AI For Addressing Objections

Tired of hearing "It's too expensive," "Send me an email," or "We're happy with our current solution"? Salespeople spend years trying to master the perfect response, but what if you could tap into the collective wisdom of a thousand top performers in seconds?

In this episode of Sales Zen AI, we pivot from the old-school idea of overcoming objections to the modern, more effective strategy of addressing and reframing them.

Discover a powerful, repeatable workflow that uses generative AI (like Gemini or ChatGPT) to instantly generate hyper-specific, conversational responses to the toughest roadblocks in ad sales.

What You'll Learn:

• The Core Idea: Stop pushing and arguing; start reframing the conversation from conflict to shared value.
• The RIGS Method: Master the Role, Instruction, Guardrails, and Specifics framework to consistently get high-quality, actionable outputs from your AI.
• Tackling "Too Expensive": Learn how to use AI as a Value Consultant to shift the discussion from cost to ROI by forcing the prospect to define the performance lift they need to see.
• Handling the Incumbency Objection: Turn the "We're happy with our current vendor" into an opportunity by having your AI act as an Ad Tech Competitive Analyst to introduce unconsidered needs and unseen risks, planting seeds of doubt without trashing the competition.
• Accelerating Time Objections: Stop letting "Call me back next quarter" mean never. We'll show you how to use AI as a Lost Revenue Calculator to quantify the cost of waiting and create professional, data-driven urgency.

This is the human-AI hybrid model in action: the human brings the empathy and relationship, and the AI brings the sharp, undeniable math. Don't just listen—open your AI and put this powerful technology to work for you immediately!

Grab the full list of RIGS prompt templates at saleszenai.com/prompts.

Transcript

Sarah 0:00

from the heart of Silicon Valley, Welcome to SalesZen AI, the quick-hitting podcast for advertising sales professionals, media leaders, and adtech execs who want to master the future of selling. Join your host, KevinCurrie, a veteran of giants like Meta and the NFL, and a certified Google Generative AI Leader. Kevin is here to show you how to leverage the Human, AI Hybrid Model to consistently blow past quota. In every fast-paced episode, you get one actionable, real-world workflow, executed with secure, powerful AI tools that you can implement today. Now your host, Kevin Currie.

