Top Closers’ Method To Objection Handling WITHOUT Rebuttals

What if I told you that the REAL SECRET to overcoming objections had NOTHING to do with rebuttals or even using the ARO Formula that I teach?

You might think I’m CRAZY or call me a hypocrite — or you might be super curious about this.

Regardless, I want to:

1. Break down ALL of the misconceptions around objections.
2. Help you become an absolute BOSS at tackling objections, so you can smash your income goal and give every customer an amazing experience.

And that’s really what everything I do here is all about. By the way, welcome or welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman, The Roof Strategist.

Now, objections are one of the HOTTEST topics in sales. Many of us practice rebuttals to these objections. Quite frankly, I don’t like that approach because it’s like throwing a right hook. So, instead, I teach the ARO Objection Handling Formula.

But how can I even do that if I just told you that the real secret has nothing to do with how we respond? Well, the framework them to be teaching you right now is what’s used by what I’ll call the top professional salespeople, including folks like:

• Jerome, who’s 21 and closing at 76% in retail roofing sales
• Butch on Matthew’s sales team, who posted publicly that his sales reps who “couldn’t save deals to close their lives” are now closing 5 to 7 deals per week because they’re using this framework.

So, that’s what I’ll be teaching you here today.

Now, if we leave it up to our customers to ask questions, there’s a big problem because:

1. They may not know what to ask: This is a common theme. If someone says, “Thanks for coming out. We have to think about it,” it’s often because you didn’t leave them with enough information to make a decision — and they don’t even know what else to ask. That can leave this type of “empty” feeling or cliffhanger, like when you’re watching a movie and the power goes out right before it ends. Then, like an hour later, you kind of forget about the movie, but the unfinished business of it leaves you with some angst. That’s what’s happening with our homeowners.
2. You’re leaving it up to them: Honestly, this is a BIG problem because most objections are blowing smoke. For example, they probably are just trying to get you out of their house when they say things like, “Well, I have to talk to my wife about it.”
3. They have to voice their objection first: You can’t properly overcome an objection if they haven’t expressed their concern about it yet. Think of it like when you were in high school, struggling to understand something. You raise your hand with a question, and the teacher calls on you 5 minutes later. By the time the teacher calls on you, there are good chances you’ve missed what they’ve said from the moment your hand went up to the time they called on you. And that’s what’s happening with our customers. So, by the time they ask you a question, they’ve had this uncomfortable feeling that’s gotten bigger and bigger — and they’re not listening. They miss whatever you’ve shared before that.

So, we need to get ahead of ALL the objections.

Now, this is challenging for some people, including me when I was new to roofing sales. That’s because when I was new in sales, I thought:

If I just do a really good job presenting and pleasing them, then they won’t ask me those really challenging, difficult questions.

Yeah, that does NOT work.

So, I learned this strategy by working in direct sales, even beyond my roofing experience, and specifically working with a law firm. I helped them increase their close rate of wanted cases from 76% to 90% week over week for 5 years running (and by the way, it was actually 90% to 100% of wanted cases for 5 years running; that was audited by a team of multiple people, two in-house and one external consultant), all by using this framework.

So, here it is — we overcome all of the big objections proactively throughout our presentation.

How to Proactively Overcome Objections in Roofing Sales

Let’s take a look at how we can proactively overcome those major objections we encounter in roofing sales, with a breakdown of how it works in storm and retail roofing sales.

Focusing first on the storm side, here are some of those big objections we tend to encounter:

1. The damage doesn’t look that bad. I think we’re okay: Homeowners may not understand what the damage really means or why that damage may require a roof replacement. They just don’t understand, and they may question what you’re saying because they don’t trust roofers in general.
2. I don’t want to file a claim: because they don’t understand why the insurance covers it or the other big objection. I want to wait and get three estimates because my insurance company told me. These are big problems that often if we do a great job presenting, we know they have damage, we’ll get a yeah, damage doesn’t look that bad.
3. I need to get three estimates: They could be doing this because they’re doing what the insurance company told them to do.

