects are more well-informed than ever before.
So you’re not actually fooling anyone by not mentioning it and, most likely, they’ve already thought of it and probably many other objections too.
By bringing up the objections first, it increases your credibility in their eyes, does more to ease their concerns, and elevates you over the competition who will likely be trying to hide those same objections.
When you let your prospects bring up objections first, even if you have the best response, it always comes across like you’re on the defensive and you end up looking like you’re trying to justify or make excuses for your product.
A Sales Example
So back to our example about price. When talking about it you can say:
“And when it comes to price, we’re certainly not the cheapest and you can find others with a lower price. For us, we spend more on R&D than most other companies in order to give you the best product. On top of that, our customer support is the best in the industry and you can be reassured that any issues you have come up will be dealt with within 10 minutes.”
So as you can see, we’re bringing up the objection first (price) then giving reasons as to why it’s justified (R&D spend, best customer support, etc.).
You could also use this same paragraph as a response when the customer brings up the price objection first, but as you’ll notice psychologically, saying it first puts it in a different frame of mind.
A Non-Sales Example
Bringing up objections also works in non-sales situations.
But as mentioned before, you only want to bring up objections that are obvious.
Again, the best way to explain this is with an example.
Back to our original scenario, let’s say you wanted to ask for help with moving into a new apartment.
How would you ask your friends or family to help you move?
You could try something like this:
“Hey Dave! I know it’s the weekend and I know you have a soccer game later that night, but would you be able to help me out with my move this Saturday? I’ll only need you for 2 to 3 hours in the morning so you can still make it to your game. I’ll get us some pizza from that new place Zeno’s we’ve been wanting to try.”
So why would this work better than just “Hey Dave, are you free to help me move this Saturday?”
First, you’re bringing up his probable main objection: “I can’t I have soccer later that evening”.
The other obvious objection is that it’s the weekend and he has other better and more fun things to do.
By bringing up both in your request, you’re actually showing that you’re sympathetic to the sacrifice that he’s making.
Score 1 point.
The other part of our request is overcoming their objections.
“I’ll only need you for 2 to 3 hours in the morning…”
So to overcome the fact that we’re asking to sacrifice some of their weekend we’re limiting their commitment (just 2–3 hours).
Score another 1 point.
“…so you can still make it to your game.”
We also address the other objection of Dave’s soccer game that night by promising him that he’ll be done long before then.
“I’ll get us some pizza from that new place Zeno’s we’ve been wanting to try.”
Then we follow that up with a little incentive of pizza. This is, of course, assume that Dave really likes pizza and has been itching to try the pizza at Zeno’s — otherwise this incentive will fall flat on its face.
Add another 6 points (hey, it’s pizza!).
And there you have it — the anatomy of how to increase your conversions when asking for a favor.
The End
As always, the “Bring up Objections” technique is YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).
It all hinges on how good you are at psychology and understand the other person.
The closer you can get to figuring out what their objections are and how close you can get to the solutions and incentives they’d like, the better your chances are of them saying yes.
What if Dave doesn’t actually like pizza, but loves burgers instead?
What if Dave doesn’t care about the soccer game since it’s the last game of the season and actually wants to go for a hike in the morning?
Even if you did prospect inside and out, that’s no guarantee that they will say yes to your favor. Sometimes what you need and what they want just doesn’t match.
But knowing their pain points and addressing them before they even bring it up significantly improves your chance of success.
It’s either that or hire some movers.
