Drew Edwards: out. I, it is Terry Edwards from Make More Placements. And welcome to this week's podcast. And today's title is, The Five Lies Killing Yourselves Calls and Why You Keep Believing Them. Let me start with something that may annoy you a bit, but that's not the intention. Most recruiters don't lose deals because they're bad. They lose the deals because they're polite. They hear them objecting, they respect it, they accept it. And then they wonder why nothing moves. Here's the honest truth. Objections are rarely real. They're smoke screens. And most recruiters never check in for the fire. Now, just hold that thought for a moment. Because at the end of this episode, you're going to realize something's slightly uncomfortable. The biggest reason your pipeline is slowing down or maybe even non-existent has got nothing to do with the market, nothing to do with the candidates or the economic climate. It's all to do with the questions that you're not asking. And we're going to go through the five most common objections that you hear from hiring managers every single day. You already know them. You've heard them thousands of times. But here's the angle most recruiters miss. It's not the objection that kills the deal. Let me repeat that. It's not the objection that kills the deal. It's what you do in the next five seconds. And if you get those next five seconds wrong, you're going to lose the deal. So you've trained yourself to lose most deals. So I want you to think of an objection like a bouncer at a nightclub. Most recruiters walk up and they're here, not tonight, and they leave. The smart ones, the best ones, they lean in and go, is that a real no or is it just your job to say no first? They don't argue, they don't push, they check. And that's the game here. You're not overcoming the objections, you're testing if they're real. This is what this is all about. And you'll never, never know that unless you ask the right questions. Here's a common one. We already have a supplier. I can give a cast-iron guarantee that everybody listening to this right now has heard that. You've heard that. And here's where most people go wrong. They hear that and instantly they become what I call respectful. And look, there's nothing wrong with being respectful, but... They think in the conversations over, but think about it. Do you ever only eat at one restaurant or only watch one TV show or only ever work with one supplier forever? Of course not. So what is this really? It's a default response. It's a brush off. It's a reflex. WIC responses sound like that. Would you consider switching to another ⁓ recruitment firm? That's basically asking permission to be rejected. Here's a stronger approach. What we call test the truth. You say things like, can I ask you a quick question? They all say sure. Is it your brother-in-law's company, the supplier? Of course, the hiring manager laughs and says no. They say right. So there's no real loyalty then. If you generally thought that we were better, you wouldn't be saying that. You'd certainly explore it a bit more, wouldn't you? See what you've done there, you've shitted something. You've gone from please consider me to let's be honest about what's really going on here. Remember what I said earlier, most objections are smoke screens. What you're doing is checking is there really a fire? Another one that you've all heard is this isn't a priority at the moment. This one kills more deals than anything else because it sounds reasonable, doesn't it? and most recruiters respect it. Big mistake, big, big mistake. This isn't a priority, it's quite vague if you think about it. In fact, it's too vague. And vagueness is where deals go to die. Weak responses. What would need to change? That's lazy. You're making them do the thinking instead of you break it down. Hey look, hear what you're saying, I'm a bit confused. When you say it's not a priority, do you mean you don't see the issue? or you see the issue and it's not hurting you yet, or is it something else? Now, something very interesting happens here. They have to clarify. And when hiring managers clarify, they reveal what's underneath, or what I call they reveal the truth. See, the doctor doesn't, if you go see a doctor and you say, feel off, they don't go, okay. They probe, they diagnose, they ask relevant questions. They ask you how you feel first thing in the morning. They ask you if you're in pain and where the pain is. Selling recruitment is no different. If you don't diagnose properly, you're gonna prescribe the wrong solution. And the only way you can diagnose is by asking questions. And if you don't diagnose, You're to get no solution at all. There's another one. We don't have a budget. This one people treat like the final response. This is like a law. If they don't have a budget, that's the end of it. It isn't. There's two possibilities going on here. They can't afford it or they don't value it enough. And most salespeople recruiters never find out which one it is. So they say things like, if I could make this work, there any reason not to look at it? Now you're negotiating with what I call a ghost. Better. If the budget appeared tomorrow, would you move? So you asked the question, now wait. Or when you say no budget, do you mean you wouldn't make room even if you wanted this? See, now they have to choose. And whatever they say, you finally know where they stand. Another one is, I need to think about it. How many times do you heard that? Especially rookie recruiters when they hear that. This one is really dangerous because it feels like you're making some progress. You're not. It's delay. And delay kills momentum. It's weak. That's this question. If you could decide now, why would you? That's awkward. That's pushy and it creates resistance. Here's something that could get a much better response and removes the pressure. Fair enough. Let's do this. Let's call it a no for now. That sounds right. I'd rather you feel in control than walk away with homework you won't do. test this method, because here's what happens. They will want to correct you. They will say, no, no, it's a no, either way. Or they'll say, well, actually, either way, you're going to win because you're not stuck in limbo. The next one I call the ghost chase. Most recruiters spend weeks, sometimes months chasing the ghost. Let me think. Send me something. I'll get back to you. That's not a Pipeline? That said graveyard. Another one is, especially when you call them, send me an email or send me your terms. And yet everyone still fell with this one, but you've all heard it. Yeah, sure. Or, yeah, will you actually read it? You've already lost authority. How about this? Can I be honest with you, Mr. or Mrs. Hiram Rai Nanger? Nine times out of 10, that's the code for end the call. If that's what you want to do, you won't hurt my feelings. Listen, I work in recruitment. I'm rejected, obviously enough. Now you've created honesty. And honesty is where the deal lies. Let's bring this back to where we started. You're not losing deals because of objections. You're losing them because you're accepting them too quickly. You're too polite when you should be curious. You'll be respectful when you should be testing. And over time, this does something very dangerous. It trains you to start to believe in those excuses. And once you believe them, you stop probing, you stop asking, you stop selling. And if you're recruitment, whether you like it or not, you have to sell. That's how careers stall. Here's the shift. Don't overcome objections. Expose them. Reveal them. Test them. Or move on fast. Because the goal isn't to win every deal. Because you never will. It's only to spend time on the real ones. So here's what I'd like you to think about. What's the one line that keeps showing up on your calls? Have a think about it. What's the one line that every time you call, you get this one line that you keep accepting? This is the key thing. The one line that shows up in your calls that you accept time after time and time again. So if you're accepting it, you're not challenging it. And that one line is costing you money. It's costing you placements. It's wasting your time. But when you fix it, everything else starts to move again. If you'd like to discover more and how exactly you can do this, you can go to makemoreplacements.com forward slash call and book a 10 minute call one of our team and they can give you a lot more information on this. So that's makemoreplacements.com forward slash call and get a cheat sheet about how to overcome these challenges. This is Terry Eddard from Make More Placements. Until next time. Take care, take action, be relentless.