In retail roofing sales, the big objections tend to include the following:

1. You’re too expensive: There are pretty good chances you’re not going to be the cheapest option, and I sure as heck hope you aren’t (otherwise, it becomes a race to the bottom, with someone else always willing to do it cheaper).
2. I want to get 1 or 2 more years out of my roof: A variation of this is, “We’re going to repair the roof, instead of replacing it.” Either way this comes up, it’s usually sticker shock driving this objection.
3. I want to get three estimates: Just like the storm side, this objection can come up on the retail side too.

So, if we wait for these objections to come up, we’re TOO LATE. Instead, we need to:

1. Speak to each of these concerns in our presentation.
2. Sprinkle the “answers” in throughout the presentation to provide homeowners with context (I’ll explain how shortly; also, check out this great video on Why You Should NEVER Tell a Homeowner the Roof Is Damaged; it’s incredibly valuable for both storm and retail roofing sales).

This all boils down to a technique known as framing. In fact, once I have the opportunity to present, here’s what I do:

• Ask for permission to pitch: I teach you exactly how to do this and more in my training system.
• Knock out three common objections: These are the “I don’t want to file a claim quite yet;” the “The insurance company told me to get a few estimates” objection; and the, “I don’t want to pay my deductible” objection. That last one could come up as saying someone else can “eat the deductible” too. That’s on the storm side. In retail, I’m going to tackle the “you’re too expensive” objection, explaining why we aren’t the cheapest. I’m also going to address the “I want to wait” objection so that when they go through these numbers, they’re going to have a very compelling reason not to wait and to do their roof now. I’ll also address the “I want to get multiple estimates” objection here before I even present.

With this, I’ve put the homeowner at ease. Now, they’re also wide open, with full attention, to hear my ENTIRE presentation.

A 2-Part Roofing Sales Assignment: How to Get Ahead of Objections

Now, the last thing that I want to do here is give you a 2-part assignment. Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. Get out a pad of paper and a pen.
2. Put yourself in the homeowners’ shoes, pretending you’re them, regardless of whether you’re in retail or storm damage roofing sales. As you do this, remember, you know nothing about roofing.
3. Write down ALL of the questions or concerns that you would have as a homeowner.

These homeowner questions and concerns can pertain to things like (but not limited to):

• I don’t want to be taken advantage of because I know roofers are scam artists. I’ve seen it on the news.
• I want a fair price and fair value. I don’t want to overpay, and I don’t want to be featured on the news.
• Do I need to get multiple estimates?

By listing all of this out, you can now speak to each of these matters in your presentation, and you build a tremendous amount of trust because you’ve joined the conversation that’s already going on inside their own head.

Recently, I did this with Kennedy on our team. When she jumped into training, listing out homeowner concerns and questions, she listed out five at first. Then, she went deeper and ended up with nearly three full pages of notes and questions, like:

• Is it a good fit?
• How long is it going to take my team?
• How long do I have reporting and access to see what they’ve gone through?

She listed out ALL of those big questions and objections. As a result, she’s become an incredibly powerful salesperson.

Roofing Sales Assignment: Part #2

Now, after you write down all of those questions and objections, putting yourself in the homeowner’s shoes and thinking as if you’re the customer, the next step is to address those issues EARLY in the appointment.

After all, everyone won’t vocalize their core concerns, and there may be several reasons why this is the case; for instance, they may not trust you, they may not feel comfortable, or they may not consciously be aware of their concerns.

So, if you do these two things:

1. Your sales presentation will become WILDLY powerful.
2. That is the REAL secret to overcoming objections without having to work on rebuttals.

In fact, with this approach:

• You can easily reduce the number of questions and objections you get because you’ve tackled those up front.
• You can build a tremendous amount of trust.
• You have a clear runway to go in for the close.
• You can walk away from that house not only with a deal but also with a pocket full of referrals.

THAT is what I’d love to help you do.

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Thanks for joining me, and I look forward to sharing more with you in the next blog.