Speaker 0:37

Welcome to this week's episode of Sales Zen AI. So today we're gonna be talking about objections. Always a hot topic in advertising sales. So you've heard 'em all, it's too expensive, which is, likely the biggest one, the most common one that we hear. Send me an email or everyone's favorite. We're happy with our current solution. So salespeople spend years trying to master the perfect response. I've spoken about it before in a previous episode. I went through sales training on overcoming objections, fighting that resistance. As you know, I'm not a fan of overcoming objections, more addressing objections. So today we're gonna talk about addressing the objections. It's not about trying to overcome them, it's about trying to understand. But what if you could have the wisdom of say, a thousand top performers in your pocket ready to go to work in seconds, and you can, and that's the workflow we're gonna talk about today. So the core idea here is to stop pushing and rebutting what the client says and start reframing. Look, the honest truth is the AI isn't gonna argue with your client. It's going to help you pivot the conversation from a point of conflict to a new shared point of value, and that's the key. So we're gonna use the RIGS method to generate a hyper-specific conversational response for the most common roadblocks in ad sales. There are a number of role play AI agents out there. In fact, they're commoditized at this point. They come out pretty much every day with new ones and updates. If your company has one, I encourage you to leverage it for this phase of the sales cycle. If they don't, you can use an LLM like Gemini or chat GPT to perform the same function. So let's focus first on what I believe is the most common objection, which is it's too expensive, right? This is the number one killer of deals. So when a client says something like Your ad solution is too expensive, they're not objecting to the price, likely they're objecting to the value they perceive. Our AI's job is to shift the conversation from cost to ROI. We don't want our AI to start arguing over the cost, right? That's not the talk track we want to have with clients. We aren't gonna win those. So we want to talk about the return on investment, right? That's ultimately what advertisers are looking for. And if we've done a good job in discovery, we likely know what they're looking to achieve. So the strategy we're gonna use is to have the AI act as a value consultant. It needs to generate two things, an acknowledgement of their concern and a powerful open-ended question that forces them to define the ROI they would need to see to justify the cost. So again, those two pieces are to acknowledge their concern. That's a human response on their end. We need to talk through that with them. And the open-ended question really gets them to the point to say, what would you need to see to justify what you are referring to as a price objection. So this moves the discussion from a hard no to a collaborative, how. The mechanics we're gonna use for this, if you open up your, internal chatbot or Gemini or chat GPT, and we're gonna use the RIGS framework again, role instruction, guardrails and specifics. So for the role you'll set as a value engineering consultant, right? This is all about consulting with them and not just pushing our product. The instruction we're gonna use is to ask AI to generate two part conversational response. The guardrails we'll put in place. The first part must validate the prospect's concern, and the second part must be a single strategic question. Again, strategic being the operative word here, we're not looking for a closed ended... If I brought my price down, would you purchase? That's not what we're looking to do here. We're looking to dig deeper. For the specifics, we're gonna plug in your prospect's current annual advertising budget and your products Target KPI. That aligns to their goals that we uncovered during discovery. So something like incremental conversion rate lift, or increased basket size. So the response you're likely to get from Chat GPT or Gemini, or the internal tool that you're using is something like, I appreciate you saying that every dollar counts to ensure we're comparing apples to apples. What kind of performance lift would you need to see this transition from a cost to a guaranteed investment? So that's gold, right? It's not a pitch, it's a strategic question. The next one we're gonna look at is the incumbency objection. We hear this from our clients all the time. We're happy with our current solution or our current vendor. This is the objection that says I'm not interested in change. And look, that's a natural human tendency, right? They had a full-time job before you reached out to them. Before you put this proposal in front of them, you're basically now asking them to either move something off their plate. Reprioritize what you have and your partnership ahead of the things that they had prioritized or to work extra hours. So the key here, as always, through cognitive selling, is to not trash the competitor, but to introduce an unconsidered need, right? Problems that they don't realize they have that are fixable by your solution. So the strategy we're gonna use here is we'll make the AI an ad tech competitive analyst, so you'll input who your competitor is and the AI will identify two or three potential blind spots or industry risks that the current older solution might have. So this plants the seed of doubt without being negative. The prompt we're gonna use with rigs, the role is gonna be an ad tech competitive analyst. As I mentioned. The Instructions, Tell it to generate three natural risk focused questions about the incumbent solution. What this does is frame it specifically to something that the client probably isn't recognizing. They may actually know it, but right now they don't see the value enough in your solution, in your proposed solution to make that switch The guardrails we're gonna use, the questions must avoid direct comparison and focus on future proofing or unseen risk. We do this better than company X. Instead, what we're doing is looking at this from a standpoint of the client, which is, if I don't make this change, here's what could happen. This is the risk. And then the specifics that we're gonna use. We really just need to put in The competitor's name, the ad platform's primary feature, for example, competitor X and cookie based targeting. So you'll likely get a response like this. That's fantastic. As you look ahead to the cookie list future, how is your current platform specifically addressing measurement continuity across all new identifiers? So do you see that you didn't pitch your product at all? You positioned yourself as the expert who is thinking three steps ahead. So the final one we're gonna do here, the third one we're gonna test out from a prompt standpoint, is the accelerating the time objection. So this is the call me back next quarter. We sit here in October. Likely you're hearing we're in the middle of planning follow up with me at the start of the year, right? There's a big issue with that, which is if they're doing the planning now and you follow up at the first of the year, they likely have made their plan and you're not included in it. So, what we wanna do is accelerate that, when a prospect says later, they often mean never, right? Your goal is to respect their timeline. 'cause there could be some really good points and reasons behind them wanting to wait. But you want to quantify the cost of waiting. So here's the strategy. The AI will act as a lost revenue calculator. Based on their current pain point, it will quickly estimate how much money or opportunity they stand to lose by delaying implementation by one quarter or until next year. This creates the urgency that we need in a professional data-driven way. So here's the prompt. The role is a business impact modeler. The instruction. Generate a short three sentence email follow up, the guardrails you want to have include professional acknowledgement, a quick numerical loss projection, and a scheduling call to action for next quarter, or hopefully to bring that up to this quarter so we can get ahead of next quarter's planning. And the specifics input, the prospect's primary pain point, like high customer churn, and the estimated monthly revenue loss associated with it. Now, if this is someone you've been working with a while, you likely have that information. If not, you're gonna have to do some research behind it. And again, see our previous podcast, around, research for Discovery. You can find some of this information. It's out there and you can at least have some pretty educated guesses. So the output you're gonna get after that prompt is something like, thanks for the clear timing. I'll definitely check back in in Q1. However, just for your planning, if the current churn rate continues for 90 days, that represents approximately $300,000 in preventable loss revenue. Let's schedule a quick five minute chat, so at least we don't let it slip past that date as you're doing your planning. So this is the human and AI hybrid model in action. The human brings the empathy and relationship and the AI brings the sharp, undeniable math. Remember, you don't have to be typing these prompts furiously. The full list of the rigs, prompt templates are available on saleszen ai.com/prompts. Just go in, copy and paste, plug it into Gemini Chat gt, or any internal tools that you're working with. Work through these in advance if you're already confident in what the client will say. It's beneficial to be proactive. I also recommend inputting the most common client responses so you're armed and ready for upcoming discussions. There's likely three or four top objections that you can get dialed in on that will cover the majority of your client meetings. It's also critical to iterate on the output AI provides to ensure it's aligned with your value proposition, the specifics of the client's objections. And uses your tone of voice to remain authentic on how you address objections. So please don't be one and done here. Spend some time getting it right. That's your actionable workflow for the week. We talked about the power of human and AI hybrid model and how to execute it securely to get immediate measurable results. Now, take action. Don't just listen. Open your AI right now. Use the process we discussed and put this technology to work for you. To see all the resources from today's quick hitting episode, or to explore how the sales and AI framework can scale to your entire team. Subscribe to the sales and AI podcast wherever you get your podcast so you never miss your weekly actionable workflow. Until next time, bring the Zen and let the AI handle the grind.